“There is no general agreement as to what the term 'Stalinism' connotes. It has never been used by the official ideologists of the Soviet state, as it would seem to imply the existence of a self-contained social system. Since Khrushchev's time the accepted formula for what went on in Stalin's day has been 'the cult of personality', and this phrase is invariably associated with two presuppositions. The first is that throughout the existence of the Soviet Union the party's policy was 'in principle' right and salutary, but that occasional errors were committed, the most serious of which was the neglect of 'collective leadership', i.e. the concentration of unlimited power in Stalin's hands. The second assumption is that the main source of 'errors and distortions' lay in Stalin's own faults of character, his thirst for power, despotic inclinations, and so on. After Stalin's death all these deviations were immediately cured: the party once more conformed to proper democratic principles, and that was the end of the matter.”