Customer Reviews

Behind the Urals: American Worker in Russia's City of Steel (Classics in Russian studies)

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One of the best books ever written about the Soviet Union. This account of the construction of Magnitogorsk -- one of the largest and most ambitious industrial projects ever undertaken -- is deeply personal and moving. Yet, it also manages to communicate the idealism and revolutionary fervor that transformed the agricultural and technologically backward Soviet Union into a superpower.

I had to read this book for my college history course in World History. The book gave good factual events from an American who had gone to Russia during the five year plan in Stalin's regime. This book is an autobiographical account of an American man's life and marriage in Russia, yet I did not enjoy the deep amount of factual literature that was implemented into the book, since the author did not let the reader become intimate with his personal life or feelings. I felt that this book was more of a textbook than a novel. However, I believe that professors will most likely assign this book for their students, especially for the topic of the five year plan, due to the amount of historical and factual content embedded into the story.