The Soviet Century
Published on 18. October 2016
432 pages
978-1-78478-650-2 (ISBN)
Description
One hundred years after the Russian Revolution the Soviet Union remains the most extraordinary, yet tragic, attempt to create a society beyond capitalism. Yet its history was one that for a long time proved impossible to write.
In The Soviet Century, Moshe Lewin follows this history in all its complexity, guiding us through the inner workings of a system which is still barely understood. In the process he overturns widely held beliefs about the USSR's leaders, the State-Party system and the powerful Soviet bureaucracy.
Departing from a simple linear history, The Soviet Century traces all the continuities and ruptures that led from the founding revolution of October 1917 to the final collapse of the late 1980s and early 1990s, passing through the Stalinist dictatorship, the impossible reforms of the Khrushchev years and the glasnost and perestroika policies of Gorbachev.
In The Soviet Century, Moshe Lewin follows this history in all its complexity, guiding us through the inner workings of a system which is still barely understood. In the process he overturns widely held beliefs about the USSR's leaders, the State-Party system and the powerful Soviet bureaucracy.
Departing from a simple linear history, The Soviet Century traces all the continuities and ruptures that led from the founding revolution of October 1917 to the final collapse of the late 1980s and early 1990s, passing through the Stalinist dictatorship, the impossible reforms of the Khrushchev years and the glasnost and perestroika policies of Gorbachev.
More details
Edition
Ebook UK & RoW
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Product notice
Reflowable
ISBN-13
978-1-78478-650-2 (9781784786502)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Moshe Lewin | Gregory Elliott
The Soviet Century
Book
10/2016
Verso Books
€34.00
Shipment within 3-4 weeks
Persons
Moshe Lewin was a hugely respected historian of the Soviet Union. Professor of Soviet Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, his books include Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison and The Making of the Soviet System: Essays in the Social History of Interwar Russia.
Content
- Intro
- Halftitle Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part One: A Regime and its Psyche
- Introduction
- 1. Stalin Knows Where He Wants to Get to - and is Getting There
- 2. 'Autonomization Versus Federation' (1922-3)
- 3. 'Cadres into Heretics'
- 4. The Party and its Apparaty
- 5. Social Flux and 'Systemic Paranoia'
- 6. The Impact of Collectivization
- 7. Between Legality and Bacchanalia
- 8. How Did Stalin Rule?
- 9. The Purges and Their 'Rationale'
- 10. The Scale of the Purges
- 11. The Camps and the Industrial Empire of the NKVD
- 12. Endgame
- 13. An Agrarian Despotism?
- Part Two: The 1960s and Beyond: From a New model to a New Impasse
- 14. 'E Pur, Si Muove!'
- 15. The KGB and the Political Opposition
- 16. The Avalanche of Urbanization
- 17. The 'Administrators': Bruised but Thriving
- 18. Some Leaders
- 19. Kosygin and Andropov
- Part Three: The Soviet Century: Russia in Historical Context
- 20. Lenin's Time and Worlds
- 21. Backwardness and Relapse
- 22. Modernity with a Twist
- 23. Urbanization: Successes and Failures
- 24. Labour Force and Demography: A Conundrum
- 25. The Bureaucratic Maze
- 26. 'Telling the Light from the Shade'?
- 27. What was the Soviet System?
- Notes
- Glossary of Russian Terms
- Appendices
- Appendix 1
- Appendix 2
- Appendix 3
- Appendix 4
- Note on Sources and References
- Index
