Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930sHere is a pioneering account of everyday life under Stalin, written by a leading authority on modern Russian history. Focusing on the urban population, Fitzpatrick depicts a world of privation, overcrowding, endless lines, and broken homes, in which the regime's promises of future socialist abundance rang hollowly. We read of a government bureaucracy that often turned life into a nightmare, and of how ordinary citizens tried to circumvent it. We also read of the secret police, whose constant surveillance was endemic at this time, and the waves of terror, like the Great Purges of 1937, which periodically cast society into turmoil. |
Contents
Hard Times | |
Palaces on Monday | |
The Magic Tablecloth | |
Insulted and Injured | |
Family Problems | |
Conversations and Listeners | |
A Time of Troubles | |
Conclusion | |
Notes | |
Bibliography | |
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abortion activists antiSoviet arrested artists authorities became blat Bolshevik bourgeois bureaucratic Central Committee child collectivization communal apartments Communist Cultural Revolution dacha dekulakization denunciations diary disfranchised elections elite everyday example exile factory FiveYear Plan former GARF Gorky Gulag Harvard Project Homo Sovieticus hooliganism housing husband ibid industrial intelligentsia iust Khlevniuk Kirov kolkhoz kolkhozniks Komsomol Krok Krokodil kulaks labor Lenin Leningrad letter living Magnitogorsk meant Molotov Moscow newspaper NKVD officials OGPU Oppositionists Ordzhonikidze party leaders party’s passports People’s Politburo political popular population practice Pravda priests privilege proletarian Purges rationing regime’s regional reported respondent revolutionary RTsKhIDNI rubles Russian Sheila Fitzpatrick shortages show trials social aliens social origin Soviet citizens Soviet Union Stakhanovites Stalin Stalin’s Peasants Stalinist story suicide terror theater trade Trud TsGAIPD unmasked urban Vyshinsky wife wives woman women workers writers wrote young