Stephen Kotkin: Magnetic Mountain, Stalinism as a Civilization
Contrary to what the header of this Google book says in the page itself this is not "Steeltown, USSR", but a much more interesting study - a study of the birth of the great Soviet industrial city - the famous "Magnitka" - in Stalin's times, done with the use of much archival evidence and rigorous analysis (apparently Kotkin did a lot of work collecting all this data and facts in the perestroika times in Magnitogorsk).
Suffice to say it's simply brilliant as it only territorially takes a microcosm of the country-wide industrialization but depicts both larger Soviet phenomena through this single city history and the everyday life of individual citizens in that small city - both a micro- and macroview. It is an indictment of the bureaucracy of Stalin's rule and the creation of a "Party quasi-religion", and also a realistic depiction of everyday life, worker competitions, and the ever-looming competition between Soviet power structures. The depiction of how the general population was involved in the purges, how the rationalization of the purges ran through the entire bureaucracy, how being a communist put you under greater risk of being purged due to increased surveillance and the administrative tasks; the book carefully deduces the disastrous effects on Soviet bureaucracy and the Soviet people in general that Stalin's "cultism" had, and how the Soviet administrative appartus turned against the countrymen, factory administrators and even it's own "apparatchiki" people.
It's a story about industry, people and power.
I can't recommend a better study whether you're left, right or center. In my view this is the best work on Stalinism, Soviet industrialization and 1930s Soviet life, so far produced.
P.S. Not all pages are accessible but I'll be damned if I don't buy or somehow order this monography, it's excellent.
