Stalin with Kant or Hegel?

Alexandre Kojeve declared himself a Stalinist. This declaration has puzzled his own students from the inter-war period and many later commentators. The present article takes Kojeve at his word; its imaginative thrust is to cast Kojeve's declaration in the context of a more comprehensive reflection on revolution and the revolutionary project undertaken by Stalinism. Kojeve envisages revolution as completing history and ushering in a new era, whose exact contours appear paradoxical, since the end of history is also the end of humanity. This conception of history Kojeve associates with Hegel. At the same time Kojeve suggests that revolution may never be complete but remains a continuous striving for an end that is always "underway." This conception of history Kojeve associates with Kant and, ultimately, with the universal and homogeneous state and, by extension, with the historical Stalinist state as well. Such a state expresses a skeptical attitude to revolution in terms of both its possibility and perhaps even its desirability.