Stalinization and Stalinism in Chile's Communist Party. A debate around its political traditions

This article analyzes the impact of Stalinism in the political culture of the Communist Party of Chile (CP). Contrary to interpretations that depict this political culture as the result of abrupt and watershed transformations, this article proposes that the CP combined and successfully synthetized diverse political traditions throughout its history. These were related to the CP's origins as the Socialist Workers Party, to the influx of the Bolshevik Revolution, and to the impact of the Stalinization process. This article argues that the Stalinization of the CP manifested itself in three different levels: ideological discourse; political practice; and internal organization. Nevertheless, the Stalinization of the CP did not lead to the disappearance of the previous political traditions of the party. The process of Stalinization began in the 1930s and achieved wide success around 1940, leading to the apogee of Stalinism in the CP, which lasted until 1956, when the USSR denounced the legacy of Stalinism and stimulated the de-stalinization of the International Communist Movement. © 2020 Investigaciones-Sociohistoricas Regionales. All rights reserved.