• Introduction: A puzzle
• Perestroika
• Release
• Revolutions
• Separatism
• Crossroads
• Leviathan
• Standoff
• Devolution
• Consensus
• Conspiracy
• Junta
• Demise
• Cacophony
• Independence
• Liquidation
• Conclusion

A major study of the collapse of the Soviet Union-showing how Gorbachev's misguided reforms led to its demise "A deeply informed account of how the Soviet Union fell apart."-Rodric Braithwaite, Financial Times "[A] masterly analysis."-Joshua Rubenstein, Wall Street Journal In 1945 the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four-million strong, five-thousand nuclear-tipped missiles, and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism. Its collapse was one of the seismic shifts of the twentieth century. Thirty years on, Vladislav Zubok offers a major reinterpretation of the final years of the USSR, refuting the notion that the breakup of the Soviet order was inevitable. Instead, Zubok reveals how Gorbachev's misguided reforms, intended to modernize and democratize the Soviet Union, deprived the government of resources and empowered separatism. Collapse sheds new light on Russian democratic populism, the Baltic struggle for independence, the crisis of Soviet finances-and the fragility of authoritarian state power.
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• Preface xiAcknowledgments xvii1 En RouteI Anticipation 31 The Swamp 52 The Preachers 233 The Faith 73II Fulfillment 1194 The Real Day 1215 The Last Battle 1586 The New City 1807 The Great Disappointment 2208 The Party Line 2722 At HomeIII The Second Coming 3159 The Eternal House 31710 The New Tenants 37711 The Economic Foundations 40812 The Virgin Lands 42113 The Ideological Substance 454IV The Reign of the Saints 47914 The New Life 48115 The Days Off 50816 The Houses of Rest 53517 The Next of Kin 55218 The Center of the World 58219 The Pettiness of Existence 61020 The Thought of Death 62321 The Happy Childhood 64522 The New Men 6653 On TrialV The Last Judgment 69723 The Telephone Call 69924 The Admission of Guilt 71525 The Valley of the Dead 75326 The Knock on the Door 77327 The Good People 81328 The Supreme Penalty 840VI The Afterlife 87129 The End of Childhood 87330 The Persistence of Happiness 88731 The Coming of War 91232 The Return 92433 The End 946Epilogue: The House on the Embankment 961Appendix: Partial List of Leaseholders 983Notes 995Index 1083.
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On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment. Written in the tradition of Tolstoy's War and Peace, Grossman's Life and Fate, and Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, Yuri Slezkine's gripping narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin's purges. A vivid account of the personal and public lives of Bolshevik true believers, the book begins with their conversion to Communism and ends with their children's loss of faith and the fall of the Soviet Union. Completed in 1931, the House of Government, later known as the House on the Embankment, was located across the Moscow River from the Kremlin. The largest residential building in Europe, it combined 505 furnished apartments with public spaces that included everything from a movie theater and a library to a tennis court and a shooting range. Slezkine tells the chilling story of how the building's residents lived in their apartments and ruled the Soviet state until some eight hundred of them were evicted from the House and led, one by one, to prison or their deaths. Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews, and featuring hundreds of rare photographs, The House of Government weaves together biography, literary criticism, architectural history, and fascinating new theories of revolutions, millennial prophecies, and reigns of terror. The result is an unforgettable human saga of a building that, like the Soviet Union itself, became a haunted house, forever disturbed by the ghosts of the disappeared.
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• Acknowledgments ix
• Chapter 1: Late Socialism An Eternal State 1
• Chapter 2: Hegemony of Form Stalin's Uncanny Paradigm Shift 36
• Chapter 3: Ideology Inside Out Ethics and Poetics 77
• Chapter 4: Living "Vnye" Deterritorialized Milieus 126
• Chapter 5: Imaginary West The Elsewhere of Late Socialism 158
• Chapter 6: Tr ue Colors of Communism King Crimson, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd 207
• Chapter 7: Dead Irony Necroaesthetics, "Stiob, " and the Anekdot 238 Conclusion 282 Bibliography 299 Index 319.
