The book examines the evolution of the regime of the Soviet Union from the illness and death of Lenin (late 1922-January 1924) to the end of the Great Terror (1936-1938).

At its center is the study of Stalinism as a multifaceted phenomenon, produced overall by the class struggle within the Soviet social formation. Consequently, the emphasis on the "cult of personality around Stalin," during the 20th Congress of the CPSU, is dismissed as a shallow and misleading approach. Similarly, the perspective suggesting that the 1930s represented the successful achievement of socialist construction in the USSR, even under difficult objective conditions, is also rejected.

The study is not based solely on the classic historical books from the 1920s to the 1980s, some of which have been available for a long time or more recently in Greek translation. It extends to a large part of the vast discussion about the USSR, primarily in the Anglo-Saxon world, over the past forty years or even in the Russian and post-Soviet sphere itself, given that many of its works have already been translated into English. This discussion is largely unknown to the Greek public.