The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin by Adam Hochschild - Essay Example

Hochschild chronicled his travels to Kolyma where he for example interviewed Stalin’s English interpreter Berezhkov. Valentine Berezhkov was privy to Stalin’s inner circle. Also, Adam made a visit to the KGB in Moscow where he was given access to its archived files. Hochschild in his sojourn compared Stalin’s murderous rule to medieval Europe’s witch craze. He subsequently blamed the ‘self-inflicted atrocities/genocide’ to Russian’s age old and common habits of passive obedience and scapegoating.

As such, the paper will analyze and evaluate the impact of Stalin’s rule according to Adam Hochschild’s book The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember. Subsequently, the worst legacy of Stalinism will be looked at. The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember tends to find answers to some critical questions. For example, what lasting political and emotional consequences has his (Stalin) reign had for the Soviet Union? What kind of memories did the gulag or Stalin survivors keep to themselves after his death?

And lastly, how are the Russians reacting to these revelations? Primarily, Stalinism can be defined as the policies and means of ruling/governing implemented and advocated by the Soviet Union’s leader Joseph Stalin. In the Soviet Union, Stalinist policies included the concept of socialism, rapid industrialization, a bureaucratic centralized state, subordination of foreign communist party interests to the interests of the communist party of the Soviet Union and agriculture collectivization. Joseph Stalin viewed the communist party of the Soviet Union as the only vanguard party of the communist revolution during his rule or time.

Stalinism on another perspective is used generally to criticize or refer to the style of governance employed by Joseph Stalin. Stalin’s form of governance was characterized or associated with personality cult and