Title Everyday Stalinism : ordinary life in extraordinary times : Soviet Russia in the 1930s / Sheila Fitzpatrick

Published New York : Oxford University Press, [1999] ©1999

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 288 pages) : illustrations Contents "The party is always right" -- Hard times -- Palaces on Monday -- The magic tablecloth -- Insulted and injured -- Family problems -- Conversations and listeners -- A time of troubles Summary Here is a pioneering account of everyday life under Stalin, written by one of our foremost authorities on modern Russian history. Focusing on urban areas in the 1930s, Sheila Fitzpatrick shows that with the adoption of collectivization and the first Five-Year Plan, everyday life was utterly transformed. With the abolition of the market, shortages of food, clothing, and all kinds of consumer goods became endemic. It was a world of privation, overcrowding, endless queues, and broken families, in which the regime's promises of future socialist abundance rang hollow. We read of a government bureaucracy that often turned everyday life into a nightmare, and of the ways that ordinary citizens tried to circumvent it, primarily by patronage and the ubiquitous system of personal connections known as blat. And we read of the police surveillance that was ubiquitous to this society, and the waves of terror, like the Great Purges of 1937, that periodically cast this world into turmoil. Fitzpatrick illuminates the ways that Soviet city-dwellers coped with this world, examining such diverse activities as shopping, traveling, telling jokes, finding an apartment, getting an education, landing a job, cultivating patrons and connections, marrying and raising a family, writing complaints and denunciations, voting, and trying to steer clear of the secret police Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-280) and index Notes Print version record Subject City and town life -- Soviet Union Communism -- Soviet Union. SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural. POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Public Policy -- Cultural Policy. SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Popular Culture. City and town life Communism Social conditions Alltag Dagelijks leven. Sociale verandering. Culture matérielle -- URSS. Vie urbaine -- URSS. SUBJECT Soviet Union -- Social conditions. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85125852 Soviet Union -- History -- 1925-1953. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85125814 Subject Soviet Union Sowjetunion URSS -- Conditions sociales. URSS -- Histoire -- 1925-1953. Genre/Form History Form Electronic book ISBN 1429400579 9781429400572 9780198021698 0198021690 9780199839247 0199839247

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