Culture, ideology and personality : Robert C. Tucker's analysis of Stalinism and soviet politics.

Abstract

Robert C. Tucker's contributions to Soviet studies have not only been various and fundamental, but also methodologically innovative. This essay seeks to make an overall assessment of Tucker's Sovietological work to date, concentrating mainly on questions of methodology and theory. It identifies three main themes of that work -culture, ideology and personality - and seeks both to assess the theoretical and in several cases extra-disciplinary foundations of each theme and to examine their mutual relationship. In both of these respects it argues that there are some unresolved difficulties in Tucker's approach, mainly having to do with explanatory scope.