Robert C. Tucker

He argued that systemic changes came not only in October 1917, when the Bolsheviks seized power, and in December 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, but also in the mid-1930s, when Lenin's one-party dictatorship was transformed into Stalin's one-man dictatorship, and in the mid-1950s, when oligarchic one-party rule filled the power vacuum created by the dictator's death.

He underscored that Soviet and post-Soviet Russia's political development progressed in distinctive stages, which were the products of leading officials' choices among viable options at key junctures.

Tucker's main stages were: War Communism (1917–1921), New Economic Policy (1921–1928), Revolution from Above (1928–1937), Neo-Tsarist Autocracy (1937–1953), Thaw (1953–1964), Stagnation (1964–1985), and Perestroika (1985–1991).

While involuntarily remaining in Stalinist Russia, Tucker was greatly influenced by psychoanalytical theories of neurosis, paranoia, and self-idealization.

He recognized such traits in Stalin and hypothesized that "psychological needs," "psychopathological tendencies", and "politicized psychodynamics" were not only core elements of Stalin's "ruling personality", but also of Stalinism as a "system of rule" and Stalinization as the process of establishing that rule—"Neo-Tsarist Autocracy".

"I hold that Stalinism must be recognized as an historically distinct and specific phenomenon which did not flow directly from Leninism, although Leninism was an important contributory factor. ... Stalinism, despite conservative, reactionary, or counter-revolutionary elements in its makeup, was a revolutionary phenomenon in essence; ... Stalinist revolution from above, whatever the contingencies involved in its inception and pattern, was an integral phase of the Russian revolutionary process as a whole; ... notable among the causal factors explaining why the Stalinist revolution occurred, or why it took the form it did, are the heritage of Bolshevik revolutionism, the heritage of old Russia, and the mind and personality of Stalin."

These themes were developed from comparative, theoretical, and interdisciplinary perspectives and were documented at length in Tucker's magnum opus, the two published volumes of an unfinished three-volume biography of Stalin, and in other important works on Stalin and Stalinism.

Tucker rejected the view that Stalinism was an "unavoidable," "ineluctable," or "necessary" product of Leninism.

Robert Charles Tucker (May 29, 1918 – July 29, 2010) was an American political scientist and historian.

Tucker is best remembered as a biographer of Joseph Stalin and as an analyst of the Soviet political system, which he saw as dynamic rather than unchanging.

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he was a Sovietologist at Princeton University.

He highlighted the similarities between tsarist and Stalinist nationalism and patrimonialism, as well as the warlike brutality of the "Revolution from Above" in the 1930s.

The chief causes of this revolution were Stalin's voracious appetite for personal, political, and national power and his relentless quest for personal, political, and national security.

The chief consequences were the consolidation of Stalin's personal dictatorship, the creation of a military-industrial complex, and the collectivization and urbanization of the peasantry.

And the chief means of achieving these ends included blood purges of party and state elites, centralized economic management and slave labor camps, and genocidal famine in Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

Stalin's irrational premonitions, trepidations, and aggressions—intermixed with his rational perceptions, predispositions, and calculations—decisively influenced Soviet domestic politics and foreign policies during and after World War II.

Of particular significance were Stalin's forced resettlement of entire non-Russian nationality groups, skillful negotiations with wartime allies, atomic espionage, reimposition of harsh controls in postwar Russia, imposition of Soviet rule in Eastern Europe, and Cold War military-industrial, geopolitical, and ideological rivalry with the United States.

He graduated from Harvard College, earning an A.B. magna cum laude in 1939, followed by an A.M. in 1941.

He served as an attaché at the American Embassy in Moscow from 1944–1953.

His viewpoints were shaped by nine years (1944–1953) of diplomatic and translation work in wartime and postwar Russia (including persistent efforts to bring his Russian wife to the United States), by wide-ranging interdisciplinary interests in the social sciences and humanities (notably history, psychology, and philosophy), and by creative initiatives to benefit from and contribute to comparative political studies (especially theories of political culture and leadership).

Tucker married a Russian, Eugenia (Evgeniia) Pestretsova, who eventually emigrated with him and taught Russian for many years at Princeton.

His daughter Elizabeth is a senior editor on the radio program Marketplace, American Public Media.

Her husband, Tucker's son-in-law Robert English, is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern California.

Tucker's Harvard University doctoral dissertation was in philosophy and challenged the dominant interpretations of Soviet and Western theorists.

He linked the ideas of the young and mature Karl Marx and emphasized their "moralist," "ethical," and "religious" rather than political, economic, and social "essence".

When Stalin died in 1953, Tucker experienced "intense elation" for personal and political reasons.

His wife, Evgenia Pestretsova, was soon granted a visa to the United States (and his mother-in-law joined them a half-decade later after a face-to-face request to Khrushchev).

Tucker saw a gradually, albeit fitfully, liberalizing Soviet polity, economy, and society and an improving Soviet-American relations (with prospects for much less conflict and much more cooperation).

For Tucker, Stalin's demise posed the question "What shall take the place of Stalinism as a mode of rule and pattern of policy and ideas"?

The central issues in Soviet politics were the "desirability, forms, limits, and tempo" of de-Stalinization.

He received his PhD degree from Harvard University in 1958; his doctoral dissertation was later revised and published as a book.

His biographies of Joseph Stalin are cited by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies as his greatest contribution.

At Princeton he started the Russian Studies Program and held the position of Professor of Politics Emeritus and IBM Professor of International Studies Emeritus until he died.

Tucker was a scholar of Russia and politics.

His revised dissertation was published as Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (1961) and was followed by a collection of innovative essays on Marxian theories of revolution, modernization, and distributive justice as well as comprehensive anthologies of the writings of Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin.

Tucker presented lucidly formulated views on tsarist and Soviet politics.

He affirmed that change in Soviet political leadership was even more important than continuity in Russian political culture.

He contended that psychological differences were more important than ideological similarities in Soviet leadership politics and that Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Mikhail Gorbachev had very different personalities and mentalities.

He emphasized that the different psychological make-ups of Russia's top political leaders invariably produced different perceptions of situations and options, which, in turn, periodically altered policymaking and implementation procedures as well as domestic and foreign policies.

As Tucker detailed in The Soviet Political Mind (1963 and 1971, rev. ed.) and Political Culture and Leadership in Soviet Russia (1987), Stalin's successors did not consensually craft a post-Stalinist political system.