This volume explores the relationship between Stalin's ideas and methods and the practices advocated by Machiavelli and the practices associated with "Machiavellian" politics. It advances the concept of "revolutionary Machiavellism" as a way of understanding a particular strand of revolutionary thought from the Jacobins to Leninism and Stalinism. It also provides a wide ranging survey of European political thought in the 19th and early 20th century, and locates the Bolshevik tradition within the wider European tradition.