| Summary: | Even though it is a well-accepted fact that most socialists have been opposed to the one-man rule of the Stalinist
regime, described as “a whole river of blood” by Trotsky (1937), the name of Stalin is deliberately manipulated and
linked with socialism in order to implicitly charge Marxism with inherent despotic inclinations. In this context, the aim
of this study is to unearth the fossilised hierarchal structure of the Stalinist bureaucracy, to investigate the impacts of
the ideological hegemony of the Stalinist dogma on the revolutionary practices of socialist activists and to reveal that
Stalinism, above all, victimised and tyrannised socialist activists, through a close reading of Anna’s critical attitude
towards the Communist Party in Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook. This study will also focus on the role of the
left-wing writer in a mid-fifties communist milieu and examine the dogmatisation of Marxism and the widening gap
between theory and practice in left-wing politics during the Stalin era. This will provide a framework to discuss whether
the novel is actually intended or functions more as a critique of socialism or specifically of Stalinism. Over the course
of the study, some short excerpts from Lessing’s interviews and autobiographical work, Walking in The Shade: Volume
Two of My Autobiography, 1949-1962, will be used.
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