Stalinism
noun ·4 syllables ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The Communist philosophies espoused by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. uncountable, usually
- 2 a form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator (not restricted by a constitution or laws or opposition etc.) wordnet
- 3 The act or state of living in accord with the communist philosophies of Stalin. uncountable, usually
- 4 The political system that put into practice - by means of governance, implementing policies, enforcing laws, etc. - the communist philosophical theory of Stalin in the Soviet Union from the 1920s and in the Soviet satellite states from the late 1940s to Stalin's death in 1953. uncountable, usually
"There are no crime[s] in history more terrible than the Moscow Trials of Zinoviev-Kamenev, and the- of Pyatakov-Radek. These trials developed not from communism, not from socialism, but from Stalinism: that is from the irresponsible despotism of the bureaucracy over the people."
Example
More examples"What I’m getting at is that Zamenhof not only built a linguistic object, but that behind that was an idea — an idea of brotherhood, a pacifist idea. That strength of an ideal — for which Esperantists were even persecuted under Nazism and Stalinism — is still conserved by the community of Esperantists. One cannot say that it has failed, but one thing needs to be said: the reason why any language is successful is always indefinable."
Etymology
From Stalin + -ism.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.