Stalin’s socialism-in-one-country doctrine originated as a polemical accident

Evidence

Deutscher, op. cit., p. 282, describes the first attack on Trotsky’s “permanent revolution” and Stalin’s counterformulation of “socialism in one country” as an accident of political maneuvering. In 1924, Stalin’s “immediate purpose was to descredit Trotsky… Searching in Trotsky’s past, the triumvirs came across the theory of ‘permanent revolution,’ which he had formulated in 1905…It was in the course of that polemic that Stalin arrived at his formula of ‘socialism in one country.’” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2705

Categorization

• XREF: The idea that a formative doctrine emerges as an accident of tactical maneuvering parallels Arendt’s theme of totalitarian ideology detached from genuine intellectual motivation.