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Soviet socialism was based on paradoxes that were revealed by the peculiar experience of its collapse. To the people who lived in that system the collapse seemed both completely unexpected and completely unsurprising. At the moment of collapse it suddenly became obvious that Soviet life had always seemed simultaneously eternal and stagnating, vigorous and ailing, bleak and full of promise. Although these characteristics may appear mutually exclusive, in fact they were mutually constitutive. This book explores the paradoxes of Soviet life, during the period of "late socialism" (1960s-1980s) through the eyes of the last Soviet generation. Focusing on the major transformation of the 1950s at the level of discourse, ideology, language, and ritual, Alexei Yurchak traces the emergence of multiple unanticipated meanings, communities, relations, ideals, and pursuits that this transformation subsequently enabled. His historical, anthropological, and linguistic analysis draws on rich ethnographic material from Late Socialism and the post-Soviet period. The model of Soviet socialism that emerges provides an alternative to binary accounts that describe that system as a dichotomy of official culture and unofficial culture, the state and the people, public self and private self, truth and lie - and ignore the crucial fact that, for many Soviet citizens, the fundamental values, ideals, and realities of socialism were genuinely important, although they routinely transgressed and reinterpreted the norms and rules of the socialist state.
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"Revolution on My Mind" is a stunning revelation of the inner world of Stalin's Russia. We see into the minds and hearts of Soviet citizens who recorded their lives during an extraordinary period of revolutionary fervour and state terror. Writing a diary, like other creative expression, seems nearly impossible amid the fear and distrust of totalitarian rule; but as Jochen Hellbeck shows, diary-keeping was widespread, as individuals struggled to adjust to Stalin's regime. Rather than protect themselves against totalitarianism, many men and women bent their will to its demands, by striving to merge their individual identities with the collective and by battling vestiges of the old self within. We see how Stalin's subjects, from artists to intellectuals and from students to housewives, absorbed directives while endeavouring to fulfil the mandate of the Soviet revolution - re-creation of the self as a builder of the socialist society. Thanks to a newly discovered trove of diaries, we are brought face to face with individual life stories - gripping and unforgettably poignant. The diarists' efforts defy our liberal imaginations and our ideals of autonomy and private fulfilment. These Soviet citizens dreamed differently. They coveted a morally and aesthetically superior form of life, and were eager to inscribe themselves into the unfolding revolution. "Revolution on My Mind" is a brilliant exploration of the forging of the revolutionary self, a study without precedent that speaks to the evolution of the individual in mass movements of our own time.
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• Introduction
• Part One. Empire, Nation, and the Scientific State
• 1. Toward a Revolutionary Alliance
• 2. The National Idea versus Economic Expediency
• Part Two. Cultural Technologies of Rule and the Nature of Soviet Power
• 3. The 1926 Census and the Conceptual Conquest of Lands and Peoples
• 4. Border-Making and the Formation of Soviet National Identities
• 5. Transforming "The Peoples of the USSR": Ethnographic Exhibits and the Evolutionary Timeline
• Part Three. The Nazi Threat and the Acceleration of the Bolshevik Revolution
• 6. State-Sponsored Evolutionism and the Struggle against German Biological Determinism
• 7. Ethnographic Knowledge and Terror
• Epilogue
• Appendixes Bibliography Index.
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When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, they set themselves the task of building socialism in the vast landscape of the former Russian Empire, a territory populated by hundreds of different peoples belonging to a multitude of linguistic, religious, and ethnic groups. Before 1917, the Bolsheviks had called for the national self-determination of all peoples and had condemned all forms of colonization as exploitative. After attaining power, however, they began to express concern that it would not be possible for Soviet Russia to survive without the cotton of Turkestan and the oil of the Caucasus. In an effort to reconcile their anti-imperialist position with their desire to hold on to as much territory as possible, the Bolsheviks integrated the national idea into the administrative-territorial structure of the new Soviet state. In Empire of Nations, Francine Hirsch examines the ways in which former imperial ethnographers and local elites provided the Bolsheviks with ethnographic knowledge that shaped the very formation of the new Soviet Union. The ethnographers-who drew inspiration from the Western European colonial context-produced all-union censuses, assisted government commissions charged with delimiting the USSR's internal borders, led expeditions to study "the human being as a productive force, " and created ethnographic exhibits about the "Peoples of the USSR." In the 1930s, they would lead the Soviet campaign against Nazi race theories . Hirsch illuminates the pervasive tension between the colonial-economic and ethnographic definitions of Soviet territory; this tension informed Soviet social, economic, and administrative structures. A major contribution to the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, Empire of Nations also offers new insights into the connection between ethnography and empire.
