Stalinism as a way of life [electronic resource] : a narrative in documents / Lewis Siegelbaum and Andrei Sokolov ; documents compiled by Ludmila Kosheleva [and others] ; text preparation and commentary by Lewis Siegelbaum, Andrei Sokolov, and Sergei Zhuravlev ; translated from the Russian by Thomas Hoisington and Steven Shabad.

New Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press, ©2000.

1 online resource (xvii, 460 pages) : illustrations.

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What was life like for ordinary Russian citizens in the 1930s? How did they feel about socialism and the acts committed in its name? This unique book provides English-speaking readers with the responses of those who experienced firsthand the events of the middle-Stalinist period. The book contains 157 documents -- mostly letters to authorities from Soviet citizens, but also reports compiled by the secret police and Communist Party functionaries, internal government and party memoranda, and correspondence among party officials. Selected from recently opened Soviet archives, these previously unknown documents illuminate in new ways both the complex social roots of Stalinism and the texture of daily life during a highly traumatic decade of Soviet history. Accompanied by introductory and linking commentary the documents are organized around such themes as the impact of terror on the citizenry, the childhood experience, the countryside after collectivization, and the role of cadres that were directed to "decide everything". In their own words, peasants and workers, intellectuals and the uneducated, adults and children, men and women, Russians and people from other national groups tell their stories. Their writings reveal how individual lives influenced -- and were affected by -- the larger events of Soviet history.

EBSCOhost eBook collection, Yale University Press.

Print version: Stalinism as a way of life. New Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press, ©2000

Books / Online

English

October 03, 2019

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.