Conclusions imply finality, but this one can only be provisional, summarising as it does the results of a preliminary investigation, which has perhaps raised more questions than it has been able to answer. Until now, it has been impossible to address the issue of popular opinion in Stalin's Russia in a systematic way. Now, for the first time, we have access to voices from the past. Often these voices come to us through the mediation of secret police and party officials. Despite the obvious problems with these sources, they do appear to correspond with a genuine vox populi, and, in the absence of any superior evidence on the popular mood, historians should use them, albeit with caution and in conjunction with other types of sources.

The new sources indicate that the Stalinist propaganda machine failed to extinguish an autonomous current of popular opinion. The machine itself was far from omnipotent, lacking sufficient resources and personnel to make it fully effective. Whole regions and social groups remained excluded from its influence at various times, and the propaganda that it did manage to transmit was sometimes communicated in a distorted form. The propaganda had to compete with a remarkably efficient unofficial parallel network of information and ideas. The importance of rumour, anecdotes, anonymous letters, and other aesopian strategies in Soviet society has perhaps not been fully appreciated. Likewise, the tenacity of alternative discourses has been underestimated. Religious and nationalist discourse continued to be employed, and gender stereotypes persisted.