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Remembered by many as the Soviet leader who banged his shoe at the United Nations, Nikita Khrushchev was in fact one of the most complex and important political figures of the twentieth century. Complicit in terrible Stalinist crimes, he managed to retain his humanity. His daring attempt to reform Communism-by denouncing Stalin and releasing and rehabilitating millions of his victims-prepared the ground for its eventual collapse. His awkward efforts to ease the Cold War triggered its most dangerous crises in Berlin and Cuba. The ruler of the Soviet Union during the first decade after Stalin's death, Khrushchev left his contradictory stamp on his country and the world. More than that, his life and career hold up a mirror to the Soviet age as a whole: revolution, civil war, famine, collectivization, industrialization, terror, world war, cold war, Stalinism, post-Stalinism. The first full and comprehensive biography of Khrushchev, and the first of any Soviet leader to reflect the full range of sources that have become available since the USSR collapsed, this book weaves together Khrushchev's personal triumphs and tragedy with those of his country. It draws on newly opened archives in Russia and Ukraine, the author's visits to places where Khrushchev lived and work, plus extensive interviews with Khrushchev family members, friends, colleagues, subordinates, and diplomats who jousted with him. William Taubman chronicles Khrushchev's life from his humble beginnings in a poor peasant village to his improbable rise into Stalin's inner circle; his stunning, unexpected victory in the deadly duel to succeed Stalin; and the startling reversals of fortune that led to his sudden, ignominious ouster in 1964. Combining a page-turning historical narrative with penetrating political and psychological analysis, this account brims with the life and excitement of a man whose story personifies his era. "A brilliant, stunning, magnificent book. One of the most important figures of the twentieth century, who had a lot to do with setting the stage for the twenty-first, Khrushchev finally has the biography he deserves-deep and detailed yet fast-paced, scholarly yet not stuffy, historical yet intensely human. Taubman brings Khrushchev alive in all his complexity, capturing both the humanity that somehow survived in him and became the bedrock for his political decency, and the cynicism that made him part of the brutality of the Soviet system. The book has the sweep of a Big Book about a Big Figure, yet its style is no-frills, no-nonsense, straight-from-the-shoulder, with judgments proferred judiciously. Taubman does a superb job of portraying the rogue's gallery of Soviet leaders while providing a colorful canvas of the country and its history. Having spent several years of my own life in Khrushchev's shadow, I couldn't be more admiring of what Taubman has accomplished." -Strobe Talbott, former U.S. deputy secretary of state, editor and translator of Khrushchev's memoirs "Monumental, definitive, rich in detail. Taubman pulls aside the curtain and shows us both a fascinating man and new facts about Soviet decision making during the most dangerous days of the Cold War. A highly readable, compelling story." -Anthony Lake, former U.S. national security adviser "The definitive account of Khrushchev's career and personality, this is also a wonderful page-turner about the deadly duel for power in the Kremlin. Altogether it is one of the best books ever written about the Soviet Union." -Constantine Pleshakov, co-author, Inside the Kremlin's Cold War "Few books in the field of Cold War history have been as eagerly awaited as William Taubman's biography of Nikita Khrushchev. Reflecting years of research as well as a keen sensitivity to culture, context, and personality, this extraordinary book more than matches the extraordinary character of its subject. It is a superb portrayal of one of the most attractive-but also dangerous-leaders of the twentieth century." -John Lewis Gaddis, professor of history, Yale University "A portrait unlikely to be surpassed any time soon in either richness or complexity. This volume, with its brisk, enjoyable narrative, succeeds in every sense: sweep, depth, liveliness, color, tempo. Each chapter shines with mastery and authority."-Leon Aron, The New York Times Book Review "Masterful and monumental...one should salute its author for a wonderful achievement....Starting with a juicy subject...Taubman has drawn on a huge body of material, much of it from newly available Soviet sources....He spent nearly twenty years on the book. The result is fun to read, full of insight and more than a little terrifying."-Robert G. Kaiser, Washington Post "Thanks to Taubman, one of the most important figures of the 20th century finally has the biography he deserves....In reconstructing a single paradoxical life, he helps us understand better the complexity of the human condition."-Strobe Talbott, Los Angeles Times Book Review.
