Stalinist Appearances
example · history ·
retold in 4 talks
Stalinism was brutal power but also a strict rule of appearances that must not be disturbed (no black chronicles/crime reports); this conjunction of terror and protected appearance is key to understanding the Big Other.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 4
“what characterizes stalinism is precisely this conjunction of raw, brutal terror and the need to protect appearances.”
“a Stalinist true Stalinist communist is a pervert not because of horrors they did but... we are just servants of the people but the catch is we know better than people what people want”
“a communist knows very well that millions are dying in the camps yet this knowledge only confirms his belief that the sublime true people happily enthusiastically build socialism”
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
×2
perversion
×1
fetishist disavowal
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
David Koresh1Taylor Sheridan1Charles de Mazade1Alexander the Great1John Miller1Ambient You (Amb. But.)1Elizabeth II1Sam Neill1
alongside works
Every retelling 4
Stalinism was brutal power but also a strict rule of appearances that must not be disturbed (no black chronicles/crime reports); this conjunction of terror and protected appearance is key to understanding the Big Other., illustrating ideology,stalinism
The Stalinist communist occupies a perverse subjective position, not through the horrors committed but through the structure: 'We are just servants of the people, but we know better than the people what they want.', illustrating perversion (subjective position),Stalinism,authoritarianism
A communist in 1930s Soviet Union, confronted with evidence of terror and famine, does not deny the facts but claims his accusers cannot perceive the emergence of the new man, the more reality is miserable, the more he clings to the fetish of socialist construction. This illustrates fetishist disavowal as the founding logic of ideological allegiance., illustrating fetishist disavowal,proton pseudos,ideology
Soviet collectivization required 'sub-kulak' as a category: defined ostensibly as an objective social class, it actually picked out those who merely had the subjective attitude of a kulak, a pure objectivization of a subjective stance inserted into an otherwise objective taxonomy., illustrating sub-kulak,suture,epistemological obstacle vs. ontological impossibility