Description
Book SynopsisAn account of what Stalinism meant to the masses of ordinary people who lived it. It argues that Stalinism offered itself as an opportunity for enlightenment. It depicts a whole range of life: from the blast furnace workers who labored in the iron and steel plant, to the families who struggled with the shortage of housing and services.
Trade Review"One of the most influential of the post-Soviet books . . . a study of the steel city of Magnitogorsk, the U.S.S.R.’s answer to Pittsburgh, as it was constructed in the shadow of the Ural Mountains in the early nineteen-thirties. . . . A sharp-elbowed intervention in the decades-old debate between 'totalitarian' historians, who saw in the Soviet Union an omnipotent state imposing its will on a defenseless populace, and 'revisionist' historians, who saw a more dynamic and fluid society, with some portion of the population actually supporting the regime." * New Yorker *
Table of ContentsIllustrations and Tables
Acknowledgments
USSR Organizational Structure, 1930s
Note on Translation
Introduction: Understanding the Russian Revolution
I. BUILDING SOCIALISM:
THE GRAND STRATEGIES OF THE STATE
1. On the March for Metal
2. Peopling a Shock Construction Site
3· The Idiocy of Urban Life
II. LIVING SOCIALISM:
THE LITTLE TACTICS OF THE HABITAT
4· Living Space and the Stranger's Gaze
5· Speaking Bolshevik
6. Bread and a Circus
7· Dizzy with Success
Afterword: Stalinism as a Civilization
Note on Sources
Notes
Select Bibliography
Photograph Credits
Index
