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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
Book Description
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.
Customer Reviews:
Everyday life and the state under Stalin.......2007-04-06
Sheila Fitzpatrick, specialist in the Stalin period of the USSR, has written a counterpart to her history of peasants and their lives in this era (Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization). Here, in "Everyday Stalinism", she chronicles the urban experience of life under Stalin during the 1930s, with all its paranoia, hardship and oddities.
The book is focused in particular on the relationship of daily life and the state, with relatively little attention for cultural history. However, making much use of the Harvard Project interviews with Soviet citizens from this period, she offers a compelling and fascinating view into the attitude of Soviet citizens towards the state, towards Stalin, and towards each other. Much more than just a tale of survival under threat of secret police, Fitzpatrick shows how people got by in terms of getting consumer goods, getting ahead, and getting even. Of course the Great Purges are given due attention, but what is particularly interesting is that in this book we see those events, as well as the earlier show trials, from the bottom up: not the political history of Stalin eliminating his enemies, but a struggle for power between the Party elites (largely received with disinterest by the general populace), and subsequently a series of rapid repressive maneouvres that descend onto the unsuspecting middle level.
Fitzpatrick pays excellent attention also to social policy and what effect this had on women, social and ethnic minorities, and so on. The USSR as an "affirmative action empire" has been well chronicled: The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (Wilder House Series in Politics, History, and Culture). Nevertheless, Fitzpatrick's overview is clear and cogent, and we get also get a good idea of the immense advances in literacy, cultural knowledge and general outlook that were made in roughly the period 1927-1937. Whereas in 1926 only 57% of those aged between 9 and 49 were literate, in 1939 81% of the whole population was literate. Similarly, the entire mass of the population learned basic culture such as appreciating poetry, washing regularly, using soap and towels, not leaving cigarette butts everywhere and not spitting on the floor, etc.
Striking is the amount of critical letters and appeals that people kept sending to Party and Politburo leaders in the (often, but not always vain) hope of redress of grievances or changes in policy. This was already a set tradition dating back to Czarist times, but was maintained during the Revolution and post-Revolutionary period in the form of public debate in leftist papers and letters to Lenin (see Voices of Revolution, 1917). This gives us a good indication however of the public opinion in the Stalinist days, to which Fitzpatrick usefully adds the NKVD reports of overheard conversations and the like. This surprisingly indicates that skepticism towards Stalin himself as well as the general system was reasonably widespread, despite the "cult of the personality".
Overall, this is a well written and interesting history of urban life in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. It must be emphasized though (as this is not directly apparent from the book description) that it only deals with urban life, and only the 1930s. Neither WWII nor the post-War Stalinist period is discussed.
Must read.......2007-02-13
If you have an interest in Stalin and the 1930's, which include the purges, this book is a must for you. For the most part I study the Military and Political history of the early Soviet Union and I had this book on my shelf for years before I finally decided to read it. But once I began I was amazed at myself that I had waited so long to finally dive into this book! The author has really done her research and it shows!
The reader will get a much better and broader understanding of what life was like in the 1930's and how a new state was coming into its own. Why certain groups or 'classes' were being targeted by the state and what happened to them. How some changed their entire lives just to get away from the OGPU and later NKVD. And interestingly enough the policies implemented by the state worked against making it a safer place. As they aggravated one group after another through trials and forced movements they made enemies where in the past there might not have been any. It began to dawn on the government that these people would only seek vengeance once they were freed from punishment and it also created the idea that these people would be enemies for life. This, to a certain extent, explains why during the "Great Purge" which started in 1937 those released from GULag camps or special settlements, etc, were once again picked up and tried and sent to either prison or were executed.
The examples the author draws upon are an excellent representation of the time period and people's thoughts recount what they felt and desired while living through this turbulent, to say the least, decade. The one aspect of the Stalinist period that should be kept in mind, and appears throughout the book, is that no one was really safe in this time. From Communist officials who were being denounced by the hundreds to the regular man on the street who could be denounced because his apartment was bigger than his neighbors, or NKVD officials, one of whom a week before committing suicide visited and drank with the families of people who were denounced and he had to arrest and lastly even to Stalin's inner circle which witnessed the likes of Kaganovich losing his brother and Molotov his wife. A great contribution to the literature on Soviet Union under Stalin!
