Issue section: A Look at the Problems of Stalinism

review

Stalin’s Latter-Day Defenders

By: Paul Le Blanc Winter 2026

Paul Le Blanc recommends Douglas Greene’s latest book In Stalin’s Shadow, a critique of the new wave of Stalinist revisionism.

The late Italian Marxist Domenico Losurdo’s Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend exalts and even deifies the long-ruling Soviet despot Joseph Stalin (1924–1953). Indeed, the text’s cover and inside cover art strikingly depict Stalin with a halo, and

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The New Politics Summer 2026 issue will soon be in the hands of subscribers, featuring articles on Democracy versus Degeneration in the United States (with contributions by Dan La Botz, Ellen Schrecker on McCarthyism Then and Now interviewed by Elizabeth Rapaport, Ben Silverman on the fascism debate, Samuel Farber on free speech, Samuel Barney on rural prisons, and Raoul Cansino and Bill Kelly on nativism), Imperialism Around the World (with articles by Lisbeth Moya González on Cuba, Husam Mahjoub on Sudan, Siyavash Shahabi and imperialism and the working class, and Matt Benson on the Mapuche in Chile), interviews on labor struggles and Russian political prisoners, a history of the International Socialists, review essays by Frieda Afary on AI, Javier Sethness on Western Marxism, and Peter Drucker on Molly Crabapple, as well as reviews on Ukraine, the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, white rage, South Asia, and Afghanistan, plus a letter on women under the Taliban.

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