The Soviet Century

Product Information

Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? Who else could have a whole chapter on Soviet-era doorknobs? This is a fascinating book about the material loose ends, the pamphlets, the clothes, the non-existent phone books, the shop signs, the chest medals, and the bric-a-brac — among many other items — of the Soviet Union. . . . This is in my view one of the better books for understanding the Soviet Union."—Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution

Lewin retains much of his earlier historical analysis. Stalin and Stalinism, constructed during 1928–39, represented a sharp break with Lenin and Bolshevism of the period up to 1924. Lenin’s final period of active politics, 1921–23, was an honest attempt by a flexible and honest communist to come to terms with the realities of a gradual transition to building socialism. It was also a crucial and wide-ranging battle between Lenin and Stalin for the future direction of policy. In opposition to Lenin’s model, Stalin sought to control the party and state to implement a dictatorial forced pattern of modernisation. Lenin’s death and the incompetent politics of the old Bolsheviks enabled Stalin to win power and crush Bolshevism. On October 4, 1957, the USSR publicly launched Sputnik 1—the first-ever artificial satellite—into low Earth orbit. The success of Sputnik made Americans fear that the U.S. was falling behind its Cold War rival in technology.U.S. President John F. Kennedy responded to Gagarin’s feat by making the bold claim that the U.S. would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. The U.S. succeeded—on July 20, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. Mikhail Gorbachev On December 25, Gorbachev resigned as leader of the USSR. The Soviet Union ceased to exist on December 31, 1991. Sources: The area of central Moscow – within walking distance of the Kremlin – housed all key Soviet institutions responsible for foreign policy decision making. These included the headquarters of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the villa of the Soviet Solidarity Committee.

Stalin implemented a series of Five-Year Plans to spur economic growth and transformation in the Soviet Union. The first Five-Year Plan focused on collectivizing agriculture and rapid industrialization. Subsequent Five-Year Plans focused on the production of armaments and military build-up. The Soviet Union is gone, but its ghostly traces remain, not least in the material vestiges left behind in its turbulent wake. What was it really like to live in the USSR? What did it look, feel, smell, and sound like? In The Soviet Century, Karl Schloegel, one of the world's leading historians of the Soviet Union, presents a spellbinding epic that brings to life the everyday world of a unique lost civilization. In response to NATO, the Soviet Union in 1955 consolidated power among Eastern bloc countries under a rival alliance called the Warsaw Pact, setting off the Cold War. Deteriorating relations between the Soviet Union and neighboring China and food shortages across the USSR eroded Khrushchev’s legitimacy in the eyes of the Communist party leadership. Members of his own political party removed Khrushchev from office in 1964. Sputnik and the Soviet Space Program Georgian-born revolutionary Joseph Stalin rose to power upon Lenin’s death in 1924. The dictator ruled by terror with a series of brutal policies, which left millions of his own citizens dead. During his reign—which lasted until his death in 1953—Stalin transformed the Soviet Union from an agrarian society to an industrial and military superpower.

Review

The real enemies were objective limitations (which Stalin declared non-existed 'for us' in 1924)[...] Throughout the book, the reader is enlighten on several crucial aspects on how Stalin betrayed Lenin while destroying the Bolshevik Party, and dismounting its accomplishments to accommodate both the party and the state to his own personal goals; which relied on eliminating any kind of connection between the revolutionary cadres that seized power in 1917, both physically -trough slandering, smearing, framing and forced confessions to the ultimate bloodshed of Lenin's comrades- and incorporating new waves of cadres that had nothing to do with the revolution, that were careerists and useful scapegoats at the same time; on top of this, falsifying history to make room for his cult. El siglo soviético se presenta como un libro que cubre (casi) todos los aspectos de lo que sucedió en la Unión Soviética. No resulta fácil cubrir 70 años de historia (bastante movidita, además) en un país que tiene miles de kilómetros y multitud de etnias. El autor lo repite varias veces a lo largo de la obra. If the past is a foreign country, The Soviet Century is a unique travelogue from one of the world’s most innovative observers of urban space and material culture. Karl Schlögel’s scholarly Baedeker is the culmination of a lifetime of study, travel, and thought. It guides us across nothing less than a continental empire and a century of upheaval. But Schlögel’s greatest accomplishment is to connect stunningly eclectic new detail to the big picture, allowing us to see and feel a lost civilization anew.”—Michael David-Fox, Georgetown University B. Lewin is no apologist for Stalinism. He reports the body count, the level of imprisonments and exile, the arbitrary application of state power, without flinching.

