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[History] Soviet industrialization, select works
Posted: 2007-12-17 03:03pm
by K. A. Pital
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.
Posted: 2007-12-18 10:58pm
by Androsphinx
Hey! I read this! Well, some of it. It was a shelf over from a book on the Khazars, and I'd already read one of Kotkin's books ("Averting Armagedon: The Collapse of the USSR", or somesuch). I then had the strangest dream in a twisted mural of Magnitogorsk and Metropolis (Fritz Lang's).
Kotkin is a serious archive-based historian. IIRC, he's locked up now on some multi-volume history of Siberia
Posted: 2007-12-18 11:06pm
by Stark
What is up with such limited-run hardcovers? I say BAH to Amazon.
I've read enough to want to buy it already. Stas needs to get into the high-flight world of Soviet academic marketing.
Posted: 2007-12-19 12:33am
by K. A. Pital
Historical works which don't suck usually enjoy small prints. Rubbish and "popular history" - the codewords for bullshit - are printed out in hundreds of thousands. Bad, yeah, but such is life.
P.S. Would there ever be a history subforum? I noted people talking about it but nothing actually happened
Posted: 2007-12-19 01:03am
by Androsphinx
The only way to keep up with anything is to have access to a serious academic or publishing library. Otherwise you bankrupt yourself very quickly.
As for the subforum, I'm not a mod, nor the son of a mod, but putting [History] in your thread title is both a good way of reminding people about the proposal, and emphasising the need for it.
Posted: 2007-12-19 02:22pm
by K. A. Pital
John Scott, Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia's City of Steel
Another book, with Kotkin writing the preface. Another very good account but this time it's a contemporary memorial (especially important as it was written in 1942 (first edition) to 1944-1945 (expanded), and the actual being of Scott in the USSR was from 1931 to 1939/
Wikipedia wrote:John Scott (1912-1976), was an American writer who worked in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. The OSS was the predecessor organization to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Scott was alleged to be working for Soviet intelligence.
Scott was the son of conservationist and peace activist Scott Nearing. Scott migrated to the Soviet Union in 1932 and worked for many years in Magnitogorsk. Scott married Mariya Ivanovna Dikareva and the two came to the United States in 1942. [Stas Bush - Scott loved Masha quite a lot apparently - he dedicated his book to her]
Scott wrote Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia's City of Steel about his experiences in Magnitogorsk, presenting the Stalinist enterprise of building a huge steel producing plant and city as an awe-inspiring triumph of collectivism.
Scott also wrote about the painful human price of industrial accidents, overwork, and the inefficiency of the hyperindustrialization program, the wretched condition of peasants driven from the land in the collectivization program and forced into becoming industrial laborers, and the harshness of the ideological purges.
These experiences, however, did not disillusion him with Soviet communism. Scott indicated he shared a belief with the Soviet people that “it was worthwhile to shed blood, sweat, and tears’’ to lay “the foundations for a new society farther along the road of human progress than anything in the West; a society which would guarantee its people not only personal freedom but absolute economic security.”
Whittaker Chambers claims Scott tried to influence Time Magazine publisher Henry Luce to remove Chambers as foreign news editor because of Chambers' anti-communist and anti-Soviet views.
Reportedly, Scott was identified as an agent by the Venona project by NSA/FBI analysts, under the code name "Ivanov".
Venona
John Scott is allegedly referenced in the following Venona project decrypts:
* 726–729 KGB New York to Moscow, 22 May 1942
* 1681 KGB New York to Moscow, 13 October 1943
* 207 KGB Moscow to New York, 8 March 1945
Posted: 2007-12-20 10:56pm
by K. A. Pital
Another set of very good works by Robert C. Allen of a leading north American economic department, of the University of British Columbia, Canada.
The Standard of Living in the Soviet Union, 1928-1940
A Multi-Sector Simulation Model of Soviet Economic Development
Capital Accumulation, the Soft Budget Constraint and Soviet Industrialization
The following works laid the groundwork for Allen's massive monography on the Soviet industrialization:
Robert C. Allen. Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution (2003)
Both deep, investigating the industrial disparities and the pace of individual events, and very broad, giving a comparison of economic and industrial devleopment in the USSR and other world countries, First, Second and Third World.
Some interesting graphs and tables from the book:
Urbanization
USSR comp.to other world
USSR comp.to Latn America
USSR comp.to East Asia
USSR comp.to Europe/offshoots
Soviet consumption in 1928-40
Posted: 2008-01-03 03:15pm
by Androsphinx
Bumped with a book I picked up at the CUP Christmas Clearout:
Women, the State and Revolution
When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, they believed that under socialism the family would "wither-away." They envisioned a society in which communal dining halls, daycare centers, and public laundries would replace the unpaid labor of women in the home. Yet by 1936 legislation designed to liberate women from their legal and economic dependence had given way to increasingly conservative solutions aimed at strengthening traditional family ties and women's reproductive role. This book explains the reversal, focusing on how women, peasants, and orphans responded to Bolshevik attempts to remake the family, and how their opinions and experiences in turn were used by the state to meet its own needs.
Posted: 2008-01-08 01:23pm
by K. A. Pital
Bump...
Urbanization, industrialization and electrification in late USSR and the consequences of it's downfall
EDIT: a fuller analysis, and with an english translation thanks to an unexpected interested party is available here:
Paul Goble, Window On Eurasia
P.S. Soon I'll hopefully translate some histories of individual Soviet industrial objects from the Russian blogosphere, so keep tuned
