žižek archive
⌘K
archive / stories / Comrade Stalin and Q&A

Comrade Stalin and Q&A

anecdote · Soviet/Stalinist · retold in 4 talks
on the map →

Žižek personifies the Q&A format as 'Comrade Stalin,' who 'doesn't like it' and is 'bugging him,' suggesting the democratic game is oppressive.

2012: 1 talk 2018: 1 talk 2022: 1 talk 2023: 1 talk
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026

As told 4

“It's comrade Stalin. Comrade Stalin, yeah. No, no, seriously.”
39:05 Slavoj Zizek - Israel, Palestine & the Future2023-11-19 · 1:32:00
“the delegates of the congress with a large majority of votes unanimously rejected the oppositional platform”
0:48 Communism – A New Beginning?2012 · 1:54:19
“this is why the stalinist leader is the very opposite of a monarch.”
13:59 Slavoj Žižek I Whose Servant is a Master?2022-09 · 1:45:21

What it carries

one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)

contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
my stalinism / benevolent stalinism ×1 authoritarian leftism ×1 university discourse ×1

Its cast and sources

populated by
Charles Baudelaire1Mariano Rajoy1Mujo and Fata1Charles de Mazade1Alexander the Great1John Miller1Ambient You (Amb. But.)1Elizabeth II1
alongside works
The Sarkozy book (Badiou)1L'Étranger (The Stranger)1History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)1Hegel on the Rabble (Ruda)1Soviet Constitution of '361Newsweek1The Greening of Greenland1DiEM251

Every retelling 4

39:05 Slavoj Zizek - Israel, Palestine & the Future2023-11-19 · 1:32:00
Žižek personifies the Q&A format as 'Comrade Stalin,' who 'doesn't like it' and is 'bugging him,' suggesting the democratic game is oppressive., illustrating democracy
0:48 Communism – A New Beginning?2012 · 1:54:19
In the History of the Soviet Communist Party (co-written by Stalin), Stalin writes that the congress 'with a large majority of votes unanimously rejected the oppositional platform', a logical contradiction that Žižek treats as a genuine Freudian slip revealing the tension between majority and unanimous will., illustrating universality vs. majority,representation,Stalinist logic
13:59 Slavoj Žižek I Whose Servant is a Master?2022-09 · 1:45:21
Stalin is the opposite of a monarch: not a traditional or obscene master, but a pathological distortion of the 'university discourse' where the master signifier directly overlaps with knowledge/truth, lacking irony or post-truth multiplicity., illustrating ideology,stalinism
1:11:23 Slavoj Žižek receives the Gold Medal (English, May 2018)2018-05-07 · 1:44:03
Žižek jokes that he will organize the Q&A in a 'proper Stalinist way' because 'free debates have to be especially well organized to avoid enemy provocations,' referencing an old communist's advice., illustrating ideology,authoritarianism