Introduction: Leader Cults, Varieties and Preconditions; E.A.Rees PART I: THE MAKING OF THE CULT: METHODS AND INDIVIDUALS Stalin and the Making of the Stalin Cult in the 1930s; S.Davies 'A Very Modest Man': Béla Illés or How to Make a Career through the Leader Cult; Á.V.Klimó Leader in the Making: The Role of Biographies in Constructing the Cult of Mátyás Rákosi; B.Apor PART II: THE FUNCTIONS OF THE LEADER CULT The Stalin Cult, Bolshevik Rule and Kremlin Interactions in the 1930s; B.Ennker Grandpa Lenin and Uncle Stalin: Soviet Leader Cults for Little Children; C.Kelly Georgian Koba or Soviet 'Father of the Peoples'? The Stalin Cult and Ethnicity; J.Plamper Working Towards the Centre: Leader Cults and Spatial Politics in Pre-war Stalinism; M.Rolf PART III: BEYOND MOSCOW: THE CULT'S PERIPHERIES Exporting the Leader: The Stalin Cult in Poland and East Germany (1944/45-1956); J.C.Behrends President of Poland or 'Stalin's Most Faithfull Pupil'? The Cult of Boleslaw Bierut in Stalinist Poland; I.Main Georgi Dimitrov: Three Manifestations of his Cult; M.Wien Leader Cults in the Western Balkans (1945-1990): Josip Broz Tito and Enver Hoxha; S.Sretenovic & A.Puto PART IV: THE DILEMMAS OF DE-STALINISATION: CHANGE AND CONTINUITY IN LEADER CULT PATTERNS IN THE POST-STALIN PERIOD 'I've Held, and I Still Hold Stalin in the Highest Esteem': Discourses and Strategies of Resistance to De-Stalinisation in the USSR, 1953-1962; P.Jones Surviving 1956: Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej and 'The Cult of Personality' in Romania; A.Mocanescu The Second Step of a Ladder: The Cult of the First Secretaries in Poland; M.Zaremba