L. E. Holmes, The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse (Bloomington, Ind., 1991), interesting assessment of the attempt to use education to engineer social change.
J. Hughes, Stalin, Siberia, and the Crisis of the New Economic Policy (Cambridge, 1991), shows how Stalin’s experience in Siberia provided the impetus to collectivization.
W. B. Husband, ‘Godless Communists’: Atheism and Society in Soviet Russia, 1917–1932 (De Kalb. Ill., 2000), on anti-religious campaigns in the early Soviet era.
L. Kirschenbaum, Small Comrades: Revolutionizing Childhood in Soviet Russia, 1917–1932 (New York, 2001), on early Bolshevik theory and policy towards childhood education.
D. Koenker, Republic of Labor: Russian Printers and Soviet Socialism, 1918–1930 (Ithaca, NY, 2005), sophisticated case study in Soviet labour history.
M. Lenoe, Closer to the Masses: Stalinist Culture, Social Revolution, and Soviet Newspapers (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), on the transformation of Soviet newspapers in the 1920s and early 1930s.
R. Pethybridge, The Social Prelude to Stalinism (New York, 1974), examines the clash between Bolshevik ambitions and Soviet realities, with much data about party, society, and culture.
L. L. Phillips, Bolsheviks and the Bottle (DeKalb, Ill., 2000), on alcohol and the workers culture in Leningrad.
L. H. Siegelbaum, Soviet State and Society between Revolutions, 1918–1929 (Cambridge, 1992), comprehensive review of major issues.
R. C. Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879–1929 (New York, 1973), biography of Stalin’s origins and rise to prominence.
C. Ward, Russia’s Cotton Workers and the New Economic Policy (Cambridge, 1990), original and penetrating look at factory life during NEP.
M. von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship (Ithaca, NY, 1990), study of military and politics in early Bolshevik state.
S. White, The Bolshevik Poster (New Haven, CT, 1988), excellent analysis with rich collection of illustrations.
E. A. Wood, The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia (Bloomington, Ind., 1997), on Bolshevik policy and practice toward women.
———Performing Justice: Agitation Trials in Early Soviet Russia (Ithaca, NY, 2005), on the political theatre of the early Soviet regime.
D. J. Youngblood, Movies for the Masses (Cambridge, 1992), on debates, films, and reaction of critics and viewers.
11. BUILDING STALINISM, 1929–1941
G. Alexopoulos, Stalin’s Outcasts: Aliens, Citizens, and the Soviet State, 1926–1936 (Ithaca, NY, 2003), analysis of the lishentsy (‘disenfranchised’) as a social class in Stalinist Russia.
V. Anderle, Workers in Stalin’s Russia (New York, 1988), sociological enquiry into workplace interaction.
D. Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931–1956 (Cambridge, Mass., 2002), on the construction of Russian national heroes, myths, and images.
M. Buckley, Mobilizing Soviet Peasants: Heroines and Heroes of Stalin’s Fields (Lanham, Md., 2006), study of rural ‘Stakhanovitism’ in the 1930s.
W. J. Chase, Enemies within the Gates? The Comintern and the Stalinist Repression, 1934–1939 (New Haven, CT, 2001), interpretative documentary volume on the Comintern during the purges.
R. Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (New York, 1990), updated version of classic account from the perspective of the ‘totalitarian’ school.
A. Dallin and F. I. Firsov (eds.), Dmitrov and Stalin, 1934–1943: Letters from the Soviet Archives (New Haven, CT, 2000), interpretative essay and translation of newly declassified documents.
V. P. Danilov, N. A. Ivnitskii, D. Kozlov, and L. Viola (eds.), The War against the Peasantry, 1927–1930: The Tragedy of the Soviet Countryside (New Haven, CT, 2005), valuable collection of new archival documents on collectivization.
R. W. Davies, The Industrialization of Soviet Russia, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1980–91), continuation of the E. H. Carr multi-volume history.
S. Davies, Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia: Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, 1934–1941 (Cambridge, 1997), fascinating summary of police reports about the popular mood in Leningrad in the 1930s.
S. Davies and J. Harris (eds.), Stalin: A New History (Cambridge, 2005), collection of essays that reflect recent scholarship and some new archival sources.
E. T. Ewing, The Teachers of Stalinism: Policy, Practice, and Power in Soviet Schools of the 1930s (New York, 2002), monograph on primary and secondary schoolteachers and their attempt to school and resocialize Soviet children.
M. Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule (Cambridge, 1958), path-breaking analysis based on the Smolensk party archive.
O. Figes, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia (New York, 2007), narrative focused on individual experiences and the personal dimension.
S. Fitzpatrick (ed.), Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928–1931 (Bloomington, Ind., 1979), treats upheavals in the professions from the perspective of social history.
———The Cultural Front (Ithaca, NY, 1992), ten essays on the complex relationship between the intelligentsia and political authority.
———Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times (Oxford, 1999), description of daily life in the 1930s.
———Stalin’s Peasants (Oxford, 1994), on peasant response and adaptation to collectivization.
———Tear off the Masks! Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-Century Russia (Princeton, NJ, 2005), collection of essays on social identity.
D. Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization (Armonk, NY, 1986), on the regime’s attempt to subdue worker resistance.
V. Garros, N. Korenevskaya, and T. Lahusen (eds.), Intimacy and Terror (New York, 1995), fascinating collection of diaries from the 1930s.
J. A. Getty, Origins of the Great Purges (Cambridge, 1985), ‘revisionist’ account of inner-party politics, drawing mainly on the Smolensk party archive.
———and R. T. Manning (eds.), Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (Cambridge, 1993), essays that reflect the emerging revisionist view of the purges and terror.
———and O. V. Naumov (eds.), The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932–1939 (New Haven, CT, 2001), interpretative documentary of the great terror, with many newly declassified documents.
G. Gill, The Origins of the Stalinist Political System (Cambridge, 1990), on the formation of the Stalinist dictatorship as a break with Leninist system.
W. Z. Goldman, Women at the Gates: Gender and Industry in Stalin’s Russia (New York, 2002), Soviet gender policy and women’s integration into the working class in the 1930s.
G. Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia (New Haven, CT, 1999), an archivally based study stressing Stalin’s interest in collective security and denying any plan for preemptive war in 1941.