Why did you decide, after working Country Email List everyday life, to develop a study on the structure of power in Stalinism? Again there are a number of reasons, but perhaps I could just mention the main one: I like to do things I haven't done before Country Email List and I don't like to be pigeonholed. I had already gone from being a cultural historian – or, rather, a historian of cultural institutions – to working in the field of social history. I mean, I hadn't stayed in Country Email List one field. But on this specific question, I had always known something about the Politburo in the 1920s because, for decades.
I had cultivated a close friendship with Igor Country Email List secretary. Sats had met Trotsky, Stalin, Bukharin and used to talk to me about them, so I had an image of those characters and their personal interactions that was not Country Email List captured in the literature at the time. In particular, she used to talk about it with political scientist Jerry Hough, to whom she was then married. Jerry always said to me, "You should write this because it gives a Country Email List picture of Soviet politics that we just don't have."
But I didn't do it because I wanted to Country Email List do social history. Long after Jerry and I got divorced—very amicably—I thought, "Why not do it?"ussr , you could do some really interesting political history work." And I thought that maybe this Country Email List could add something to the way we see and think about Stalin himself. Because there have been a lot of studies on Stalin, but almost all of them are biographical. I did not intend to nullify that Country Email List work, nor to say "No, it is the Politburo that runs everything, not Stalin." I was trying to see how the Politburo fit into the Stalinist system.