Donald, Christian, and Connor return to the subject of Stalin and Stalinism. Picking up from the Great Purge, the episode covers the Second World War through the death of Stalin, or the High Stalinist period. Among other things they take up the questions of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Gulag system, and the rise of technocracy in the postwar years. The episode ends by exploring the lessons to be learned from studying Stalin and Soviet history, and what a lot of the Left gets wrong in their orientation toward the past.

References: M. J. Carley - 1939: The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II S. Davies, J. Harris - Stalin’s World: Dictating the Soviet Order M. Djilas - Conversations with Stalin J. E. Duskin - Stalinist Reconstruction and the Confirmation of the New Elite, 1945-1953 D. Filtzer - Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism: Labor and the Restoration of the Stalinist System after World War II B. Kagarlitsky - The Thinking Reed: Intellectuals and the Soviet State from 1917 to the Present N. Khrushchev - Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Volume 2 M. P. Leffler- A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War M. Lewin - The Soviet Century N. Naimark - Stalin and the Fate of Europe: The Postwar Struggle for Sovereignty R. C. Raack - Stalin’s Drive to the West: 1938-1945 The Origins of the Cold War G. Roberts - Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold 1939-1953 A. Weiner - Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution