Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 Stalinism still casts its shadow over post-Communist Russia. For the Second Edition of this popuar text, the author re-examines this remarkable phenomenon in the light of the latest research findings of the Russian archives. As with all the books in the series Martin McCauley addresses the key questions facing students, and also takes into account the vigorous scholarly debate between the old, dominant totalitarian interpretation of Stalinism and the alternative school of thought put forward by the "social historians'' in the 1980s.