title: Nominal democracy in Stalinism
abstract: I suggest here my interpretation of sham nature of democratic institutions under Stalinism – elections, constitution, soviets, and the Supreme Soviet – focusing on the constitution of 1936 but in larger historical national context. I argue that Stalin and the government succumbed to self-deception about successful socialist transformation of economy and society by the mid-1930s. They were dogmatically attached to Lenin’s vision of future socialist state (in the State and Revolution and later wor