Aproape că i-am scăzut o stea pentru că este incoerent (dez)organizată (nu are o structură clară ci funcționează prin alunecare - vorbește de divorț deci trece la femei deci apoi la copii de la care la infractori juvenili de la care la justiție apoi la bărbați și de la ei înapoi la copii prin pensia alimentară șamd), dar rămâne de 5 pentru că este cea mai comprehensivă descriere a tuturor aspectelor vieții de zi cu zi a sovieticilor anilor 30. Un mare plus este faptul că este vorba de cetățenii banali, nu de lideri, în fond o mare nedreptate a istoriografiei în general (după ce că liderii le-au furat tot, le fură în continuare și posteritatea, cărțile fiind tot despre tirani, nu victime).
Spre marea mea scârbă, 90% din ce am citit acolo (minus Gulagul) am recunoscut perfect în România anilor 80 prin care am trăit (adică noi am reușit să fim cu 50 de ani întârziați față de cei mai dobitoci primitivi nemernici ai Europei și să le păstrăm toate relele, în ciuda experienței negative).
O carte echilibrată (deloc pătimașă, ba în opinia mea cam blândă cu sovieticii și Stalin) pe care o recomand drept medicament amar tuturor nostalgicilor de vârsta a 3a sau 1 (că din fericire nostalgici de vârsta a 2a nu am cunoscut). ( )

This book looks at the experience of the extremely turbulent and traumatic decade of the 1930s in the Soviet Union, the era of collectivisation, industrialisation and mass terror, from the point of view of ordinary Soviet people: workers; peasants; students; the intelligentsia; Party and non-Party people; Russians and other nationalities. To the extent that the notion of "public opinion" can be held to exist meaningfully in the context of a totalitarian society without press freedom or freedom of assembly, there is a large body of evidence from: individuals' letters and petitions expressing grievances to local, regional or national authorities; discussions at near compulsory workplace and public meetings on the new Stalin constitution of 1936 and on restrictions to the abortion laws; and from conversations reported by third parties such as informers and the secret police. This all gives a wealth of information about people's views, and on the dire economic conditions many faced, with a lot of fascinating, bizarre and sometimes horrific individual stories. It's an interesting complement to more straightforward political narratives of the period, which are numerous. The author is an academic, and her research is thorough, but her writing style almost always accessible to anyone already knowing the basic flow of events. A good read. ( )

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.

Dr. Fitzpatrick is a very fine writer on Stalinist Russia, and I recommend all her other work on this topic (see my catalogue). The style is more clinical than outraged, and perhaps all the more illuminating because of it. She cites numerous letters, memoirs and documents, and presents a very intimate picture of what it was like to live in that time and place. ( )