Life in Stalin's Soviet Union

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations List of Contributors Introduction, Kees Boterbloem (University of South Florida, USA) 1. The End of the Russian Peasants under Stalin, Kees Boterbloem (University of South Florida, USA) 2. Food Consumption, Diet and Famines, Elena Osokina (University of South Carolina, USA) 3. The Cities: Urbanization and Modern Life, Heather Dehaan (Binghamton University, USA) 4. On the Margins: Social Dislocation and Criminality in the Soviet Union from the 1930s to the 1950s, David Shearer (University of Delaware, USA) 5. The Gulag under Stalin, Golfo Alexopoulos (University of South Florida, USA) 6. Private Ivan's Life and Fate: Daily Life in Stalin's Red Army during the "Great Patriotic War", Kenneth Slepyan (Transylvania University, USA) 7. The History of Disability during Stalinism, Frances Bernstein (Drew University, USA) 8. Gender and Sexuality, Amy Randall (Santa Clara University, USA) 9. The Educational Experience in Stalin's Russia, 1931-1945, Larry E. Holmes (University of South Alabama, USA) 10. A Year of Celebrations in the Life of a Soviet Student, Karen Petrone (University of Kentucky, USA) 11. Soviet People's Informal Interactions with Officials of the Stalin-Era Party-State, James Heinzen (Rowan University, USA) 12. The Religious Front: Militant Atheists and Militant Believers, Gregory Freeze (Brandeis University, USA) Index

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 :
Life in Stalin's Soviet Union is a welcome addition to the volumes currently available for teaching the history of Stalinism. While earlier collections tend to focus on the 1930s, many of the chapters in this work chart the full period of Stalinist rule, from the late 1920s to 1953. A popular interpretation of the Soviet Union in the West, particularly from the 1950s to the 1960s, emphasized the totalitarian nature of a communist regime that strictly controlled the daily lives of its citizens. Written for a general readership, Life in Stalin's Soviet Union, edited by Kees Boterbloem, successfully challenges such a historiographical approach by highlighting the many strategies Soviet citizens used to circumvent, even defy, such a regimented and brutal government and, by the same token, recover some of their freedom. 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. 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.