The Soviet Century

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A detailed examination of the relics of ordinary communist life. Perfect for dipping into."—Fred Studemann, Financial Times The area of central Moscow – within walking distance of the Kremlin – housed all key Soviet institutions responsible for foreign policy decision making. These included the headquarters of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the villa of the Soviet Solidarity Committee. Schlögel – assisted by his excellent translator, Rodney Livingstone – is an eloquent writer and a captivating travel guide around this Soviet “lost world”."—Stephen Lovell, Times Literary Supplement

This leads him to another question, among the grandest 'ifs' in contemporary history. Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB, succeeded the brain-dead Brezhnev as general-secretary of the party in 1983, but fell mortally ill and died the following year. Suppose he had lived! The wealth of this book cannot be sufficiently explored within the limits of a review. Gibbonian in scale, it is a veritable cornucopia of jewels. “In Russia, radical changes and catastrophic experiences occur in their pure form,” Schlögel states. Reading his chronicle of this massive churn in all its sensory whimsies, we gain fresh insights into the lost world of the Soviet Union."—Prasenjit Chowdhury, Hindustan Times Who else could have a whole chapter on Soviet-era doorknobs? This is a fascinating book about the material loose ends, the pamphlets, the clothes, the non-existent phone books, the shop signs, the chest medals, and the bric-a-brac — among many other items — of the Soviet Union. . . . This is in my view one of the better books for understanding the Soviet Union."—Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution During the height of Stalin’s terror campaign, a period between 1936 and 1938 known as the Great Purge, an estimated 600,000 Soviet citizens were executed. Millions more were deported, or imprisoned in forced labor camps known as Gulags. The Cold War After reading it I feel like things might have gone quite differently had it not been for Stalin as an individual. For example there seem to have been several people who led various things after his time, where they seem to have been energetic and brave reformers, and what they achieved was to un-Stalinize things. So if those same people had inherited a less horrific situation then they probably could have achieved a lot more with the same energy.The Soviet Union is gone, but its ghostly traces remain, not least in the material vestiges left behind in its turbulent wake. What was it really like to live in the USSR? What did it look, feel, smell, and sound like? In The Soviet Century, Karl Schlögel, one of the world’s leading historians of the Soviet Union, presents a spellbinding epic that brings to life the everyday world of a unique lost civilization.

A museum of-and travel guide to-the Soviet past, The Soviet Century explores in evocative detail both the largest and smallest aspects of life in the USSR, from the Gulag, the planned economy, the railway system, and the steel city of Magnitogorsk to cookbooks, military medals, prison camp tattoos, and the ubiquitous perfume Red Moscow. The book examines iconic aspects of Soviet life, including long queues outside shops, cramped communal apartments, parades, and the Lenin mausoleum, as well as less famous but important parts of the USSR, including the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, the voice of Radio Moscow, graffiti, and even the typical toilet, which became a pervasive social and cultural topic. Throughout, the book shows how Soviet life simultaneously combined utopian fantasies, humdrum routine, and a pervasive terror symbolized by the Lubyanka, then as now the headquarters of the secret police. But if that 'Where did it go wrong?' question were put to Lewin, I think he would answer: 'Not everything did!' Most of this book, which is crammed with detailed research and not always easy reading, is concerned with the decades after Stalin. 'The sound and fury over dissidence ... should not be allowed to obscure the systemic trends that were at work in the Soviet Union.' Arbitrary terror was replaced by repression, which was at least applied through a legal framework; the Soviet Union became for a while a 'great power' economically and politically, as well as in armed strength; health and living conditions improved steeply. Lewin's other concern is in differentiating Stalinism from other, very different, stages of Soviet history. Kruschev's reforms may have largely failed, but his immediate move to begin dismantling of the key aspects of Stalinism succeeded. Political repression may have remained a part of Soviet policy but mass terror never returned, and the infamous gulag system disappeared entirely by the late 50's. One of the interesting details Lewin uncovered was the seemingly widespread policy of “prohylaxis”, wherein the KGB would identify dissidents and, instead of arresting them, throwing them in prison or simply shooting them in the head, would essentially give them a stern talking to and a warning to cut it out. While still obviously oppressive, this policy, which Andropov, the secretly liberal KGB chief in the 60's and 70's was apparently a big proponent of, is a pretty far cry from the menacing reputation the KGB had in the West, and is massively different from the arbitrary way the NKVD operated under Stalin.El siglo soviético se presenta como un libro que cubre (casi) todos los aspectos de lo que sucedió en la Unión Soviética. No resulta fácil cubrir 70 años de historia (bastante movidita, además) en un país que tiene miles de kilómetros y multitud de etnias. El autor lo repite varias veces a lo largo de la obra. Karl Schlögel has created a rich and fascinating mosaic of Soviet culture focusing on the manifold sensory qualities and experiences of everyday life. His insatiable curiosity leads him to wide panoramas and meaningful closeups of a culture that lives on in histories, memories, and appropriations.”—Joes Segal, The Wende Museum On December 25, Gorbachev resigned as leader of the USSR. The Soviet Union ceased to exist on December 31, 1991. Sources:

