The Soviet Century

Forside
Verso, 17. feb. 2005 - 416 sider
The USSR may no longer exist, but its history remains highly relevant—perhaps today more so than ever. Yet it is a history which for a long time proved impossible to write, not simply due to the lack of accessible documentation, but also because it lay at the heart of an ideological confrontation which obscured the reality of the Soviet regime.

In The Soviet Century, Moshe Lewin traces this history in all its complexity, drawing widely upon archive material previously unavailable. Highlighting key factors such as demography, economics, culture and political repression, Lewin guides us through the inner workings of a system which is still barely understood. In the process he overturns widely held beliefs about the USSR’s leaders, the State-Party system and the Soviet bureaucracy, the “tentacled octopus” which held the real power.

Departing from a simple linear history, The Soviet Century takes in all the continuities and ruptures that led, via a complex route, from the founding revolution of October 1917 to the final collapse of the late 1980s and early 1990s, passing through the Stalinist dictatorship and the impossible reforms of the Khrushchev years.
 

Utvalgte sider

Innhold

STALIN KNOWS WHERE HE WANTS TO GET TO AND IS GETTING THERE
10
AUTONOMIZATION VERSUS FEDERATION 19223
17
CADRES INTO HERETICS
30
THE PARTY AND ITS APPARATY
37
SOCIAL FLUX AND SYSTEMIC PARANOIA
50
THE IMPACT OF COLLECTIVIZATION
64
BETWEEN LEGALITY AND BACCHANALIA
71
HOW DID STALIN RULE?
82
THE ADMINISTRATORS BRUISED BUT THRIVING
215
SOME LEADERS
234
KOSYGIN AND ANDROPOV
246
LENINS TIME AND WORLDS
269
BACKWARDNESS AND RELAPSE
290
MODERNITY WITH A TWIST
308
URBANIZATION SUCCESSES AND FAILURES
315
LABOUR FORCE AND DEMOGRAPHY A CONUNDRUM
332

THE PURGES AND THEIR RATIONALE
96
THE SCALE OF THE PURGES
104
THE CAMPS AND THE INDUSTRIAL EMPIRE OF THE NKVD
111
ENDGAME
125
AN AGRARIAN DESPOTISM?
141
E PUR SI MUOVE
151
THE KGB AND THE POLITICAL OPPOSITION
176
THE AVALANCHE OF URBANIZATION
200
THE BUREAUCRATIC MAZE
340
TELLING THE LIGHT FROM THE SHADE?
359
WHAT WAS THE SOVIET SYSTEM?
376
Glossary of Russian Terms
389
Appendices
393
Note on Sources and References
403
Index
405
Opphavsrett

Andre utgaver - Vis alle

Vanlige uttrykk og setninger

Om forfatteren (2005)

Moshe Lewin was a hugely respected historian of the Soviet Union. Professor of Soviet Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, his books include Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison and The Making of the Soviet System: Essays in the Social History of Interwar Russia. Gregory Elliott is a member of the editorial collective of Radical Philosophy and author of Althusser: The Detour of Theory and Labourism and the English Genius: The Strange Decay of Labour England?.

Bibliografisk informasjon