Customer Reviews

Steeltown, USSR: Soviet Society in the Gorbachev Era

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Quite excellent view of the late-Soviet reality through the eyes of one Russian industrial town. Very engaging narrative. Highly recommended, along with the venerable classic THE RUSSIANS by Hedrick Smith. In fact I would recommend this book before I would recommend's Hedrick Smith's follow up book THE NEW RUSSIANS, in all honesty. STEELTOWN, USSR is truer in spirit and kinship to the earlier Smith book...THE NEW RUSSIANS focuses a little too much on Gorbachev to the exclusion of the wider picture. This book gives an effective glimpse of that wider picture thru an effective microcosm...a must read for any student of Russian history.

This is based on Kotkin's two long visits to the giant Soviet steel city of Magnitogorsk in 1987 & 1989, as part of his research for Magnetic Mountain. He was able in '87 to see the beginnings of Glasnost and in '89 to see its fuller flowering. As an amiable Russian-speaking Berkeley graduate student, he seems to have been able to wander fairly freely. Even in 1987 he was bold in seeking interviews: he describes showing up at the local KGB offices and asking to interview the chief, to the polite consternation of the front desk staff.

He describes the wretched state of the economy, the obsolescence of the steel plant, the appalling state of the main hospital, the weakness of law. But much of the value comes from the many long direct quotes of how the Magnitogorsk residents themselves saw their situation. Many in the USSR had suspected that overall living standards were much worse than in the West. But what shocked people in '89 was the realization that social standards (health care, pensions, etc) were also worse and so was overall "social justice". This undermined the last raison d'etre of the Soviet system. If even this was an illusion, how could anything be justified?

Kotkin reports widespread deep dissatisfaction with the system. By 1989, after four years of talk of perestroika, things seemed to be becoming worse rather than better. But at the same time there was deep resistance to change and a strong "leveling" sentiment against people seeking to better themselves. People valued their heavily subsidized, hard-to-obtain apartments, their cheap low-quality food, their tiny guaranteed pensions and appalling health care. They feared, perhaps wisely, that if these things changed, it would be for the worse.

Kotkin also covers the semi-democratic Soviet Congress elections of '89. This was in no sense a "free" election, but it further exposed the hollowness of the party's ideology and of its plans for the future, thus creating demand for true multi-party elections.

Finally, Kotkin reviews the Stalinist history of Magnitogorsk and notes how much of that legacy, above all its deadening style of thinking, remained into the 80s.

The writing is sometimes a little slow going, but there is a great deal of useful information here on how Gorbachev's drive for reform was experienced at the industrial "grass roots", far from Moscow.

A fascinating account on the Soviet Union's gradual dissolution, as witnessed first hand by Kotkin during several long stays in Magnitogorsk, a giant industrial city in the Urals.

Kotkin provides a detailed but not overwhelming account of the political and social evolution of the town in the waning years of the Soviet Union. Here, the end of empire isn't just grand headlines in the international press - it is the daily grind of ordinary people struggling to find their way (and simply survive) in a society whose rules are changing by the day, towards an uncertain future.

Looking at the 'micro' provides a welcome perspective on, and a fuller understanding of the 'macro' that is generally all the general outsider will know or read about. (Kotkin's "Armageddon Averted" is recommended reading for a broader general 'macro' history of the end of the Soviet Union).

Having slogged my way through "Magnetic Mountain", Kotkin's detailed academic study of Magnitogorsk in the 20's and 30's (masterful but not a light read by any measure), "Steeltown, USSR" is far more accessible, a much shorter and much easier read, although still rather more academic than general interest.

If the subject matter interest you, you won't be disappointed.