This is the first book in English to explore the relationship between Stalin's ideas and methods, and the practices advocated by Machiavelli and those associated with 'Machiavellian' politics. It advances the concept of 'revolutionary Machiavellism' as a way of understanding a particular strand of revolutionary thought from the Jacobins through to Leninism and Stalinism. By providing a wide-ranging survey of European political thought in the Nineteenth - and early Twentieth-century, E. A. Rees locates the Bolshevik tradition within the wider European tradition.

E.A. REES is Professor of East European History at the European University Institute, Florence. He studied at the University of York and completed his PhD at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham. He taught political science at the University of Keele, and Russian/Soviet history at the University of Birmingham.

Introduction Machiavelli's Ideas on Politics Machiavelli, Marx and Nietzsche Machiavelli in Russia up to 1917 Revolutionary Machiavellism Bolshevism, Lenin and Machiavelli Machiavellism in Soviet Thought Stalin and Machiavelli 1 Stalin and Machiavelli 2 Stalin and Machiavelli 3 Stalin and Machiavelli 4 Conclusion Appendix: Machiavelli in the Post-Stalin Era Bibliography