If you have a solid grip on Soviet history, then this would be an illuminating read. Lewin, a long-time scholar of Soviet history, presumes that the reader has this prior knowledge going in. I think I might have digested it better had my knowledge of the Soviet Union's history been more expansive, but I nonetheless remain fascinated by a number of gems in the book, from insightful portraits into individual administrators to the in-depth descriptions of the Soviet Union's labor shortages and its administrative bumbling. Throughout the book, the reader is enlighten on several crucial aspects on how Stalin betrayed Lenin while destroying the Bolshevik Party, and dismounting its accomplishments to accommodate both the party and the state to his own personal goals; which relied on eliminating any kind of connection between the revolutionary cadres that seized power in 1917, both physically -trough slandering, smearing, framing and forced confessions to the ultimate bloodshed of Lenin's comrades- and incorporating new waves of cadres that had nothing to do with the revolution, that were careerists and useful scapegoats at the same time; on top of this, fal A museum of-and travel guide to-the Soviet past, The Soviet Century explores in evocative detail both the largest and smallest aspects of life in the USSR, from the Gulag, the planned economy, the railway system, and the steel city of Magnitogorsk to cookbooks, military medals, prison camp tattoos, and the ubiquitous perfume Red Moscow. The book examines iconic aspects of Soviet life, including long queues outside shops, cramped communal apartments, parades, and the Lenin mausoleum, as well as less famous but important parts of the USSR, including the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, the voice of Radio Moscow, graffiti, and even the typical toilet, which became a pervasive social and cultural topic. Throughout, the book shows how Soviet life simultaneously combined utopian fantasies, humdrum routine, and a pervasive terror symbolized by the Lubyanka, then as now the headquarters of the secret police. After coming to power in 1917, the Bolsheviks sought to reshape the way people, both local and foreign, engaged with their physical and social environment. The ideological principles of rationality, scientific thought and collective living were forcibly implemented within the urban environment. As Schlögel puts it: An unsuccessful coup by Communist Party hard-liners in August 1991 sealed the Soviet Union’s fate by diminishing Gorbachev’s power and propelling democratic forces, led by Boris Yeltsin, to the forefront of Russian politics.

The symbolic centre of the Soviet universe

In 1949, the U.S., Canada and its European allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO). The alliance between countries of the Western bloc was a political show of force against the USSR and its allies. WOW! This was one heavy, dense book on Soviet economics, which is not for the casual reader. It started out as more of a historical account of how Bolshevik-ism transformed into the Soviet system that was well known during the middle part of the 20th Century. However, it seemed too often to get lost in the weeds of specificity. Probably no other Western historian of the USSR combines Moshe Lewin’s personal experience of living with Russians from Stalin’s day—as a young wartime soldier—to the post-communist era, with so profound a familiarity with the archives and the literature of the Soviet era. His reflections on the ‘Soviet Century’ are an important contribution to emancipating Soviet history from the ideological heritage of the last century and should be essential reading for all who wish to understand it. Eric Hobsbawm Interesting and insightful analysis into the nature and dynamics and history of the Soviet Union. The primary argument that runs throughout the book is that the Soviet government was not a monolithic, unchanging, all-powerful totalitarian state, but one that changed dramatically at different points, and which often was responding (often impotently) to societal changes, rather than imposing its own will on Soviet/Russian society. This may seem like an obvious point, but as the author points out, this is in fact often lost in traditional narratives of the USSR that are overly influenced by the propaganda wars of the Cold War.

Lewin's other concern is in differentiating Stalinism from other, very different, stages of Soviet history. Kruschev's reforms may have largely failed, but his immediate move to begin dismantling of the key aspects of Stalinism succeeded. Political repression may have remained a part of Soviet policy but mass terror never returned, and the infamous gulag system disappeared entirely by the late 50's. One of the interesting details Lewin uncovered was the seemingly widespread policy of “prohylaxis”, wherein the KGB would identify dissidents and, instead of arresting them, throwing them in prison or simply shooting them in the head, would essentially give them a stern talking to and a warning to cut it out. While still obviously oppressive, this policy, which Andropov, the secretly liberal KGB chief in the 60's and 70's was apparently a big proponent of, is a pretty far cry from the menacing reputation the KGB had in the West, and is massively different from the arbitrary way the NKVD operated under Stalin. The Soviet Union is gone, but its ghostly traces remain, not least in the material vestiges left behind in its turbulent wake. What was it really like to live in the USSR? What did it look, feel, smell, and sound like? In The Soviet Century, Karl Schlögel, one of the world’s leading historians of the Soviet Union, presents a spellbinding epic that brings to life the everyday world of a unique lost civilization. In a period known as the Red Terror, Bolshevik secret police—known as Cheka—carried out a campaign of mass executions against supporters of the czarist regime and against Russia’s upper classes. This leads him to another question, among the grandest 'ifs' in contemporary history. Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB, succeeded the brain-dead Brezhnev as general-secretary of the party in 1983, but fell mortally ill and died the following year. Suppose he had lived!Increasingly, the system which had turned a vast rural, semi-feudal empire into a modern industrial powerhouse transformed itself into a great engine of wastefulness, buying its citizens off with the promise of an easy, quiet life in exchange for their tacit consent. ‘We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us’ became the defining feature of the stagnation which set in during 1970s. Utilising cutting edge research and analysis, Moshe Lewin reveals that the Soviet leadership were often completely aware of the problems that beset them, but, having discarded the tools of mass coercion, were completely incapable of responding effectively. As the great machine of the planned economy began to wind down in the second half of the 20th century, the people operating it were unable to do anything other than manage its decline. The Soviet Union possessed vast reserves of resources in areas with no surplus labour to exploit them, while at the same time maintained huge levels of overstaffing and in areas with massive labour surpluses, leading to plummeting productivity. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. This isn't a book for beginners. There's an assumption that the reader has a certain level of knowledge about the Soviet Union, which I do not possess, so it was heavy going for me but very much worth the effort.