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

Sheila Fitzpatrick (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195050010 | ISBN-13: 978-0195050011 | Publication Date: May 11, 2000

Here 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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Most popular books about the Stalin era feature the big names and a firm narrative shape: Robert Conquest's The Great Terror; Alan Bullock's Hitler and Stalin. Some books yield their revelations at a glance, like the stunning The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia.

But scholar Sheila Fitzpatrick is famous for letting the common people and the facts speak for themselves, in all their complexity. Her new book on Soviet life in the 1930s--based on research in newly opened archives--does for urbanites what her Heldt Prizewinning Stalin's Peasants did for rural victims. The many witnesses in this fascinating horror story cast doubt on Stalin's notorious 1935 slogan "Life has become better, comrades; life has become more cheerful."

A comment made by a victim of Ivan the Terrible would be more apt: "We Russians don't need to eat; we eat one another and this satisfies us." Famine, caused by bad weather and worse policies, plagued the decade, and life became a chronic struggle to wrest crumbs from an incompetent bureaucracy. Stalin's sly methods of deflecting blame from the state onto allegedly disloyal citizens provoked orgies of denunciation (which could backfire on denouncers). A mad starch factory director forbade comrades to get shaves or haircuts at home--it would have been disloyal to the factory's hairdresser. One kid, Pavlik Morozov, reported his father for grain hoarding in 1937, was murdered by relatives, and became a national hero to kids. Andrei Sakharov's future spouse Elena Bonner was shocked at her 9-year-old brother's response to his father's arrest: "Look what these enemies of the people are like--some of them even pretend to be fathers." The celebrated Moscow Children's Theater put on The Squealer, a drama strikingly like Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront.

Fitzpatrick gives a sense of what it really was like to live under the satanic circus master Stalin: it was beyond Kafka, and it was bloody hard work. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In a parallel to her 1994 Stalin's Peasants, a textured study of life in the countryside, Fitzpatrick, a University of Chicago historian known for her writing on social and cultural history, addresses the trials and tribulations of urban life in Stalin's Soviet Union. Based on archives and interviews, her newest fleshes out our general knowledge of the hardship Russians endured under Stalin. Not only did people gravitate blindly to queues, but the few goods available, such as shoes, were terribly made. In poorly equipped, cramped communal apartments, residents hung sacks of food out of the windows for space and preservation. The transformative spirit went well beyond propaganda: men dropped peasant names for more modern identifiers (Frol for Vladimir). The totalitarian state was so imposing that many people blamed Soviet power in their suicide notes. But citizens had their strategies to counter the oppression, among them blat (which translates as pull, influence or, under the Soviets, thievery) and subversive jokes that twisted Soviet slogans?for, as Fitzpatrick concludes, "Homo sovieticus was a string puller, an operator... a survivor." While she notes that the Great Purges of 1937-1938 could be endured but not explained, she cites the state's manipulation of patriotism and its provision of welfare as reasons for Soviet citizens' acceptance of their government. Fitzpatrick's absorbing study provides solid details for the general and student reader and lays the groundwork for future research.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (May 11, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195050010
• ISBN-13: 978-0195050011
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #83,292 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sheila Fitzpatrick is Bernadotte E. Schmitt Professor of Modern Russian History at the University of Chicago. A past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies and a co-editor of The Journal of Modern History, she is the author of many other books and articles about Russia. She lives in Chicago and Washington, DC.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stalinism from a different angle., April 22, 2002

By 

Virgil "Virgil" (Chapel Hill, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (Paperback)

I've read several dozen works on the Soviet era between the October revolution and the Second World War, from Pipes to Conquest and including Solzeynitsin's "Gulag" trilogy. While Solzeynitsin focused on the impact of those who were swept up in the great terror of the '30s, "Everyday Stalinism" looks at the impact on the average individual's daily life in the cities of the USSR.

Unlike the Pipes/Conquest terror-as-a-psychopathic-spasm-and-if-you-don't-believe-that-you're-a-revisionist school, Fitzpatrick is more focused on Stalinism at the common level. How it was maintained and what its effects were.

And, surprisingly, many people supported or benefited from it by filling the spaces of those "liquidated" or informing and denouncing rivals in love or work. The real fear wasn't always the KGB at 4am but a neighbor or acquaintance at work. The sad truth is that many were co-opted by the system and worked within it to support the party.

Addressed is the commonly held belief then that no matter what you may have done since the revolution, if you had been born into an "enemy class" then you were in a sense marked for life. The commoness of this view is highlighted in Fitzpatricks account. the irony of this is that those who rose up to replace the liquidated were themselves given bourgeois rewards.

Fitzpatrick does excellent work in guiding the reader throught the beauracratic, social and economic difficulties of the average Soviet citizen. Well researched and well written this can be read as an introduction to the era or especially as a valuable look at Stalinism from the perspective of the urban "masses".

Fitzpatrick, unlike the Conquest/Pipes school, does better at facing the sad and bitter truth that the system- while terryifing for some- was held together and supported by many who benefited. Even today walking the streets of St Petersburg, you will see many in the older generation holding pictures of Stalin in a sort of reverence. The co-opting of the culture and population is, to me, the most troubling aspect and legacy of Stalinism. Everyday Stalinism could function as an interesting companion piece to Orwell's 1984.

Well done.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well written and well researched, December 29, 2000

By 

doc peterson (Portland, Oregon USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (Paperback)

Written by one of the most respected scholars of the USSR in the 1930's, Everyday Stalinism is outstanding. Fitzpatrick has exhaustively scoured recently opened Soviet archives for material in this book, and it shows. There is an abundance of new information here. Fitzpatrick details urban life in 1930's Soviet Union - the daily struggles of common men and women in extraordinary circumstances are vividly portrayed: the shortages of food and clothing, the ubiquitous presence of the government, the almost feudal arrangements between social strata (party members and others who hold "blat" - influence) and the competition for housing as the USSR began to urbanize. Only one chapter is devoted exclusively to the Great Purges of the late 1930's, although its silent presence is tangible just beneath the surface in much of the books subject matter. As one would expect from a professional historian, the books primary purpose is scholarship. But a strength is Fitzpatrick's writing style which is fluid and never dull. Be forewarned, this is not light reading. With that said, I highly recommend it to anyone who has more than a passing interest in the Soviet Union or Russia. If you want a deeper understanding of why the USSR socially and econcomically rotted from within, this is an excellent starting place.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everyday Stalinism., May 9, 2000

By 

F. Conley (Folkestone, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (Paperback)

Life in Stalin's Russia must have been extremely hard for all concerned, yet Sheila Fitzpatrick has managed to create a fascinating and readable book. There is a great deal of detail based on meticulous research, but at the same time there is an awareness of ordinary people, and some humour: if you needed to invent a new life for yourself, it was best to claim that you had been born in Kiev, since their records were destroyed in the Civil War. The strongest message comes at the end, that with everything "homo sovieticus" had to endure, he/she was a survivor. As a teacher of 20th century history I can totally recommend this book to anyone, student or general reader, who wants to understand this period and these remarkable people.