Society and Everyday Life

• Did the “revisionists” have a better idea of Stalinism than “traditional” historians? [debate]
• How did the social stratification of society change?
• How was everyday life in the 1930s?
• What impact did the 'building of socialism' have on gender relations?

Essential Reading

Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ‘New Perspectives on Stalinism’, Russian Review, 45 (1986), pp. 357-373.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ‘Afterword: Revisionism Revisited’, Russian Review, 45 (1986), pp. 409-413.

Articles of Brower, Chase, Conquest, Getty, Hough, Manning, Tucker, Russian Review, 46 (1987), pp. 379-427. (see JSTOR)

Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, pp. 40-66 (= Chapter 2: Hard Times), pp. 89-114 (= Chapter 4: The Magic Tablecloth), pp. 139-163 (= Chapter 6: Family Problems). Link 1, Link 2, Link 3

Goldman, Wendy, 'Babas at the Bench: Gender Conflict in Soviet Industry in the 1930s', in Melanie Ilić (ed.), Women in the Stalin era (London, 2001), pp. 69-88

Recommended Reading

Ilić,, Melanie 'Traktoristka: Representations and Realities', Women in the Stalin era, pp. 110-130.

Davies, Sarah, 'A Mother's cares': Women Worker and Popular Opinion in Stalin's Russia', Women in the Stalin era, pp. 89-109

Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ‘Revisionism in Retrospect: A Personal View', Slavic Review 67 (2008), pp. 682-704 (and subsequent comments of Robert V. Daniels, J. Arch Getty, Elena A. Osokina, Jochen Helbeck, pp. 705-723)

Further Reading

Cohen, Stephen F., ‘Stalin’s Terror As Social History’, Russian Review, 45 (1986), pp.375-384. (see JSTOR)

Suny, The Soviet Experiment, pp. 269-290.

Siegelbaum, Lewis H., ‘“Dear comrade, you ask what we need”: Socialist paternalism and Soviet Rural “Notables” in the mid-1930s, in Fitzpatrick, Stalinism. New Directions, pp. 231-255

Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, pp. 149-197, 238-279

Davies, Sarah, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia: Terror, Propaganda, and Dissent, 1934-1941 (Cambridge, 1997)

Fitzpatrick, Sheila and Yuri Slezkine (eds), In the Shadow of Revolution: Life stories of Russian Women from 1917 to the Second World War (Princeton, 2000)

Engel, Barbara A. and Anastasia Posadskaya-Vanderbeck (eds), A Revolution of Their Own: Voices of Women in Soviet History (Boulder, Col., 1997)

Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ‘Blat in Stalin’s Time’, in Alena Ledeneva, Stephen Lovell, and Andrei Rogachevskii (eds), Bribery and Blat in Russia: The Rights and Wrongs of Reciprocity (London, 1999).

Waters, Elizabeth, ‘The Modernization of Russian Motherhood, 1917-1937’, in Chris Read (ed.), The Stalin Years: A Reader (Houndmills, Basingstoke, 2003), pp. 25-38.

Goldman, W., Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life 1917-1936 (Cambridge, 1993).