In this informative survey of the Soviet Union in the 1930s, Sheila Fitzpatrick outlines a tale of struggle, hardship, and occasional triumph of the Soviet people in their everyday lives. This was an era of a growing and industrializing society full of its problems and accomplishments, and how its citizens had dealt with their lives in a decade that started with collectivization and ended with the winding down of the Terror and war scares.
Fitzpatrick clarifies that this is a study about urban lives during the 1930s (she already covered rural lives in an earlier book). She defines ordinary lives for the Soviet context as shopping, travelling, celebrating, telling jokes, finding an apartment, getting an education, securing a job, advancing in one’s career, cultivating patrons and connections, marrying and raising children, writing complaints and denunciations, voting, and avoiding any contacts with the secret police. It sounds mundane for us in our contemporary lives, but for the industrializing Soviet society in the 1930s, it was usually an adventure remembered for better or worse. Consumer goods (with the occasional exception of food after the 1932-1933 famine) and housing were usually in short supply. Average citizens would live in crowded barracks, apartments, and dormitories either waiting to find bigger housing space or getting along with their neighbors. The citizens (especially the well-off) would attempt to make connections with Communist Party and government officials in order to improve their material conditions. Fitzpatrick does clearly outline that these times certainly were not a walk in the park, often times even difficult, however those were also times of great improvement for the Soviet people. Education was much easier (and free!) to access for the entire population (assuming that there is either space or availability where one citizen lives), greater access of cultural activities and leisure time never before in Russian history, and women were finally able to leave their old patriarchal lives and work or pursue a career they desired (despite reinforcement of Soviet family values and sexist values that no amount of government laws and decrees could eliminate).
Everyday Stalinism uses both primary and secondary resources to outline the history of the 1930s Soviet Union. Primary sources range from the Soviet Archives (secret police files on public opinion was widely used), memoirs of people who lived during that time (many of which came from the Harvard Project), and from newspapers and articles from that time. Secondary sources were used to fill in the gaps provided (those sources were from studies from other scholars who focused on a specific aspect of the 1930s Soviet Union). This gives the book much credibility to the reader, although it has started to show its age. Part of Fitzpatrick’s thesis was that the general quality of life usually went worse in certain years of the decade, and public opinion, jokes, and quips from Soviet workers can attest to that. However, as Robert C. Allen reveals in his superb study of the Soviet economy Farm to Factory, Soviet life overall in the 1930s massively improved when compared to the tsarist era and the NEP period (the 1920s). Fitzpatrick does acknowledge that fact in her later studies if my knowledge is correct, some update in Everyday Stalinism can be useful.
Fitzpatrick’s book is very useful when getting a general understanding of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. It does not go into exact detail of every aspect of that time period, but it points in the right direction for history students, scholars, and readers. It can be overwhelming at times, but it is certainly a good read.
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