Joseph Stalin Archives - Public Seminar

If These Walls Could Talk

In a room at The New School, the revolutionaries are still arguing

May 14, 2026 • by Julia Foulkes

The public refuses TO SEE painting. They want TO HEAR painting. They don’t care for the show itself, they prefer TO LISTEN to the barker outside.— José Clemente Orozco, in Orozco “Explains” (1940) CAST IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE Portrait of Joseph Stalin, revolutionary and leader of the Soviet Union: "Struggle in the ...

Democracy

The Revolution Against Legitimacy

To the new revolutionary class, legitimacy itself is an unjust claim of power

August 26, 2025 • by Roger Berkowitz

“[Stalin] changed the old political and especially revolutionary belief expressed popularly in the proverb “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs” into a veritable dogma: “You can’t break eggs without making an omelette.”—Hannah Arendt We are living through a revolution, though not the kind we are used to. Most today ...

Philosophy

Ideology After Marxism

From Karl Mannheim and Daniel Bell to Vaclav Havel

June 10, 2024 • by Alex Rossen

Among the many reckonings of [the twentieth century] was a reckoning, not merely with Marxism—but with the process of ideology-making itself....

Europe & Central Asia

Ukraine’s Fight For Freedom

Russia’s imperial dreams and the tragedy of Central Europe

April 6, 2022 • by Karolina Koziura

Some in the West are amazed that Russia is losing this war so far. Others are surprised by the courageous ways in which Ukrainians are resisting attacks and defending themselves with determination. Yet the opposite has happened. Ukraine has never been further away from Russia and closer to Western Europe ...

Literature

Boris Pasternak in Spring

A translation of the poet’s very early work

March 18, 2022 • by Inessa Medzhibovskaya

Boris Pasternak, a Jew by birth, chose to remain in Soviet Russia when the rest of his family, his famous father, painter and portraitist Leonid Pasternak including, had left, never to return....