The Stalin Cult in East Germany and the Making of the Postwar

The Stalin Cult in East Germany and the Making of the Postwar Soviet Empire, 19451961Author(s): Alexey Tikhomirov, Jacqueline Friedlander\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, United States\nImprint: Lexington Books\nISBN-13: 9781666911893, 978-1666911893\nSynopsis\nThis book examines the construction, dissemination, and reception of the Stalin cult in East Germany from the end of World War II to the building of the Berlin Wall. By exporting Stalins cult to the Eastern bloc, Moscow aspired to symbolically unite the communist states in an imagined cult community pivoting around the Soviet leader. Based on Russian and German archives, this work analyzes the emergence of the Stalin cults transnational dimension. On one hand, it looks at how Soviet representations of power were transferred and adapted in the former enemys country. On the other hand, it reconstructs spaces of agency where different agents and generations interpreted, manipulated, and used the Stalin cul.