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Offering a fundamental reinterpretation of the emergence of the Soviet state, Peter Holquist situates the Bolshevik Revolution within the continuum of mobilization and violence that began with World War I and extended through Russia's civil war. In so doing, Holquist provides a new genealogy for Bolshevik political practices, one that places them clearly among Russian and European wartime measures. From this perspective, the Russian Revolution was no radical rupture with the past, but rather the fulcrum point in a continent-wide era of crisis and violence that began in 1914. While Tsarist and Revolutionary governments implemented policies for total mobilization common to other warring powers, they did so in a supercharged and concentrated form. Holquist highlights how the distinctive contours of Russian political life set its experience in these years apart from other wartime societies. In pursuit of revolution, statesmen carried over crisis-created measures into political life and then incorporated them into the postwar political structure. Focusing on three particular policies - state management of food; the employment of official violence for political ends; and state surveillance -Holquist demonstrates the interplay of state policy and local implementation, and its impact on the lives of ordinary citizens. "Making War, Forging Revolution" casts a new light on Russia's revolution and boldy inserts it into the larger story of the Great War and 20th-century European history.
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• List of Illustrations ix List of Tables xi Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: Making Sense of War 7 PART I: DELINEATING THE BODY POLITIC 41 One Myth and Power: The Making of a Postwar Elite 43 Two "Living Up to the Calling of a Communist": Purification of the Rank and File 82 PART II: DELINEATING THE BODY SOCIOETHNIC 127 Three Excising Evil 129 Four Memory of Excision, Excisionary Memory 191 PART III: THE MAKING OF A POSTWAR SOVIET NATION 237 Five Integral Nationalism in the Trial of War 239 Six Peasants to Soviets, Peasants to Ukrainians 298 Afterword: A Soviet World without Soviet Power, a Myth of War without War 364 Bibliography 387 Index 411.
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In "Making Sense of War" Amir Weiner reconceptualizes the entire historical experience of the Soviet Union from a new perspective, that of World War II. Breaking with the conventional interpretation that views World War II as a post-revolutionary addendum, Weiner situates this event at the crux of the development of the Soviet - not just the Stalinist - system. Through a richley detailed look at Soviet society as a whole, and at one Ukranian region in particular, the author shows how World War II came to define the ways in which members of the political elite as well as ordinary citizens viewed the world and acted upon their beliefs and ideologies.
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This study is a street-level inside account of what Stalinism meant to the masses of ordinary people who lived it. Stephen Kotkin was the first American in 45 years to be allowed into Magnitogorsk, a city built in response to Stalin's decision to transform the predominantly agricultural nation into a "country of metal". With unique access to previously untapped archives and interviews, Kotkin forges a vivid and compelling account of the impact of industrialization on a single urban community. Kotkin argues that Stalinism offered itself as an opportunity for enlightenment. The utopia it proffered, socialism, would be a new civilization based on the repudiation of capitalism. The extent to which the citizenry participated in this scheme and the relationship of the state's ambitions to the dreams of ordinary people form the substance of this story. Kotkin depicts a whole range of life: from the blast furnace workers who laboured in the enormous iron and steel plant, to the families who struggled with the shortage of housing and services.
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This study is the first of its kind: a street-level inside account of what Stalinism meant to the masses of ordinary people who lived it. Stephen Kotkin was the first American in 45 years to be allowed into Magnitogorsk, a city built in response to Stalin's decision to transform the predominantly agricultural nation into a 'country of metal'. With unique access to previously untapped archives and interviews, Kotkin forges a vivid and compelling account of the impact of industrialization on a single urban community. Kotkin argues that Stalinism offered itself as an opportunity for enlightenment. The utopia it proffered, socialism, would be a new civilization based on the repudiation of capitalism. The extent to which the citizenry participated in this scheme and the relationship of the state's ambitions to the dreams of ordinary people form the substance of this fascinating story. Kotkin tells it deftly, with a remarkable understanding of the social and political system, as well as a keen instinct for the details of everyday life. Kotkin depicts a whole range of life: from the blast furnace workers who labored in the enormous iron and steel plant, to the families who struggled with the shortage of housing and services. Thematically organized and closely focused, "Magnetic Mountain" signals the beginning of a new stage in the writing of Soviet social history.
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Writing as "Z" in the world-famous article "To the Stalin Mausoleum", Malia predicted the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union. In this brilliant narrative, he evokes both the tragedy and desperate delusion that characterized the 74-year Soviet experiment with socialism to reveal why that system held such appeal for the Russians and why they refused to let go for so long. Previously announced.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)