<p>The purpose of this project is to critically evaluate the history of Stalin and Stalinism. Since the beginning of the Cold War, the selective rendition of Soviet history has been used to delegitimise socialist political movements globally, whilst simultaneously downplaying or ignoring the multiple horrors inflicted on colonised populations by capitalist imperialism. Stalinism as a concept has been central to the denigration of ‘actually existing socialism’, and is often portrayed as the end result or final consequence of any attempt to build real socialist alternatives. <br /><br />Many self-proclaimed socialists in the West have adopted the capitalist telling of Soviet history wholesale, abandoning any attempts at materialist analysis altogether. But to place all the blame for the failures of the Soviet Union with Stalin alone is both intellectually lazy and politically dangerous. Unless the Left learns from the mistakes of history it is doomed to repeat them. <br /><br />Until the
