Under the Influence

Reviews / Votes

Using drinking as a lens through which to assess cultural revolution in Russia, Transchel persuasively reveals how practices steeped in everyday life limited state-sponsored efforts to remake society. In elegantly lean prose, she demonstrates how workers effectively resisted Bolshevik efforts to establish cultural hegemony and what this ultimately meant for the Soviet project. * Donald J. Raleigh, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill * In this fascinating study, Kate Transchel shows how Russian workers resisted both Tsarist and Soviet attempts to reform their traditional drinking habits. Eventually, in the mid-1930s, Stalin had to abandon the attempt to transform Russia's drinking cultures, along with the larger project of creating a 'new Soviet man.' Like much recent research on early Soviet history, Transchel's pioneering study shows the remarkable resilience of Russian working-class culture despite the colossal and often brutal transformations of the early twentieth century. * David Christian, San Diego State University * In this carefully researched and well-written book, Kate Transchel examines the ill-fated temperance movement in Tsarist and Soviet Russia. By illustrating the persistence of popular drinking traditions, she vividly demonstrates the centrality of alcohol to Russian working-class sociability and the limits of directed cultural transformation. * David Hoffmann, Ohio State University * A compelling analysis of a much-cited yet superficially investigated aspect of Russian and Soviet life. Through a careful investigation of an impressive array of archival and primary resources, Transchel's work offers important insights into the relationship between the newly industrialized working classes and the Russian state through the negotiation over the use and abuse of alcohol. * <i>Labor History</i> * An insightful, well-written, and thoroughly researched account of how tenacious and enduring traditional practices thwarted the Soviet state's attempts to transform everyday life. It deserves a wide readership. * <i>Annals of the History of Eastern Europe</i> * A solid examination of the persistence of drinking culture despite revolutionaries' attempts to eliminate it, using a wide range of all available sources. It should be read not only by those who study Russia, but also by those who study working class culture in other areas of the world. Concisely and clearly written, the study would be a useful supplementary text in upper-level undergraduate Russian history classes. * <i>The NEP Era</i> *