Everiday stalinism. Ordinary life in extraordinary times: soviet Russia in the 1930s
Editorial OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
España peninsular
- Editorial OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
- ISBN13 9780195050004
- ISBN10 0195050002
- Tipo LIBRO
- Páginas 288
- Año de Edición 1999
- Encuadernación Tela
Materias
Historia Contemporánea UniversalEveriday stalinism. Ordinary life in extraordinary times: soviet Russia in the 1930s
Editorial OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
España peninsular
Detalles del libro
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 '30s, 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. It was a world of privation, overcrowding, endless queues, and broken families, in which the regime's promises of future socialist abundance rang hollow. 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 ubiquitous 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.