Life in Stalin's Soviet Union - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 147428552X ISBN 13: 9781474285520

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019

Synopsis

Life in Stalin's Soviet Union is a collaborative work in which some of the leading scholars in the field shed light on various aspects of daily life for Soviet citizens. Split into three parts which focus on 'Food, Health and Leisure', the 'Lived Experience' and 'Religion and Ideology', the book is comprised of chapters covering a range of important subjects, including:

* Food
* Health and Housing
* Sex and Gender
* Education
* Religion (Christianity, Islam and Judaism)
* Sport and Leisure
* Festivals

There is detailed analysis of urban and rural life, as well as explorations of life in the gulag, life as a peasant, life in the military and what it was like to be disabled in Stalin's Russia. The book also engages with the wider Soviet Union wherever possible to ensure the most in-depth discussion of life, in all its minutiae, under Stalin.

This is a vitally important book for any student of Stalin's Russia keen to know more about the human history of this complex period of dictatorship.

About this title

About the Author:

Kees Boterbloem is Professor of History at the University of South Florida, USA. He is the author of nine books on Russian, Soviet and World History, including A History of Russia and Its Empire (2nd edition, 2018), The Life and Times of Andrei Zhdanov, 1896-1948 (2004) and Life and Death under Stalin (1999). He was, from 2008 to 2018, editor of the journal The Historian.

Review:

“Kees Boterbloem brings together a formidable cast of first-rate scholars for this study of daily life in Stalinist Russia. The result is an extremely impressive book that offers cutting-edge research with a remarkably wide scope. Its focus lies at the intersection of everyday life and the horrors of Stalinism, to which Soviet citizens were subjected for decades. This remarkable book helps us to see what it was to live in Stalinist Russia; I can think of no other text that does this as effectively.” ―Erik van Ree, Assistant Professor of Eastern European Studies, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands

“With contributions from some of the most original and insightful historians of the Soviet Union, this volume demonstrates how the cataclysmic changes unleashed by Stalin impacted the daily lives of ordinary Soviet citizens. It is a story of brutal transformations and heroic resilience.” ―Jeffrey Veidlinger, Professor of History and Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, USA.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 147428552X
• ISBN 13: 9781474285520
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 264
• Editor: Boterbloem Kees