War, Violence and the Making of the Stalinist State: A Tillyian Analysis. Issue 6 (3rd July 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Markwick, Roger D.
• Is Part Of: Europe-Asia studies. Volume 71:Issue 6(2019)
• Page Start: 907
• Page End: 931
• Publication Date: 2019-07-03
• Subjects: Europe, Eastern -- Periodicals; Eurasia -- Periodicals; Former Soviet republics -- Periodicals; Soviet Union -- History -- Periodicals; 940
• DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2019.1637400
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0966-8136

Abstract

Abstract: Defining the state as 'organised violence', based on the emergence of the modern European national state system, Charles Tilly identified four essential war-driven, state-building activities: 'war-making'; 'state-making'; 'protection' of elite 'clients'; and 'extraction' of resources. Drawing on Tilly's primary categories of analysis, this essay considers the ways in which war, or the threat of war, real or imagined, shaped the Soviet state, particularly in its Stalinist manifestation. This essay argues that Tilly's warfare-state paradigm, judiciously deployed, brings into high relief facets of Soviet state-making that few other paradigms do.