Impressed so far.......2007-02-11
Clearly it is well researched and (notwithstanding the author's Introduction) cuts through a lot of the politicised waffle that tends to accompany other books dealing with this period. You get an idea of the human and personal dynamics that were operating at the time. In short, the insight gained is sometimes surprising even when you think you know a lot about this period of history, i.e. the October Revolution and socialist construction. Only half way through the book as a matter of fact but you can tell from the outset that what you're reading is a study of substance that genuinely serves to inform the reader. I would say the author is one who is prepared to let facts speak for themselves.
Clear, concise, filled with information.......2006-08-10
This is a good, necessary, and essential book. It is compact and precise. Its aim is to provide massive information about Stalinist Soviet Union in the 1930s. It does so not by the analysis of high politics or the significant political events, but through a depiction of everyday life of urban inhabitants of the Soviet Union during these years.
Fitzpatrick tries to remain neutral, but so many of the disastorous conditions she records were clearly brought on by the Stalin bureaucracy's fear, its fear of workers, its fear of the intellectuals, its fear of those who held positions under Tsarism, its fear of those who had belonged to opposition factions in the Communist party, and fear of itself.
Whether what she provides is "new" is irrelevant except to the academically twisted. What she does is provide the realities of life in the USSR in those years as personally experienced whether in the cold, rancorous, barracks and apartments filled with four or five families of the plebian cities, or the luxurious dachas of the rising bureaucracy.
The strength of this book is its compactness and clarity and its lack of digressions. Fitzpatrick produces a very high amount of understandable information per page.
The one weaknesses of the book is that in order to do this, she tends to assume the reader's knowledge of Soviet history in the late 1920s and early 30s, particularly, "the cultural revolution," though many, especially popular, readers may know little or nothing about this. Perhaps this just invites the reader to explore the work of Fitzpatrick and her colleagues on these questions.
Nothing very much "new". .......2006-06-27
Professor Fitzpatrick has chosen to write a History of Stalin's Soviet Union during the 1930s (that is, at the height of the Great Purges) by focusing on doings at the private life sphere of common Soviet citizens of the time. Problem is, after we have read the book, we realize we've been told about the same old issues: de-kulakization, collectivization, shortages, queues, Yezhov, social mobility through the Party apparatus. The problem being, perhaps, that the whole book was based on a flimsy foundation, that of the opposition between the "private" & the "public" sphere, when actually, in the early Soviet Union, there was no "private" sphere at all, private life merged with public life entirely - something Professor Fitzpatrick acknowledge at the conclusions, but fails to draw the conclusion that the opposition between the private and the public is an historical construction, not an ontology. Therefore the book is informed and readable, but offers nothing that is altogether new.
Book Description
Asked shortly after the revolution about how she viewed the new government, Tatiana Varsher replied, "With the wide-open eyes of a historian." Her countrywoman, Zinaida Zhemchuzhnaia, expressed a similar need to take note: "I want to write about the way those events were perceived and reflected in the humble and distant corner of Russia that was the Cossack town of Korenovskaia." What these women witnessed and experienced, and what they were moved to describe, is part of the extraordinary portrait of life in revolutionary Russia presented in this book. A collection of life stories of Russian women in the first half of the twentieth century, In the Shadow of Revolution brings together the testimony of Soviet citizens and émigrés, intellectuals of aristocratic birth and Soviet milkmaids, housewives and engineers, Bolshevik activists and dedicated opponents of the Soviet regime. In literary memoirs, oral interviews, personal dossiers, public speeches, and letters to the editor, these women document their diverse experience of the upheavals that reshaped Russia in the first half of this century.
As is characteristic of twentieth-century Russian women's autobiographies, these life stories take their structure not so much from private events like childbirth or marriage as from great public events. Accordingly the collection is structured around the events these women see as touchstones: the Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War of 1918-20; the switch to the New Economic Policy in the 1920s and collectivization; and the Stalinist society of the 1930s, including the Great Terror. Edited by two preeminent historians of Russia and the Soviet Union, the volume includes introductions that investigate the social historical context of these women's lives as well as the structure of their autobiographical narratives.
Book Description
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Russia was one of the great powers of Europe. But it was a great power that was universally regarded as backward by comparison with Britain, Germany, and France. As Russia moved from under the weight of World War I, Western influences began to settle upon this vast empire, leading the way to the turbulent years of the Russian Revolution.
