Social Dimensions of Soviet Industrialization

Social Dimensions of Soviet Industrialization PDF

Author: William G. Rosenberg

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 9780253207722

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"This is a fine book, impressive in both quantity and quality." --Journal of Economic History "The collection stands out as one of the most useful volumes currently available on the Soviet Union in the 1930s." --Labour History Review "Altogether, this book succeeds in opening up the social history of the Soviet Union in the era of planning for those students and scholars who are ready to advance beyond the old stereotypes." --ILWCH The pathbreaking essays assembled here examine the complex pattern of relationships between the first Five Year Plans and the society and culture of Stalinist Russia. Discussion focuses on urbanization, social mobility, questions of social identity and the cultural constructions of the industrialization drive, as well as work organization, management relations, and the underlying processes of industrial organization.

Stalin's Quest for Gold

Stalin's Quest for Gold PDF

Author: Elena Osokina

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2021-09-15

Total Pages: 461

ISBN-13: 1501758527

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Stalin's Quest for Gold tells the story of Torgsin, a chain of retail shops established in 1930 with the aim of raising the hard currency needed to finance the USSR's ambitious industrialization program. At a time of desperate scarcity, Torgsin had access to the country's best foodstuffs and goods. Initially, only foreigners were allowed to shop in Torgsin, but the acute demand for hard-currency revenues forced Stalin to open Torgsin to Soviet citizens who could exchange tsarist gold coins and objects made of precious metals and gemstones, as well as foreign monies, for foods and goods in its shops. Through her analysis of the large-scale, state-run entrepreneurship represented by Torgsin, Elena Osokina highlights the complexity and contradictions of Stalinism. Driven by the state's hunger for gold and the people's starvation, Torgsin rejected Marxist postulates of the socialist political economy: the notorious class approach and the state hard-currency monopoly. In its pursuit for gold, Torgsin advertised in the capitalist West, encouraging foreigners to purchase goods for their relatives in the USSR; and its seaport shops and restaurants operated semilegally as brothels, inducing foreign sailors to spend hard currency for Soviet industrialization. Examining Torgsin from multiple perspectives—economic expediency, state and police surveillance, consumerism, even interior design and personnel—Stalin's Quest for Gold radically transforms the stereotypical view of the Soviet economy and enriches our understanding of everyday life in Stalin's Russia.

Soviet Economic Development from Lenin to Khrushchev

Soviet Economic Development from Lenin to Khrushchev PDF

Author: Robert William Davies

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1998-03-28

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 9780521627429

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This book provides a comprehensive survey of Soviet economic development from 1917 to 1965 in the context of the pre-revolutionary economy. In these years the Soviet Union negotiated the first stages of modern industrialisation and then, after the defeat of Nazi Germany and its allies, emerged as one of the two world superpowers. This was also the first attempt to construct a planned socialist order. These developments resulted in great economic achievements at great human cost. Using the results of recent Russian and Western research, Professor Davies discusses the inherent faults and strengths of the system, and pays particular attention to the major controversies. Was the Russian Revolution doomed to failure from the outset? Could the mixed economy of the 1920s have led to a democratic socialist economy? What was the influence of Soviet economic development on the rest of the world?

Closer to the Masses

Closer to the Masses PDF

Author: Matthew Lenoe

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2004-06-30

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 9780674013193

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Lenoe traces the origins of Stalinist mass culture to newspaper journalism in the late 1920s. In examining the transformation of Soviet newspapers during the New Economic Policy and the First Five Year Plan, Lenoe tells a dramatic story of purges, political intrigues, and social upheaval.

The Soviet Union: A Very Short Introduction

The Soviet Union: A Very Short Introduction PDF

Author: Stephen Lovell

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-07-23

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 0199238480

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Almost twenty years after the Soviet Union's end, what are we to make of its existence? Was it a heroic experiment, an unmitigated disaster, or a viable if flawed response to the modern world? What was the Soviet Union like? How did it evolve over seven decades? What was the relationship between the regime and the general population? This introduction blends political history with an investigation into the society and culture at the time. The author examines aspects of patriotism, mass culture, political violence, poverty, and ideology; and provides answers to some of the big questions about the Soviet experience.

Stuck on Communism

Stuck on Communism PDF

Author: Lewis H. Siegelbaum

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2019-11-15

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 1501747398

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This memoir by one of the foremost scholars of the Soviet period spans three continents and more than half a century—from the 1950s when Lewis Siegelbaum's father was a victim of McCarthyism up through the implosion of the Soviet Union and beyond. Siegelbaum recreates journeys of discovery and self-discovery in the tumult of student rebellion at Columbia University during the Vietnam War, graduate study at Oxford, and Moscow at the height of détente. His story takes the reader into the Soviet archives, the coalfields of eastern Ukraine, and the newly independent Uzbekistan. An intellectual autobiography that is also a biography of the field of Anglophone Soviet history, Stuck on Communism is a guide for how to lead a life on the Left that integrates political and professional commitments. Siegelbaum reveals the attractiveness of Communism as an object of study and its continued relevance decades after its disappearance from the landscape of its origin. Through the journey of a book that is in the end a romance, Siegelbaum discovers the truth in the notion that no matter what historians take as their subject, they are always writing about themselves.

The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia Volume 7: The Soviet Economy and the Approach of War, 1937–1939

The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia Volume 7: The Soviet Economy and the Approach of War, 1937–1939 PDF

Author: R. W. Davies

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-07-11

Total Pages: 439

ISBN-13: 1137362383

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This book concludes The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia, an authoritative account of the Soviet Union’s industrial transformation between 1929 and 1939. The volume before this one covered the ‘good years’ (in economic terms) of 1934 to 1936. The present volume has a darker tone: beginning from the Great Terror, it ends with the Hitler-Stalin pact and the outbreak of World War II in Europe. During that time, Soviet society was repeatedly mobilised against internal and external enemies, and the economy provided one of the main arenas for the struggle. This was expressed in waves of repression, intensive rearmament, the increased regimentation of the workforce and the widespread use of forced labour.

Making Workers Soviet

Making Workers Soviet PDF

Author: Lewis H. Siegelbaum

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-07-05

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 1501718142

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Drawing on such diverse sources as propaganda art, the trade union press, workers' memoirs, and materials in recently opened Soviet archives, this is the first book to examine the shifting identity of the "working class" in late tsarist and early Soviet societies. New essays by fifteen leading historians show how Russian workers responded to attempts to make them Soviet. Initial chapters consider power relations and working-class identity in imperial Russia. The effects of the revolutionary upheavals of 1917 to 1921 on labor relations among printers and coal miners are then discussed. Addressing subsequent decades, other essays document the situation of cotton workers and white-collar workers embroiled within the ambiguities of the New Economic Policy or challenge the appropriateness of "class" analysis for the Stalin era. Additional chapters reconstruct workers' responses to the Great Purges and trace the significance of class in visual and verbal discourse. Making Workers Soviet will be central to the current rethinking of Soviet history and of class formation in noncapitalist settings.

Laboratory of Socialist Development

Laboratory of Socialist Development PDF

Author: Artemy M. Kalinovsky

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-05-15

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 1501715585

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"Focusing on the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, this book places the Soviet development of Central Asia, and the Soviet hope for communism's bringing prosperity to a supposedly backward area, in global context"--