Советские бэйби-бумеры. Послевоенное поколение рассказывает о себе и своей стране

by Donald J. Raleigh, Дональд Рейли

Книга Дональда Рейли посвящена советскому аналогу американского поколения бэйби-бума - детям холодной войны, которые сейчас играют заметную роль в социальной жизни. Внимательно вслушиваясь в рассказы московских и саратовских выпускников английских спецшкол о своем жизненном опыте, автор показывает, почему советские бэйби-бумеры, получившие максимум из того, что могла предложить советская система, не будучи ее противниками и не ожидая ее крушения, все же оказались вполне готовы принять горбачевскую перестройку и начать новую жизнь в новой России и за рубежом. Анализируя устную историю советских бэйби-бумеров, автор выявляет внутренние механизмы, разрушившие советскую систему. Дональд Рейли - профессор Университета Северной Каролины (США).

Genres: History, Russia, Nonfiction, Oral History, Russian History

544 pages, Hardcover

First published October 8, 2011

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much has been made about the baby boomer generation that came of age during the height of the Cold War in the West. Historians have expounded voluminous interpretations of their influence on culture and their subsequent transition into adulthood. However, what seemed to be missing from the histories of the era was an accurate and extensive account of the baby boomers on the other side of the Iron Curtain, those who grew up in the Soviet Union. Donald J. Raleigh offers this in Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War Generation, which provides great insight into their lives and recollections. Not only are the baby boomers of Russia reliably represented, but their story aligns itself with the story of the USSR from the postwar days of Stalin to the downfall of the empire and even into the twenty-first century. Their generation’s version of “Homo Sovieticus” observed and thought about the world differently from their grandparents and parents who suffered through the revolution and the Great Patriotic War. The baby boomers experienced the Khrushchev Thaw, Brezhnev-stagnation, and Gorbachev’s perestroika, only to come out of these tumultuous times seeming more and more like their baby boomer contemporaries in the West, at ease with greater openness and liberalization. “The Soviet Union was a doomed structure mainly because it could exist only with the strictest adherence to Stalin’s principles. My generation and I represent those people who began this small deviation.” That statement, by Vladimir Prudkin, one of the many voices to play a role in this book, encapsulates his generation as the conceptual framework for social change found in Soviet Baby Boomers.
What makes Raleigh’s work special is the methodology, relying for the most part on oral sources, especially considering this is one of the first post-1945 Soviet histories to employ such a distinctive approach. It works well bearing in mind that oral history, or primary sources in general, tends to be more subjective which is desirable since the USSR had sought to repress free speech regarding the state for so many years. While the sources do not add much new content to what we know about the Soviet Union, this work is significant because the reflections by these Russians reveals their relationship to the important events of the Cold War, thus broadening understanding of the era.
While oral histories are frequently seen as a shared project between the interviewer and interviewees, the structure and arrangement of the numerous voices into a coherent narrative is what drives this methodology. Raleigh is able to take a multitude of memories and construct them chronologically along major stages of the subjects’ lives which also happen to coincide with important periods in Soviet history. Each chapter is then divided up thematically and the oral histories come alive and disclose a great deal about growing up in postwar Soviet Russia. The first five chapters of the book distinguish between remarks from students at school No. 42 in the provincial town of Saratov and those in the more cosmopolitan Moscow at school No. 20, but the sixth chapter begins with the roll-out of perestroika blurring many of the socio-economic-political differences between the two cities. While not hindering the narrative, an apparent weakness in Raleigh’s organization of the book was a noticeable overlap of themes and repetition of testimonies presented at multiple times resulting in the work coming off as a patchwork of sorts. Despite such occurrences, a constructive story plays out in Soviet Baby Boomers with the help of five questions which the book strives to answer. The questions are presented in the introduction and then revisited in the conclusion and all relate to understanding what it meant to “live Soviet” and what forces shaped the weltanschauung of the baby boomers during the Cold War.
Soviet Baby Boomers presents a solid selection of various and, at times, discordant viewpoints from the baby boomer generation. However, the opinions of only a small and privileged segment of the Russian population are represented. For the most part, the baby boomers were children of government and Communist Party officials, of the intelligentsia and also important administrators in the Soviet system, the nomenklatura. In short, they were from the upper crust of Soviet urban, professional society. This demographic seemed most unique in their ability to get things done or attain highly sought-after positions in schools or employment within the tightly controlled Soviet society. This elite influence was called blat, and was just one aspect that made this segment of the population so intriguing in its portrayal. While Raleigh makes no attempt to hide or play down this elite cross-section, one cannot help but wonder what the middle and lower classes felt and perceived life to be like in the Soviet Union.
The students featured in Soviet Baby Boomers, who grow up to have children of their own by the final chapters, come off as surprisingly comparable to citizens living at that time in the West. Stalin’s death in 1953 appears to initiate a slow transformation of liberalization for the Soviet Union and its people. After Khrushchev denounced Stalin in 1956, an independent public opinion emerged whereby citizens could express a little more openly about the Soviet system and its shortcomings. Hosting major international expositions would also broaden the perspectives of those living under the repressive regime. Moscow welcomed young people from around the globe when it hosted the World Festival of Youth in 1957 and then Russians caught a glimpse of life in the United States when the American National Exhibit was surprisingly well attended just two years later. Eyebrows were further raised along with expectations when citizens started experiencing more of the world outside the USSR. Soft power from the West in the form of fashion, dance and music (particularly The Beatles) permeated Soviet society by the 1960s. Travel restrictions on foreign trips were gradually lifted and many families were surreptitiously listening to Western radio broadcasts, mainly those of the BBC and Voice of America. In addition, the reading of samizdat, censored or banned materials, was widespread, especially for those in the intelligentsia. But the connection between the individual baby boomers is their time spent together in secondary school. Being members of the privileged classes, they were lucky enough to attend what were called “magnet schools” with intensive emphasis on English instruction. Learning English allowed them better understanding of materials which found their way over from the West and school No. 20 in Moscow was even visited regularly by prominent visitors from western countries. Their English teachers were also remembered as more open about their nonconformist sentiments regarding the Soviet system, one of them even read Alexander Solzhenitsyn in class. By the time of Brezhnev-era stagnation, the citizens in the Soviet Union were enervated from living under a stifling system that wasn’t keeping up with the outside world. This failure to meet growing expectations could only be assuaged by the enormous changes brought on by Mikhail Gorbachev, perestroika and the eventual collapse of the entire Soviet system.
A purported ancient Chinese curse says “may you live in interesting times,” and the Cold War was just that, but especially so for the youngsters who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s in Moscow and Saratov. Through the oral history of the baby boomers, Raleigh is able to gather qualitative measurements of their memories, mix in quantitative research and embed it into the larger story of the Cold War in order to give significant psychological “truth” to the history of the Soviet Union. The coherent story unmistakable in Soviet Baby Boomers is a struggle of those trying to find themselves and their place in the world and many of the forces at work mirrors those working on a larger scale within the USSR at the time. In addition, they appear more similar to young people everywhere, but particularly their baby boomer counterparts in the West, possibly debunking some of that renowned Russian otherness.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