Now in a new edition, this provocative and eminently readable work looks at the many upheavals of this long and often devastating period as successive stages in a single process--the Russian Revolution. Focusing on the Russian Revolution in its widest sense, Fitzpatrick covers not only the events of 1917 and what preceded them, but the nature of the social transformation brought about by the Bolsheviks after they took power. Making use of a huge amount of previously secret information in Soviet archives and unpublished memoirs, this detailed chronology recounts each monumental event from the February and October Revolutions of 1917 and the Civil War of 1918-1920, through the New Economic Policy of 1921 and the 1929 First Five-Year Plan, to Stalin's "revolution from above" at the end of the 1920s and the Great Purge of the late 1930s.
Lucid and concise, this classic study makes comprehendible the complex events of the revolution.
Customer Reviews:
a excelent piece of work.......2007-07-17
this is a great book...the best about the brutal war in the american revolution...from the wilds of new york to the forests of the ohio this script relates with great veracity this black period of north american history...theres no book like this, this is the best.
Average customer rating:
- Steampunk - with knights
- Hard to get into the world of Fitz
- An intriguing read
- The future and the folly of empire.
- Outstanding Story and Novel
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Fitzpatrick's War (Daw Science Fiction)
Theodore Judson
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Book Description
In the twenty-sixth century the world is a very different place. The United States and Canada are gone, replaced by the socially rigid, authoritarian Confederacy of the Yukon. Also gone is the electronic age-destroyed in the apocalyptic Storm Times that devastated the globe and decimated the world's population in the late twenty-first century. It is now, once again, an age of steam, an age of lighter-than-air craft, an age of feudalism and knighthood, and for some, an age of conquest.
Fitzpatrick's War is the intimate memoir of Sir Robert Bruce, a close companion of Fitzpatrick the Younger, the greatest hero of the Yukons. Yukon History paints Fitzpatrick as a latter-day Alexander the Great, and calls Bruce a lying traitor. Was Robert Bruce a degenerate scoundrel...or the only man to tell his world the truth?
Customer Reviews:
Steampunk - with knights.......2007-04-22
Fun steampunk novel - postapocalyptic and medieval, the world as told by a retired military engineer and edited by a mainstream historian approximately a hundred years later. The book follows a fun storyline from the academy through an interesting war. The book fails on the clarity of the technology - especially when describing the vastly improved aircraft, it wasn't clear how the planes had such a greater range and speed. Small details sometimes irk the reader, especially when Judson gets lazy with his language, falling into cliches. But the book is fun, fast and cool - a little oversentimental, but a fun ride through a wild future with interesting settings and warfare technologies.
Hard to get into the world of Fitz.......2006-12-30
Mentioning 'apocolyptic' on the back cover of your book brings a certain audience to your door. As a fan of the genre, I have one main requirement in books that profess to fall into this category...the events of the downfall of the world as we know it must be imaginative, descriptive, and above all, possible. Nothing about the future world presented in this book meets my criteria. The story is original, but the premise falls flat. It just seemed too far out, and when I chuckle reading about the back story, it's not a good thing in this genre.
From there, the book just putters along. I comtemplated just giving up a few times, but I was determined to slog through it. The main character was nicely flawed and seemed to fit in well with the world he grew up in. But the main character, Fitzpatrick, was far too much to swallow. Fancies himself Alexander the great? It's interesting, but blatently trying to mimic the ancient conqueror's world and even running in competition with him was very silly to me.
In the end, I really didn't care about any of the characters in this book. The not so subtle injections about the authors views were heavyhanded and really helped choke off the story for me. In the end, finishing this book only left me with the sense of accomplishment I get from seeing something through to the end, but there wasn't much enjoyment in it.
An intriguing read.......2006-08-08
This book is reminscent of several other books. The theme of debunking a popular war hero reminds me of Jack McDevitt's "A Talent for War". The battle scenes and the plot device of an academic gloss remind me of Norman Spinrad's "The Iron Dream". However, the book that "Fitzpatrick's War" most reminds me of is "Gulliver's Travels". I may have totally missed the point(s) Mr. Judson is trying to make, but it seems to me that this book is both a satire on 20th/21st Century American civilization (the pot-smoking "Hypees" spring to mind) and, what is a much more difficult feat, a satire on the Yukon civilization Mr. Judson has created. As such, it succeeds brilliantly. The "academic" foornotes are a joy to read and mesh well with the main narrative.
