Reading Stalinism: Stalinist Culture as a Field of Research

The article analyses Stalinism as a research field, which has been rapidly changing since the early 1990s, when the study of Stalinism left the sphere of traditional Sovietology and gradually became one of the dominant trends in the history of the twentieth century. Among the main factors that influenced the formation of this scientific field are the change of generations of researchers, interdisciplinarity and methodological shifts, democratization, the opening of archives, as well as changes in the academic eco - nomy. However, in general, the analysis of Western and Russian historiography reveals numerous gaps in the study of Stalinism and the need for new methodological and institutional changes.