Soviet official culture underwent a dramatic shift in the mid-1930s, when Stalin and his fellow leaders began to promote conventional norms, patriarchal families, tsarist heroes, and Russian literary classics. For Leon Trotsky—and many later commentators—this apparent embrace of bourgeois values marked a betrayal of the October Revolution and a retreat from socialism. In the first book to address these developments fully, David L. Hoffmann argues that, far from reversing direction, the Stalinist leadership remained committed to remaking both individuals and society—and used selected elements of traditional culture to bolster the socialist order.