Life in Stalin's Soviet Union Quotes

“Skepticism and often cynicism appears the prevalent mood in much of the post-Soviet world, or at least in Russia and Ukraine.”
― Kees Boterbloem, Life in Stalin's Soviet Union

“Almost overnight, Soviet peasants needed to become factory workers and miners. Industrialization was to be financed by domestic means, given the absence of any meaningful foreign investments in the country; this meant that the peasantry that did not join the industrial workforce had to foot much of the bill. Herding them into collective farms seemed a promising way to force them to pay this bill. Stalin would state, not long after he unleashed the full brunt of his modernization program, that the Soviet Union was at least half a century behind the industrialized world, and needed to catch up with it within a decade. Every sacrifice toward this goal was justified. This, then, was the broader context in which Soviet daily life played itself out between 1928 and 1933.”
― Kees Boterbloem, Life in Stalin's Soviet Union

“Altogether, the lives of Stalin's subjects unfolded against the background of twenty-five years of almost relentless deaths of "unnatural causes"; for most, at some point during this quarter century, this background became foreground, when they themselves or their relatives and friends were swept up in this maelstrom.”
― Kees Boterbloem, Life in Stalin's Soviet Union

“Because all the new enterprises needed workers, throughout most of the 1930s the cities' population rose quickly, nourished by a steady influx of country dwellers. But the daily needs of the urban dwellers were given a low priority, and living (and labor) conditions were spartan before the middle of the decade: Ration cards provided basic foodstuffs, with anything beyond staples such as bread or milk being exorbitantly expensive; housing was abysmal with people living in communal apartments, in which several families shared one kitchen and bathroom, and used one room each, while others slept on bunk beds in factory barracks without adequate heating, electricity, or running water; and public transport and schools functioned haltingly. Meanwhile, the amount of industrial accidents (and the number of people contracting work-related diseases) was staggering.”
― Kees Boterbloem, Life in Stalin's Soviet Union

“The industrial infrastructure laid down between 1928 and June 1941 proved (barely) sufficient to sustain the country during the Second World War, but victory came otherwise at a staggering price.”
― Kees Boterbloem, Life in Stalin's Soviet Union

“In the course of the First Five-Year Plan, production aims were upped to impossible heights. The result was chaotic, and many of the local political leaders, factory bosses, planners, engineers, foremen, and even shop floor workers developed ways to exaggerate their accomplishments.”
― Kees Boterbloem, Life in Stalin's Soviet Union

“Having tolerated religion somewhat in the 1920s, Stalin's new socialist society would no longer abide Christianity or Islam.”
― Kees Boterbloem, Life in Stalin's Soviet Union

“The Russian and non-Russian peasants, probably four-fifths of the total Soviet population in 1929, were herded into collective farms, without anyone truly knowing how collectivized agriculture was supposed to work.”
― Kees Boterbloem, Life in Stalin's Soviet Union

“Today any serious student will agree that the history of the Soviet Union under Stalin is first and foremost testimony to human resilience.”
― Kees Boterbloem, Life in Stalin's Soviet Union

“In absolute numbers of people killed, the quarter century of tyranny (1929–53) of Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) over the Soviet Union ranks as the second deadliest regime in history, after that of his disciple Mao Zedong (1893–1976), who was responsible for even more deaths in Communist China between 1949 and 1976.”
― Kees Boterbloem, Life in Stalin's Soviet Union

“Through its constant upheaval, daily life under Stalin was never like daily life anywhere else in a modern or modernizing (industrializing) society.”
― Kees Boterbloem, Life in Stalin's Soviet Union