section_path: Legacy
section_name: Legacy
paragraph_text: Legacy
  
  The historian Robert Conquest stated that Stalin perhaps "determined the course of the twentieth century" more than any other individual. Biographers like Service and Volkogonov have considered him an outstanding and exceptional politician; Montefiore labelled Stalin as "that rare combination: both 'intellectual' and killer", a man who was "the ultimate politician" and "the most elusive and fascinating of the twentieth-century titans". According to historian Kevin McDermott, interpretations of Stalin range from "the sycophantic and adulatory to the vitriolic and condemnatory." For most Westerners and anti-communist Russians, he is viewed overwhelmingly negatively as a mass murderer; for significant numbers of Russians and Georgians, he is regarded as a great statesman and state-builder.
  
  According to Service, Stalin strengthened and stabilised the Soviet Union. In under three decades, Stalin transformed the Soviet Union into a major industrial world power, one which could "claim impressive achievements" in terms of urbanisation, military strength, education and Soviet pride. Under his rule, the average Soviet life expectancy grew due to improved living conditions, nutrition and medical care as mortality rates also declined. Although millions of Soviet citizens despised him, support for Stalin was nevertheless widespread throughout Soviet society. Conversely, the historian Vadim Rogovin argued that the Great Terror which had gained traction in 1937 "caused losses to the communist movement both in the USSR and throughout the world from which the movement has not recovered to this very day". Similarly, Khrushchev believed his widespread purges of the "most advanced nucleus of people" among the Old Bolsheviks and leading figures in the military and scientific fields had "undoubtedly" weakened the nation.
  
  Stalin's necessity for the Soviet Union's economic development has been questioned, and it has been argued that Stalin's policies from 1928 onwards may have only been a limiting factor. Stalin's Soviet Union has been characterised as a totalitarian state, with Stalin its authoritarian leader. Various biographers have described him as a dictator, an autocrat, or accused him of practising Caesarism. Montefiore argued that while Stalin initially ruled as part of a Communist Party oligarchy, the Soviet government transformed from this oligarchy into a personal dictatorship in 1934, with Stalin only becoming "absolute dictator" between March and June 1937, when senior military and NKVD figures were eliminated. According to Kotkin, Stalin "built a personal dictatorship within the Bolshevik dictatorship." In both the Soviet Union and elsewhere he came to be portrayed as an "Oriental despot ". Dmitri Volkogonov characterised him as "one of the most powerful figures in human history."
  
  McDermott nevertheless cautioned against "over-simplistic stereotypes"—promoted in the fiction of writers like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vasily Grossman, and Anatoly Rybakov —that portrayed Stalin as an omnipotent and omnipresent tyrant who controlled every aspect of Soviet life. Service similarly warned of the portrayal of Stalin as an "unimpeded despot", noting that "powerful though he was, his powers were not limitless", and his rule depended on his willingness to conserve the Soviet structure he had inherited. Kotkin observed that Stalin's ability to remain in power relied on him having a majority in the Politburo at all times. Khlevniuk noted that at various points, particularly when Stalin was old and frail, there were "periodic manifestations" in which the party oligarchy threatened his autocratic control. Stalin denied to foreign visitors that he was a dictator, stating that those who labelled him such did not understand the Soviet governance structure.
  
  A vast literature devoted to Stalin has been produced. During Stalin's lifetime, his approved biographies were largely hagiographic in content. Stalin ensured that these works gave very little attention to his early life, particularly because he did not wish to emphasise his Georgian origins in a state numerically dominated by Russians. Since his death many more biographies have been written, although until the 1980s these relied largely on the same sources of information. Under Mikhail Gorbachev 's Soviet administration various previously classified files on Stalin's life were made available to historians, at which point Stalin became "one of the most urgent and vital issues on the public agenda" in the Soviet Union. After the dissolution of the Union in 1991, the rest of the archives were opened to historians, resulting in much new information about Stalin coming to light, and producing a flood of new research.
  
  Leninists remain divided in their views on Stalin; some view him as Lenin's authentic successor, while others believe he betrayed Lenin's ideas by deviating from them. The socio-economic nature of Stalin's Soviet Union has also been much debated, varyingly being labelled a form of state socialism, state capitalism, bureaucratic collectivism, or a totally unique mode of production. Socialist writers like Volkogonov have acknowledged that Stalin's actions damaged "the enormous appeal of socialism generated by the October Revolution".