The future and the folly of empire........2006-07-01
Fitzpatrick's War is a sprawling 500+ page whopper of a book which should appeal to some, but not all, speculative fiction fans. A combination of alternative history and military fiction, Fitzpatrick's War points inexorably to the personal and political costs of empire.
In this future, the "rigorous" fundamental Yukons overcome the decadent old world to becomes the single world superpower. They deliberately turn back the clock, cutting off the possibility of electricity use with their storm machines. They impose their notion of purity on what's left of the world population and rewrite history so that their rise becomes inevitable.
The idea of the book is that it is a journal written by Robert Mayfair Bruce. Bruce is an engineering genius in the circle of Isaac Fitzpatrick, the dashing young son of the ruling Consul. When Fitzpatrick decides that he wants to conquer the parts of the world not yet under Yukon control, he turns to Bruce to make the logistics happen. The book is presented by yet another scholar, Doctor Professor Roland Modesty Van Buren, who leaves us with copious and informative footnotes throughout the text.
First of all, it is impressive that a speculative fiction book considers logistics. Fitzpatrick's War is possessed of a healthy measure of realism that makes it grounded and very readable.
I enjoyed the book quite a bit. I did not think that it was perfect. I found the bit about the universal railroad tiresome and generally felt as though it could have been shortened before publication. Also, while I sort of liked the conceit of the footnotes, I often found them too precious. Too much wide-eyed "of course he couldn't have been telling the truth!".
Fitzpatrick's War should be just the thing for alternative history fans. It is not a light read, and is more about the strategy and the politics than about any science/fantasy storm and flash. Recommended.
Outstanding Story and Novel.......2005-11-30
Fitzpatrick's War was an outstanding story & is still clear in my mind well over a year after having read it. The story is interesting on a few different levels, each of which I will get into in a bit of detail while not trying to give away too much of the story itself.
The first level I am referring to is the story itself. Fitzpatrick's War is a journey through Judson's imaginative world of the future. This future is vastly different from ours. The modern world is gone and a perpetual heroic age has been ushered in. The governments of the USA and other major nations have been toppled and the Yukon's now rule. Society itself is very different from ours - the pious nature of the Yukon's is a sharp contrast to us today & you see how that directly changes their society. Fitzpatrick, who is the focus of the book, but not the main character, is particularly interesting. He is essentially Alexander the Great of the future. The parallels between Alexander & Fitzpatrick give a lot of insight into the world where this book takes place, further expressing how different it is from our world.
There is a great deal more to the story - and keep in mind that the `war' itself isn't its focus, but rather the life and eventual revelations of Robert, our main character, about how he fits into this world of Fitzpatrick's.
The next level of interest that I have in the book is more technical, but still adds to the story. The novel is told with 2 points of view. The first framing is that of Robert & his `true' history of Fitzpatrick. Robert tells his tale in the form of a manuscript decades after the events of the book have taken place. His views of Fitzpatrick are first hand, but are in sharp contrast to the glorious public perspective of the former king.
The second point of view comes in the form of footnotes by a critic of Sir Robert. This critic has noted some of the important `errors' as he sees them about Robert's tale of Fitzpatrick. His intent is to call into question the veracity of Robert's tale & to defend the honor of their heroic leader. In essence the world after Fitzpatrick is one of conformity & anything that might shake that status quo is questioned and rejected.
The story of Fitzpatrick's War can stand alone on its own merit. It is an inventive and fun world created by Judson. His use of history & religion add to the depth of the story provide a great contrast in order to view Sir Robert. The way the story is told, I feel, adds to the overall feel. This story is essentially about the creation of a hero. Despite
Fitzpatrick's actions - he is deified by his successors & Sir Roberts `truth' has no place in that world.
Book Description
A study in the formation and development of a Soviet government institution after the Revolution of October 1917. The commissariat - which was responsible both for education and the arts - was the main channel of communication between the government and Bolshevik party on the one hand, and the Russian intelligentsia on the other. The commissar, Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky, was, in his own words, ‘a Bolshevik among intellectuals and an intellectual among Bolsheviks’; his closest colleagues were Lenin’s wife Krupskaya and the historian Pokrovsky.
