The Stalin Cult and Ethnicity
Georgian “Koba” or Soviet “Father of Nations”?
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Stalin was a Georgian. However, within the Stalin cult, which starting in 1929 was promoted by all of the Soviet media – the fine arts, folk poetry, film – his personal nationality remained taboo. Stalin embodied the “father of nations” beyond any kind of own ethnicity. His patriarchal role stood symbolically for the Soviet Union, for the transnational roof that spanned the national territories of the socialist, federal state. Stalin filled the representative vacuum that existed at the level of supranational Soviet identity.
(Osteuropa 7-10/2015, pp. 129–149)