Questions for discussion:

Can Stalinism truly be described as a ‘new civilisation’? Was Stalinist society conservative or revolutionary? Did it succeed in creating ‘new people’?

Set reading (to be prepared for class discussion):

Source: Ivan Zhiga, ‘The Thoughts, Cares and Deeds of Workers’, 1928. Available online: http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1929-2/new-way-of-life/new-way-of-life-texts/thoughts-cares-and-deeds-of-workers/

Stephen Kotkin, ‘Coercion and Identity: Workers’ Lives in Stalin’s Showcase City’, in Lewis H. Siegelbaum, ed., Making Workers Soviet: Power, Class and Identity, (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 274-311. Scan available here.

Selected further reading:

David Brandenberger, Propaganda State in Crisis: Soviet Ideology, Indoctrination, and Terror Under Stalin, 1927-1941 (Stanford, Calif.: New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011). E-book.

Sheila Fitzpatrick, Tear off the Masks!: Identity and Imposture in Twentieth Century Russia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005). E-book.

Jochen Hellbeck, Revolution on My Mind: Writing a Diary Under Stalin (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009). E-book.

Julie Hessler, “Cultured Trade: The Stalinist Turn Toward Consumerism,” in Stalinism: New Directions, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick (Basingstoke, 2000).

David L. Hoffmann, Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917-1941 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003).

Oleg Kharkhordin, The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), especially Chapter 6, ‘Working on Oneself: The Individual as a Subject of Knowledge and Action’.