Download Description
A study in the formation and development of a Soviet government institution after the Revolution of October 1917. The commissariat - which was responsible both for education and the arts - was the main channel of communication between the government and Bolshevik party on the one hand, and the Russian intelligentsia on the other. The commissar, Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky, was, in his own words, 'a Bolshevik among intellectuals and an intellectual among Bolsheviks'; his closest colleagues were Lenin's wife Krupskaya and the historian Pokrovsky.
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- A TOUCHING PERSONAL INSIGHT INTO LIFE DURING THE WAR.
- History from the mouth of a common soldier
- Great insight into hardships of war from a soldier's view.
- Letters to Amanda...
- Excellent look at a soldier's life during the Civil War.
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Letters to Amanda: The Civil War Letters of Marionhill Fitzpatrick, Army of Northern
Manufacturer: Mercer University Press
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0865548811 |
Customer Reviews:
A TOUCHING PERSONAL INSIGHT INTO LIFE DURING THE WAR........1999-09-26
THE MORE I READ OF THIS BOOK, THE HARDER IT BECAME TO PUT IT DOWN. I FELT A PART OF THE WRITER'S EXPERIENCES, FRUSTRATIONS AND LONGINGS. READING A BOOK LIKE THIS PUTS ME INTO THE LIVES BEING DESCRIBED AND EXPOSES ME TO THE HEARTBREAK THEREIN. VERY TOUCHING AND ONE THAT I WILL READ AGAIN. MY HEART GOES OUT TO THE SUFFERINGS OF MARION AND AMANDA AND THEIR FAMILIES.
History from the mouth of a common soldier.......1999-01-03
This simple farmer who went to war wrote letters home to his wife and child describing what his daily routines were in the army, including the homesickness and heartaches. The daily truths he describes make it hard to idealize and glorify any war.
Great insight into hardships of war from a soldier's view........1999-01-02
If you want to know what it was like to be a soldier in the Civil War, read this book. It gives incredible insight into the day to day hardships that a soldier faced. It is an emotional journey that presents the pride of fighting for a cause and the heartaches of leaving ones family.
Letters to Amanda..........1998-12-24
My great-grandfather fought along-side Marion Hill Fitzpatrick as a member of the 49th Georgia, a sister regiment of Thomas' Brigade. This book gave me a very personal, heart-wrenching insight into not only what these men went through, but also the daily ordeals of surviving of their families back home. My thanks to the the folks who produced this wonderful work.
C. Bryan Smith
Excellent look at a soldier's life during the Civil War........1998-12-18
This book captures the feel of a soldier's life during the Civil War. The hardships and the heartaches of the war are made all too clear through the letters of this simple Georgia farmer to his beloved wife Amanda. A must read for any Civil War buff and an excellent slice of real history for anyone.
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- A Vibrant Window into the New Russian Historical Methods
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Stalinism: New Directions (Rewriting Histories)
S. Fitzpatrick
Manufacturer: Routledge
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ASIN: 0415152348 |
Book Description
Stalinism is a controversial new addition to the current debates related to the history of the Stalinist period of the Soviet Union. Sheila Fitzpatrick has collected together not only the classics of the revisionist period but also new work by young Russian, American and European scholars, in an attempt to reassess this contentious and deeply politicized subject.
The articles are contextualized by a thorough introduction to the totalitarian/revisionist arguments. Avoiding an exclusively political focus, the book draws together work on class, identity, gender, work and agency.
