Description
Book SynopsisUnder Stalin's leadership, the Soviet government carried out a massive number of deportations, incarcerations, and executions. Paradoxically, at the very moment that Soviet authorities were killing thousands of individuals, they were also engaged in an enormous pronatalist campaign to boost the population. Even as the number of repressions grew exponentially, Communist Party leaders enacted sweeping social welfare and public health measures to safeguard people''s well-being. Extensive state surveillance of the population went hand in hand with literacy campaigns, political education, and efforts to instill in people an appreciation of high culture. In Cultivating the Masses, David L. Hoffmann examines the Party leadership''s pursuit of these seemingly contradictory policies in order to grasp fully the character of the Stalinist regime, a regime intent on transforming the socioeconomic order and the very nature of its citizens.
To analyze Soviet social policies, Hoffman
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Cultivating the Masses is a major contribution to an ongoing effort to place the interwar history of the Soviet Union in comparative, transnational, and transcultural perspective according to the central assumptions of this paradigm.... This book is a meritorious contribution to that ongoing conversation.
-- Glennys Young * Russian Review *
David L. Hoffmann offers a powerful counterweight to... simple (and self-exonerating) explanations in the first major comparative assessment of Soviet socialism in its turbulent foundational decades.... Hoffmann has presented an ambitious survey of Soviet state practices that deserves an audience in all fields of modern world history. Even if some might dispute his largely structuralist interpretation of the system's most infamous abuses, they will be hard pressed to ignore the abundance of evidence he presents of influences common to the transition to modernity. His prose is lucid, and the comparative approach and chronological scope of this monograph make it an attractive choice for the classroom.
-- T. Clayton Black * The NEP Era: Soviet Russia 1921-1928 *
For well over a decade now a major debate in Soviet historiography has centered on Bolshevik Russia's suspected participation in a happening called modernity, a happening that is as exciting to attend as it is difficult to locate.... Hoffmann's Cultivating the Masses is the latest book-length contribution to this debate; it testifies to the tenacity of the problematic, while raising doubts as to its continuing fecundity. The research behind Hoffmann’s historical narrative is impeccable throughout... and his handling of non-Russian contexts is truly impressive in its breadth.
-- Petre Petrow * Slavic and East European Journal *
In Cultivating the Masses, David L. Hoffmann argues that the Soviet Union under Lenin and Stalin was not an anomaly in European history—rather, it was one variant of that continent's broader experience with industrial modernity. A challenging thesis, this contention leads Hoffmann not only to reject the popular view that the USSR followed a unique, Sonderweg-like historical trajectory but also to cast doubt upon more routine claims that Soviet state policy development was essentially sui generis, proceeding according to an insular, domestically determined agenda.... A fascinating study, Cultivating the Masses deserves to be widely read.
-- David Brandenberger * The Journal of Modern History *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1. Social Welfare
Cameralism, Social Science, and the Origins of Welfare
The Social Realm in Russia
Warfare and Welfare
The Soviet Welfare State
2. Public Health
Social Medicine and the State
Social Hygiene
Foreign Influences on Soviet Health Care
Physical Culture and Its Militarization
3. Reproductive Policies
Birthrates and National Power
Contraception, Abortion, and Reproductive Health
Promoting Motherhood and Family
Eugenics
Infant Care and Childraising
4. Surveillance and Propaganda
Monitoring Popular Moods
Wartime Propaganda
Soviet Surveillance
Political Enlightenment
The New Soviet Person
5. State Violence
Origins of Modern State Violence
Internments, Deportations, and Genocide during the First World War
The Russian Civil War and the 1920s
Collectivization and Passportization
The Mass Operations
The National Operations
Conclusion
Archives Consulted
Index
