International Communism and the Cult of the Individual

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Introduction: Wherever a Communist Party is at Work…

   • Kevin Morgan

   Pages 1-24

3. Cult Developments 1917–1956

   • Kevin Morgan

   Pages 25-70

4. Cult Variations

   • Kevin Morgan

   Pages 71-126

5. Leader Cults

   • Kevin Morgan

   Pages 127-184

6. Cults of Circumstance

   • Kevin Morgan

   Pages 185-255

7. Cult Representations

   • Kevin Morgan

   Pages 257-325

8. Cult Reflections: No Saviour from on High

   • Kevin Morgan

   Pages 327-338

9. Back Matter

   Pages 339-363

   PDF

This book explores how the communist cult of the individual was not just a Soviet phenomenon but an international one. When Stalin died in 1953, the communists of all countries united in mourning the figure that was the incarnation of their cause. Though its international character was one of the distinguishing features of the communist cult of personality, this is the first extended study to approach the phenomenon over the longer period of its development in a truly transnational and comparative perspective. Crucially it is concerned with the internationalisation of the Soviet cults of Lenin and Stalin. But it also ranges across different periods and national cases to consider a wider cast of bureaucrats, tribunes, heroes and martyrs who symbolised both resistance to oppression and the tyranny of the party-state. Through studying the disparate ways in which the cults were manifested, Kevin Morgan not only takes in many of the leading personalities of the communist movement, but also some of the cultural luminaries like Picasso and Barbusse who sought to represent them. The cult of the individual was one of the most fascinating, troubling and revealing features of Stalinist communism, and as reconstructed here it offers new insight into one of the defining political movements of the twentieth century.

• Soviet Union
• Picasso
• Barbusse
• Political movements
• Cult of personality

“Kevin Morgan has provided us with a masterful analysis of these cults of the individual in international communism between the 1920s and 1956. His history is also an explicitly transnational and comparative one, and he succeeds admirably in demonstrating how valuable such a perspective is in understanding both commonalities and differences in the communist movements of the world. … this book on international communism has a distinct Western-centric focus.” (Stefan Berger, Moving the Social, Vol. 62, 2019)


“Kevin Morgan has performed an inestimable service for students of international communism. … as a study of non-Soviet communism, Morgan’s book is excellent. Now that it has been published, one cannot claim to understand communism outside the Soviet Union without having read it and incorporated into one’s own analysis of the phenomenon the many insights it thankfully contains.” (Jay Bergman, English Historical Review HER, Vol. 135(564), October, 2018)



“This is a work of considerable accomplishment and erudition. It displays a deep familiarity with the available literature on individual leaders. It is enlivened with telling insights into the appeal of the cult, its multi-faceted forms, the variations between countries, and the appeal which it carried for followers and acolytes.” (E. A. Rees, European History Quarterly, Vol. 47 (4), 2017)


“Morgan’s wide-ranging and penetrating discussion greatly advances our understanding of personality cults in general. … This very fine and thoroughly researched book will be of great interest to scholars of political leadership and of communist and fascist movements. Not only are its case studies superbly conducted; it offers a conceptual framework that can be adapted and applied to many movements and leaders who are beyond the remit of the book itself.” (Stephen Gundle, Labour History Review, Vol. 82 (3), 2017)


“The book undoubtedly succeeds in its goal of providing a broad, comparative and analytical account of the cult of the leader in the international communist movement from the 1930s to the 1950s, when it was its height. There is a very large literature on the cultic practices of particular communist parties and particular leaders, and Morgan is on top of that literature. He goes beyond it in the range of his inquiry, his attention to different forms and aspects, and his historicisation of the subject. This will be the authoritative account of the subject.” (Stuart Macintyre, University of Melbourne, Australia)

• Sch of Social Sci Politics, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom

  Kevin Morgan

Kevin Morgan is Professor of Politics and Contemporary History at the University of Manchester, UK. He has published extensively on the history of the communist movement including the three volumes of his Bolshevism and the British Left (2006-13). He is a founding editor of the journal Twentieth Century Communism.

Policies and ethics