Customer Reviews:
A Vibrant Window into the New Russian Historical Methods.......2005-07-27
Sheila Fitzpatrick has put together an anthology of essays from the "new generation" of Russian/Soviet scholars to emerge within the last decade. The thread of methodology incorporated here harbors on the social/cultural with a sprinkling of post-modernism with its emphasis on rhetoric and language. All of the essays rely heavily on the availability of new archival sources since the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991. Sarah Davies ("'Us Against Them': Social Identity in Soviet Russia, 1934-41") reveals the "popular mood" of Soviet society through her analysis of anonymous hate mail sent to various ruling boroughs from the "little people" (pp. 47, 55). One is amazed at the oftentimes-brazen attacks coming from a population living within a "totalitarian" state that promotes terror to achieve its political ends. This article is one of the highlights of the book. The Soviet individual is the topic of three of the book's essays. Jochen Hellbeck's ("Fashioning the Stalinist Soul: The Diary of Stepan Podlubnyi, 1931-39) psychoanalysis of the diary of a Kulak's son to reveal one's inner turmoil of conforming to the new Soviet society raises some interesting questions about historical methodology. Vladimir A. Kozlov ("Denunciation and its Functions in Soviet Governance: From the Archive of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs, 1944-53") employs a similar approach to explore motivations of written denunciations in the post World War II period. In a slightly different vain, Alexei Kojevnikov ("Games of Stalinist Democracy: Ideological Discussions in Soviet Sciences 1947-52") argues against the Lysenko model claiming not all Soviet scholars and scientist paid lip service to the ruling body. Other pieces take a look at the needs of Soviet society. Julie Hessler ("Cultured Trade: The Stalinist Turn Towards Consumerism") believes the mindset of Soviet citizens remained fixed on a "culture of shortages" in spite of official policies to promote a culture of consumerism (p. 194). Vadim Volkov (The Concept of Kul'turnost': Notes on the Stalinist Civilizing Process") explores the concept of Kul'turnost' (culturedness) before communism and how the Bolsheviks attempted to modify this intangible notion. As with many recent historians, Lewis H. Siegelbaum ("'Dear Conrade, You Ask What We Need': Socialist Paternalism and Soviet Rural 'notables' in the mid-1930's) also gleans from written letters to question the effectiveness of the Soviet reward and punishment system (paternalism) in the 1930's. Perhaps Volkov's article, though noteworthy, seems a bit out of place sandwiched between the other two contributions. Another section is devoted to the effects of terror on the lower rungs of Soviet society. James R. Harris ("The Purging of Local Cliques in the Urals Region, 1936-7") describes the "coping strategies" devised by the local regional (oblast) leadership to protect themselves from the state bureaucracies as well as, Stalin's reaction to them (p. 267). Paul M. Hagenloh ("'Socially Harmful Elements' and the Great Terror") shows the significance broad ranging crime (what he refers to as "marginal") and the police campaigns to combat it played in the overall picture of the Great Terror. Ethnicity and nationalism provide the themes of the final two essays. Yuri Slezkine ("The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism") shows that the Soviet regime exhibited a sympathetic attitude to nationalist/ethnic groups in spite of its proletarian ideology. In a jingoistic laced essay, Terry Martin ("Modernization or Neo-Traditionalism? Ascribed Nationality and Soviet Primordialism") utilizes the theory of nationalism (principally Earnest Gellner's interpretations) as "an excellent test case" (p. 350) to compare the modernization and neo-traditionalist paradigms invented by scholars as a means of studying Russia's diverse ethnic and national population. Complimenting Sheila Fitzpatrick's own contribution to this book ("Ascribing Class: The Construction of Social Identity in Soviet Russia"), Martin concludes it was the latter paradigm that reigns supreme in spite of the fact that Communism societies do not advocate a return to traditional modes of society. Undoubtedly recent archival material played heavily into the contributions of this book. Of course this is a positive step in the advancement of Russian historiography. An underlying idea throughout this collection of essays, however, prompts one to ask whether the plethora of newly available archival material is, in one respect, the tail wagging the dog. To clarify, we as historians are taught to begin by formulating an historical question, then consult primary and secondary evidence to conform or refute a thesis. Not that this methodology is carved in stone, still, by reading the contributions of the "new generation" of Russian scholars, this reviewer gets the impression that these researchers are working backwards. That is to say, they travel to the vast reservoirs of new material, collect whatever they can get their hands on and, only then, do they synthesize the material into a workable theory. The tail (new archival material) is wagging the dog (imaginative research). This point is well illustrated in Mark von Hagen's article ("The Archival Gold Rush and Historical Agendas in the Post-Soviet Era," Slavic Review, April, 1993) and magnified within this collection of essays.
Customer Reviews:
Through a Glass darkly.......2002-10-04
A fantastic eloquently written account of contemporary Moscow that also manages to convey the psyche of ordinary muscovites far more perceptively than anything that I have ever read. It's like being hit by a brick. Breathtaking and achingly painful in its delivery it makes incredible reading.
