Contending with Stalinism: Soviet Power and Popular Resistance in the 1930s - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801439833 ISBN 13: 9780801439834

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2002

Synopsis

Resistance has become an important and controversial analytical category for the study of Stalinism. The opening of Soviet archives allows historians an unprecedented look at the fabric of state and society in the 1930s. Researchers long spellbound by myths of Russian fatalism and submission as well as by the very real powers of the Stalinist state are startled by the dimensions of popular resistance under Stalin.

Narratives of such resistance are inherently interesting, yet the topic is also significant because it sheds light on its historical surroundings. Contending with Stalinism employs the idea of resistance as a tool to explore what otherwise would remain opaque features of the social, cultural, and political history of the 1930s. In the process, the authors reveal a semi-autonomous world residing within and beyond the official world of Stalinism. Resistance ranged across a spectrum from violent strikes to the passive resistance that was a virtual way of life for millions and took many forms, from foot dragging and negligence to feigned ignorance and false compliance.

Contending with Stalinism also highlights the problematic nature of resistance as an analytical category and stresses the ambiguous nature of the phenomenon. The topics addressed include working-class strikes, peasant rebellions, black-market crimes, official corruption, and homosexual and ethnic subcultures.

About this title

About the Author

Lynne Viola is Professor of History at the University of Toronto. She is the author of The Best Sons of the Fatherland and Peasant Rebels under Stalin and coeditor of The War against the Peasantry.

Reviews

The partial opening of Soviet archives has enabled Russian voices "from below" to be heard and thus a much richer portrait of Soviet society under Stalin to emerge. The present volume presents a series of papers from a conference outside Toronto in 1999 exploring "the conjunctures between state and society under Stalin," in particular the problem of resistance. An earlier work by editor Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, made a major contribution to this process, as did Stalinism As a Way of Life, edited by Lewis H. Siegelbaum and Andrei Sokolov. As Viola recognizes, the central issue here is just what constitutes "resistance": active insurrection certainly; strikes and passive obstruction, probably (the regime thought so); and economic disobedience are all examples. But what about crime, the black market, and "alternative subcultures" such as homosexuality? These are more debatable, and a defensive tone is occasionally discernible from those discussing these areas. This collection will deservedly interest students of Stalinism, though the general reader may find it a difficult slog. Robert H. Johnston, McMaster Univ., Hamilton, ON
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801439833
• ISBN 13: 9780801439834
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Viola Lynne