Great, but it lacks any rural perspectives which was an important part of the country. It does include Jewish perspectives but that's really the only minority represented.

[Zine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read quite a bit of oral history in my life, and Soviet history. This book stands out as particularly valuable and perceptive. It is illuminating to see the personal effects - on a family, an individual life, for “ordinary” humans - of policies, developments, epochs I’ve read about. The way Big History plays out in our Secret Histories, our Personal Histories. Every chapter is filled with marvelous little details - some tragic, some laugh-out-loud funny - that sparkle like gems. To understand what big historical strokes mean in the lives of individuals is to immerse yourself in history in a completely different way, and Raleigh gives us this gift through the way he structures and presents all that he has gathered. Highly recommended - and a fabulous balance of academic rigor with accessible presentation, making this a book for those within AND without the academy.

[Matheus e Silva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apesar do anticomunismo latente o livro acaba sendo útil, ouvir o relato dessas pessoas é uma fonte incrível e quem não for alienado perceberá que muitas vezes o que o autor tenta colocar como negativo é só ele tentando desmerecer a experiência soviética. Por exemplo, ele constrói que a educação na URSS era boa mas muito autoritária por exigir demais dos alunos, o que seria esse exigir demais? Ter esporte e aulas de piano. Além de sempre usar termos como propaganda e autoritarismo, muitas das coisas que ele aponta como autoritarismo e propaganda os EUA faz e faz pior mas aparentemente não é um problema, e digo isso porque em todo momento ele cita os EUA, por conta da Guerra Fria.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really well-written book to understand what it was like to live in the Soviet Union from the 1950s to its collapse. Weaves together oral histories and contextual information nicely. Will certainly recommend and re-read!

[Angus J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good academic book but not particularly interesting.

[Zak Kizer · Rating 4 out of 5]

While not exactly impossible to put down, Soviet Baby Boomers is a still a thorough and accessible bit of insight into an often overlooked side of history.

[Jack T · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

[Wesley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting. Didn't read the book word for word but read quite a bit. It was interesting to compare the 2 cultures, the Soviet with the American. Follows the lives of 2 classes of somewhat privileged Soviets. The book told how this generation was ready for the fall of communism but not all of its consequences. Not really a book that has a running narrative. It's like a collection of interviews.

[Jennie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a VERY LONG academic work, so if you decide to read it, keep that in mind. But if you do read it, I think you'll find a whole bunch of information that it's hard to get these days without talking to individual people. It took forever to finish in dribs and drabs as I was falling asleep at night, but I sure learned plenty!

[Geoffrey Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, an enjoyable read. Surprisingly, it was more interesting to read about the boomers experiences during Perestroika and beyond than their nostalgic 1950s-1960s childhood tales.

I think this book could have been edited a bit better though; thus, only 3 stars.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book for my Soviet Experiment class in university. I found it read like a textbook, which I was not a fan of because the rest of the books in this class were very entertaining. This book definitely helped me answer my final exam question though!