Living and working as an expat in Moscow it opened to me a completely different way of viewing Russia. Maybe I was blinkered, but I owe a great debt to the author for showing me what I should have been seeing with my eyes and ears every day of the week but filtered by my western upbringing refused to see and refused to hear.
I can't recommend this book highly enough (Catherine A. Fitzpatricks translation is exceptional).
Interesting, alarming, important.......2000-11-30
We have heard of the crisis in Russia for many years; however, like most tragedies of great magnitude, this situation is difficult to truly imagine. "Moscow Days" provides tangible descriptions of the plight of everyday Russians to which the average western reader can relate. It brings the impact of the dissolution of the Soviet system, and the unleashing of unrestained "capitalism" down to a quotidian level. Reading this book provided me with a greater appreciation of the ramifications of the economic and political crisis confronting Russia as well as, paradoxically, an understanding of how people are surviving the midst of this castastrophe.
While the above probably makes this book sound like a depressing reading experience the author's sardonic wit, and often mordant humor, makes this a palatable learning experience. Dutkina leaves you with a tremendous amount of respect for the resiliance of the Russian people and their stoic response to an ever changing situation which they find themselves largely impotent to affect.
I found this book reminiscent of the Croatian author,Slavenka Drakulic's works "How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed" and "Balkan Days". While bright and witty, unfortunately Galina Dutkina does not have the literary prowess of Drakulic. Nevertheless, this is a worthwhile and important read, particularly in light of how ignorant the average American is of the devastation confronting the Russian people.
Thanks to Ms. Dutkina for stalwart honesty.......1999-07-06
I empathize with her constant fear of the crimes of the many against ordinary citizens. It could not have been easy for Ms. Dutkina to be so open about the problems in Moscow these days and to write with such intelligent restraint that the book provides important albeit unpleasant information without demonizing the Russian people or becoming pedantic.
Book Description
Two small boys in warrior garb peer at each other across a deserted landscape. Each is suspicious of the other; each is proud and boastful. And so, an argument breaks out that grows bigger and bigger, until it threatens to consume them and everything around them. In this unusual book words take flight, morph into birds, race down gullies and flood the page. I AM I is a memorable and stimulating meditation on the power of imagination and the power of wordsand a visual tour de force by a gifted author and artist.
Customer Reviews:
Bizarre.......2007-09-13
I work in a children's library and have rarely found a book more bizarre than this one. I can see no way that a toddler or even a preschooler could begin to comprehend the illustrations. Additionally, I was very disturbed by the words, "I HATE YOU, HATE YOU, HATE YOU which are exchanged by the two boys. A very disappointing addition by Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick.
Thought provoking story of the power of words.......2007-05-03
This fascinating book by an award winning Irish author and illustrator is a story that works on multiple levels. It is a colorful short story of two "tribal" boys in a dry wilderness having a game of king of the hill, and it is a powerful demonstration of how words can hurt...or heal. It has also on a deeper level a clear anti-war/anti-violence message.
Words in this book have a life of their own and literally transform, in multi panel form, almost like animation, to become the visual agent of change. Words shape themselves as birds, they tangle and twist into dividing barbed wire, they clot together and dam a river, causing a flood, and they form into a destructive dragon and breath fire. And ultimately, they form into redemptive rain that brings beautiful poppies.
This is a book that can be enjoyed for it's sheer exuberence and artistry, or treasured for it's deeper message of respect and peace. One need not come from a land of sectarian violence such as Ireland to appreciate it's thoughtful lasting impression. Buy it!
I Am I.......2007-02-23
The book "I Am I" by Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick is a wonderful book for young readers everywhere. This is a great book to buy and read to your toddlers. They would simply love it.
There are many bright colors. The boy on the cover page has colorful hair that is yellow and blue. It is a heart-warming story. This is because the two little kids learn how to share and that helps them in life. It helps you make friends! This is a very easy book to read so almost anyone can read it. The vocabulary is very simple. An example sentence from the book to show this is, "I am I king of all the sea."
Anybody could read it, such as kindergarten and up. The colors are beautiful and will catch the eye of many young toddlers. It teaches a very good lesson in sharing and not to fight. If you want to teach your own children how to read, buy it!
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- Grey Knights (Warhammer 40,000 Novels)
- Harrington on Hold 'em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 1: Strategic Play
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4)
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