THE SOVIET SYSTEM AND THE CULTURE OF STALINISM
BOOK REVIEW by Stephen D. Shenfield
Sheila Fitzpatrick. EVERYDAY STALINISM. ORDINARY LIFE IN EXTRAORDINARY TIMES: SOVIET RUSSIA IN THE 1930s. Oxford University Press, 1999.
What was it like to live in Stalinist Russia? This extraordinarily rich and detailed account of everyday urban life in the USSR in the 1930s goes a long way toward providing an answer. (Another book by the same author gives a parallel account of rural life. (1))
Sheila Fitzpatrick discusses -- inter alia -- housing conditions and access to consumer goods ("shopping as a survival skill"), social privilege and discrimination (for instance, against "former people" -- those who belonged to privileged social groups before the revolution), relations between the political leadership and the cultural elite, the position of servants, popular entertainment, marriage and family problems, and the upbringing of the "new man," including the inculcation of standards of personal hygiene.
There is also a chapter (Ch. 7) devoted to the channels of communication between rulers and ruled, including secret police surveillance, the press, citizens' letters of complaint to the authorities, and even suicide. Fitzpatrick's book is in this respect a valuable complement to the book by Brooks reviewed above, helping to place his purely press-based analysis in a broader context.
The picture of life under Stalin that gradually emerges consists of two sharply contrasting psychic worlds superimposed upon one another -- the grim world of privation, fear, and repression, and the bright world of hope, opportunity, and excitement. But one cannot say that only the first of these worlds was "real" and the second mythical. For instance, new technologies did excite the imagination of millions of Soviet people, as demonstrated by the craze for aviation and parachute- jumping, while Arctic exploration satisfied the craving for vicarious adventure (as would the exploration of outer space for the post-Stalin generation).
The two worlds were in some cases opposite sides of the same medal. The opportunity for educational and social advancement that the 1930s opened up to so many was only in part the consequence of industrial expansion. In large part the new and young people owed their rapid promotion to the repression of their predecessors. (2)
A similar point may be made about the combination of forced industrial development and the underdevelopment of the general urban environment. We tend to think of Stalinism as a system in which everything of any importance was closely planned, organized, and controlled by centralized power structures. In certain spheres Stalinism was indeed like that -- but by no means in all. In some ways Stalinism meant utter chaos. The construction of new factories was carefully planned from above, but the massive flow of migrants from the countryside -- refugees from collectivization and famine -- that provided the new factories with their unskilled labor force was a spontaneous process. So was the haphazard growth around the new factories of the zones of dirt roads and barracks where the migrant laborers lived. And crime got so far out of control that in some places workers had to sleep inside the factories.
The image of Stalinism as a system of total thought control -- or at least of total control over the public expression of thought -- is likewise misleading. The expression of divergent points of view on certain topics and within certain parameters was permitted and even encouraged. Thus the author gives a fascinating account of the debate arranged in the press to sound out public responses to the draft law of May 1936 that dealt with abortion, divorce, child support, and rewards for mothers of many children (pp. 152-156). The boundaries of permitted discussion were continually shifting, before and after Stalin as well as under his rule. Now the limits were narrower, now somewhat wider -- but it was always a matter of policing the limits rather than of trying to impose absolute uniformity.
While this book is not explicitly about theory, it contains many ideas and observations relevant to a theory of Stalinism or of the Soviet system. In any case, no theory can be adequate that fails to come to grips with the multifaceted and paradoxical reality surveyed by the author.
REFERENCES
(1) Sheila Fitzpatrick. Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village After Collectivization. New York, 1994.
(2) For an eloquent expression of the ecstatic feelings of the new people see Alexander Zinoviev's "Nashei yunosti polyot" [Flight of Our Youth].
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