Although as a good social historian, Lewin continues to emphasise the broader context that supported Stalin’s authoritarianism, there is much more weight put on Stalin’s character. Reference is made to Stalin’s desire for absolute power, to be recognised as the indisputable authority on history, politics, ideology, etc., that lay behind the decision to destroy the Bolshevik Old Guard and indeed anyone whose historical memory might undermine Stalin’s version of events. Lewin claims that Stalin had the Great Terror of 1936–38 in mind as early as 1933. The references to Stalin’s ‘mania’, ‘paranoia’, ‘political pathology’ and their impact on the system more generally brought Khrushchev’s Secret Speech to mind. The Secret Speech is often presented as an élite cynical ploy to lay systemic failings at an individual’s door and to give a rationale for continuing to believe in the USSR. However, Lewin’s reading of events may lead us to see the Secret Speech as an honest attempt to understand what really happened in the change from Lenin’s leadership to Stalin’s. The inefficient (from a capitalist perspective) elements of the system were an important part of the social safety blanket for the wider population. The de-facto welfarist elements of the productive system were therefore held firmly in place by the most conservative elements of the apparatus. These conservatives were often themselves former Stalinists who were happy to accept ossification as the price of stability and social peace. When the next wave of political reform finally came with perestroika in the mid 1980s, it lifted the lid not on the potential for violent revolution, but on the dead air a moribund social contract. On October 4, 1957, the USSR publicly launched Sputnik 1—the first-ever artificial satellite—into low Earth orbit. The success of Sputnik made Americans fear that the U.S. was falling behind its Cold War rival in technology. Se centra en algunos aspectos mientras obvia otros difíciles de justificar. Si la estructura no me gustó, las omisiones resultan estridentes. ¿La Segunda Guerra Mundial? Se la salta. ¿Brezhnev? No merece mención especial (no es que no se hable de Brezhnev sino que, mientras que otros personajes menores merecen una biografía propia, Brezhnev, que gobernó el país durante 18 años, no). ¿Gorbachov? Pasaba por allí. Estas omisiones dan una información incompleta de la URSS (aunque no sesgaba pues, como digo, intenta en todo momento ser neutral). In a period known as the Red Terror, Bolshevik secret police—known as Cheka—carried out a campaign of mass executions against supporters of the czarist regime and against Russia’s upper classes.A] magnum opus. . . . This invaluable study casts a lost world in a new light."— Publishers Weekly (Starred review) The Soviet Century is a great monument to the vanished Soviet world. Rich, witty, and entertaining, the book offers a comprehensive textual museum that is all the more important because no such real-life museum exists in Russia or elsewhere, and I doubt that it will be created anytime soon. The more difficult it is to go to the White Sea Canal, the Lenin Mausoleum, or a Russian dacha, the more enjoyable is this book.”—Alexander Etkind, Central European University There is much food for thought in this book, even if Lewin is mainly restating earlier propositions. It is not a general history of the USSR, even if it offers a periodisation of the Soviet Union’s history (at its most basic Lenin, Stalin, post-Stalinism) and an explanation for its downfall. It is wonderfully idiosyncratic. There is next to nothing on the Gorbachev period, but there is a lengthy section on Andropov and a call for a better understanding of his reform programme. Brezhnev is simply dismissed as an example of one of the USSR’s numerous useless leaders. Lewin prefers to focus upon the brighter minds of the Brezhnev period from the academic institutes. But then there is more on Solzhenitsyn than the more interesting Sakharov. There are thus large gaps and chapters in which one has to be prepared simply to follow Lewin’s obsessions. This book should probably be read as a transition to the ‘more systematic future work’ that Lewin says that he has in mind. (p.viii). For all that, it is well worth reading.

This isn't a book for beginners. There's an assumption that the reader has a certain level of knowledge about the Soviet Union, which I do not possess, so it was heavy going for me but very much worth the effort. At home, however, Khrushchev initiated a series of political reforms that made Soviet society less repressive. During this period, later known as de-Stalinization, Khrushchev criticized Stalin for arresting and deporting opponents, took steps to raise living conditions, freed many political prisoners, loosened artistic censorship, and closed the Gulag labor camps. In 1949, the U.S., Canada and its European allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO). The alliance between countries of the Western bloc was a political show of force against the USSR and its allies.Some reread Marx, concluding that all would have been well if Lenin had not been so selective about the great man's message. Many others conclude that the attempt to build Marxist socialism in Europe's least industrialised society was doomed from the start. A few think that Lenin was to blame for what he did to the Bolshevik party before the revolution: forging it into a conspiracy whose natural style of government could only be dictatorship. The Soviet Union was not only a political system with a debatable beginning and an end, but a form of life with its own history, maturity, decline and fall. With its practices, values and routines, it shaped the citizens of the nation for many generations to come. Daily life