Life in Stalin's Soviet Union

by Kees Boterbloem (Editor)

Life in Stalin's Soviet Union is a collaborative work in which some of the leading scholars in the field shed light on various aspects of daily life for Soviet citizens. Split into three parts which focus on 'Food, Health and Leisure', the 'Lived Experience' and 'Religion and Ideology', the book is comprised of chapters covering a range of important subjects, including:

* Food
* Health and Housing
* Sex and Gender
* Education
* Religion (Christianity, Islam and Judaism)
* Sport and Leisure
* Festivals

There is detailed analysis of urban and rural life, as well as explorations of life in the gulag, life as a peasant, life in the military and what it was like to be disabled in Stalin's Russia. The book also engages with the wider Soviet Union wherever possible to ensure the most in-depth discussion of life, in all its minutiae, under Stalin.

This is a vitally important book for any student of Stalin's Russia keen to know more about the human history of this complex period of dictatorship.

Genres: History

260 pages, Hardcover

First published September 5, 2019

Reviews

[Jess]

I'm one of the "loony left wingers" the other reviewer was talking about. I feel like most people are capable of reviewing a book without engaging in dehumanizing ad hominems, so it feels weird to me to be expressing similar appreciation of this book with that person. Something to ponder.

Anyway, I just read the disability and gender chapters, because that is what I was curious about. My suspicion was that this era was as bad as what was happening in imperial countries, just in different ways and, yep. The post-Revolution period continues to sound amazing, the Stalinist approach ... not so much. It is really fascinating to me how many parallels there were in the USA and the USSR during this period, of mass dehumanization, sexism, ableism, eurocentrism, religious persecution, persecution of political dissidents, just using different methods and different rationales.

I appreciated how the authors of those two chapters leaned into the complexities and contradictions of the material realities experienced by actual people, which can be especially challenging when having to work around limitations in archival materials.

[Hallie Cantor]

This book should be shown to every loony left-winger clinging to the illusory superiority of communism over capitalism. This compilation of essays contain horror stories of mass shortages, mass corruption, bloated bureaucracy, impossible quotas, mass starvation (particularly in Ukraine, where the displacement and imprisonment of Kulaks -- wealthy peasants -- crippled Russia's agriculture); millions sent to the gulags; millions murdered during years 1936-1938, when Stalin's paranoia went full-blown. Moreover, flights to the cities in search of work left in its wake many abandoned villages. The so-called "Workers' Paradise" was one big sham, built on lies and propaganda. Sitting too close to the stage could easily spoil the illusion.

The essays are all well researched and based on data, statistics, and primary sources. The writers, all scholars in Soviet history, point out directly or indirectly the dysfunctionality of the regime, which seemed to have been manned by the inherently incompetent. The essays, ranging from religion to gender, also explores the ways the average citizens compensated for shortages (i.e. growing their own gardens, marrying people with connections) and basically a morass of misery.

World War Two was a sort of catalyst. Also known as the Great Patriotic War, it resulted in millions of Russian deaths, as the disasters of the Finnish campaign in 1940 had left the Russians unprepared for the Nazi invasion in June 1941. The army was a sad joke: military supplies were frequently in short supply or handed out haphazardly. Yet, paradoxically the war raised morale by mobilizing the population into mass defense of the Motherland, opening opportunities for workers, and expanding industrial production. It left a disabled (mostly male) population demanding compensation and finding a voice where formerly they were marginalized.

The only bright spot in this dark history seems to be education, where apparently the government made strides in literacy. Soviet youth found refuge in the schools, which varied in quality yet offered food, security, and warmth during brutal winters. Carnivals based on new holidays and festivals like May 1st (the European Labor Day) or Grandfather Frost (New Year's) helped to create loyal young citizens. Not all of the youngsters, however, enjoyed better lives; streets in many cities were filled with orphans and feral children, whose parents had been murdered or imprisoned.

This book is fascinating and ultimately depressing in its depiction of the twentieth-century's tragic folly. Given the recent riots in Cuba -- one of the remaining bastions of Communism -- this folly might be mercifully trashed; unfortunately, given the likes of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it might be bolstered by the delusions of a dangerously ignorant public.