Everyday Stalinism Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s

by Fitzpatrick, Sheila

• ISBN13: 9780195050004
• ISBN10: 0195050002
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-03-04
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Here is a pioneering account of everyday life under Stalin, written by one of our foremost authorities on modern Russian history. Focusing on urban areas in the 1930s, Sheila Fitzpatrick shows that with the adoption of collectivization and the first Five-Year Plan, everyday life was utterly transformed. With the abolition of the market, shortages of food, clothing, and all kinds of consumer goods became endemic. As peasants fled the collectivized villages, major cities were soon in the grip of an acute housing crisis, with families jammed for decades in tiny single rooms in communal apartments, counting living space in square meters. It was a world of privation, overcrowding, endless queues, and broken families, in which the regime's promises of future socialist abundance rang hollowly. We read of a government bureaucracy that often turned everyday life into a nightmare, and of the ways that ordinary citizens tried to circumvent it, primarily by patronage and the ubiquitous system of personal connections known as blat . And we read of the police surveillance that was endemic to this society, and the waves of terror like the Great Purges of 1937, that periodically cast this world into turmoil. Fitzpatrick illuminates the ways that Soviet city-dwellers coped with this world, examining such diverse activities as shopping, traveling, telling jokes, finding an apartment, getting an education, landing a job, cultivating patrons and connections, marrying and raising a family, writing complaints and denunciations, voting, and trying to steer clear of the secret police. Based on extensive research in Soviet archives only recently opened to historians, this superb book illuminates the ways ordinary people tried to live normal lives under extraordinary circumstances.

Author Biography

Sheila Fitzpatrick teaches modern Russian History at the University of Chicago. A former President of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, and a co-editor of The Journal of Modern History, she is also the author of Stalin's Peasants, The Russian Revolution, and many other books and articles about Russia.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(13)
Milestones	4	(4)
Stories	8	(3)
A Note on Class	11	(3)
1 "The Party Is Always Right"	14	(26)
Revolutionary Warriors	15	(9)
Stalin's Signals	24	(4)
Bureaucrats and Bosses	28	(7)
A Girl with Character	35	(5)
2 Hard Times	40	(27)
Shortages	42	(8)
Miseries of Urban Life	50	(4)
Shopping as a Survival Skill	54	(8)
Contacts and Connections	62	(5)
3 Palaces on Monday	67	(22)
Building a New World	68	(3)
Heroes	71	(4)
The Remaking of Man	75	(4)
Mastering Culture	79	(10)
4 The Magic Tablecloth	89	(26)
Images of Abundance	90	(5)
Privilege	95	(11)
Marks of Status	106	(3)
Patrons and Clients	109	(6)
5 Insulted and Injured	115	(24)
Outcasts	116	(6)
Deportation and Exile	122	(5)
Renouncing the Past	127	(5)
Wearing the Mask	132	(7)
6 Family Problems	139	(25)
Absconding Husbands	143	(9)
The Abortion Law	152	(4)
The Wives' Movement	156	(8)
7 Conversations and Listeners	164	(26)
Listening In	168	(7)
Writing to the Government	175	(3)
Public Talk	178	(4)
Talking Back	182	(8)
8 A Time of Troubles	190	(28)
The Year 1937	194	(5)
Scapegoats and "The Usual Suspects"	199	(6)
Spreading the Plague	205	(4)
Living Through the Great Purges	209	(9)
Conclusion	218	(11)
Notes	229	(38)
Bibliography	267	(14)
Index	281