CONCEPTS AND IDEOLOGEMES OF STALINISM: JOSEPH STALIN AND WAR
Joseph Stalin remains one of the most popular public figures of Russia. His activity is illuminated in a wide spectrum of opinions and assessments, from the most negative to the most praiseworthy. The debates about Stalin will hardly subside in the coming years; they split the Russian society ideologically. The subject of our study is the historical and contemporary discourse about J. Stalin primarily as a leader of the state in the Great Patriotic War, as well as the compliance of this discourse with the actual management decisions made by J. Stalin in 1930–1940-s. Discourse-analysis of significant amount of literature on Stalin's personality published in the last 20 years has allowed us to identify the main concepts in Stalinism: Communist conception, Bolshevik and post-Bolshevik conceptions, statist and liberal conceptions. We propose the following methodology for analysis of the Ideologemes of Stalin's role in the Great Patriotic War: (1) The answer to the question of whether there was an alternative to the decisions of a statesman or he acted in a very limited field of decision-making; (2) Analysis which is used in the management, of the ratio of the achieved result and the resources used, in the comparison of different options for solutions; (3) The answer to the question about the consequences of actions of the head of state and how favorably they affected the development of the country in the coming years. The use of this methodology in the analysis of human and natural resources in the period before the Great Patriotic War, and during the war (loss of people and weaponry), allowed us to conclude about the failure in Russian perceptions of Joseph Stalin as a successful military and state manager. In the field of party struggle, Stalin’s management was, undoubtedly, successful.