Stalinism and Soviet life

Introduction

At a time of tension between the Western powers and the Russian Federation, there are few historical challenges more urgent that studying the recent Russian past. So: welcome to Stalinism and Soviet Life, the specified subject that gives you the inside view of Soviet history. It focuses on the period from 1928 to 1964, on the rise and fall of Stalinism, but it also throws light on twentieth-century Russian history as a whole. The paper opens up the uniqueness and also the normality of the Soviet experience; if you work hard, reconstructing this lost world will be a richly rewarding experience.

In an epic process of creation and destruction, the Stalinist dictatorship built the world’s first socialist society while killing and imprisoning millions of citizens. It triumphed against Nazi Germany and rebuilt the country after 1945. But the Stalinist system faced a defining crisis with the death of Stalin himself in March 1953. Amid extraordinary drama and high anxiety, Khrushchev responded with the ‘Secret Speech’ of February 1956. By selectively condemning the crimes of Stalinism, Khrushchev opened up a new incarnation of the Russian Revolution and the Soviet world. Arbitrary rule and widespread fear were replaced with ‘the thaw’ and improving living standards, but the lasting trauma of war and terror still haunted Soviet society.

We will explore Soviet life from the inside, from factory floor to Stalin’s Kremlin, from communal apartments to Gulag camps, from the Bolshoi Theatre to the Battle of Stalingrad. But we will also debate the classic questions of Soviet historiography. Was Stalinism a natural consequence of 1917 or a disgraceful aberration from the true Leninist path? Was it a new type of civilization or a terroristic personal dictatorship, a lethal malfunction of modernity or a ‘neotraditional’ reinvention of Russia’s autocratic past? Did ‘the thaw’ create a new relationship between people and power based on respect and rights, or was it simply a new version of repression? Did the post-Stalin Soviet Union become a normal society not entirely dissimilar from the West? How useful a term is ‘totalitarianism’? Why would historians ask such a question?

Introductory reading

Geoffrey Hosking, A History of the Soviet Union, London, 1992 (also published as The World’s First Socialist Society): the most elegant overview of the whole of Soviet history
Mark Edele, Stalinist Society 1928-1953, Oxford, 2011: a provocative and very engaging account, organized by theme (read Hosking first)
Sheila Fiztpatrick, Everyday Stalinism. Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s, Oxford, 1999: the most vivid and important of histories from below
Sheila Fitzpatrick, On Stalin’s Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics, Princeton, NJ, 2015: a very readable account of the ecology of Stalinist high politics
Oleg Khlevniuk, Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator, New Haven, CT, 2015: from the leading Russian historian of the Stalin period and the world’s leading master of the Stalin-era archives
Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization, Berkeley, CA, 1995: the best book yet written on the Soviet 1930s?
Stephen Lovell, The Soviet Union: A Very Short Introduction, London, 2009: a sophisticated introduction, conceptually rich (read Hosking first) Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, London, 2003: popular, populist, and well worth reading
Mark B. Smith, The Russia Anxiety: And How History Can Resolve It, London, 2019: touches on many of the themes we cover in the course
William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, New York, 2002: the only full-length biography in English, excellent on Khrushchev’s personality and the epic dilemmas he faced
www.soviethistory.msu.edu: an excellent and very concise choice of introductory essays by leading historians, and also primary sources
beyondthekremlin.wordpress.com: my own blog on Russia past and present: many of the (very short) posts are (broadly conceived) relevant to our studies