#23 - JRL 9062 - JRL Home
From: "Bill Daniels" <rdaniels@zoo.uvm.edu>
Subject: New book by Moshe Lewin, The Soviet Century
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005

Dear David,

Your readers will all be interested in the remarkable new book by Moshe Lewin of the University of Pennsylvania, "The Soviet Century" (Verso). www.versobooks.com

This work is not simply a narrative history, but a series of analytical probes into the nature of the Soviet system as it developed and came apart. Focussing on the formation of Stalinism in the 1930s and on the failed reforms of the 1960s, Lewin depicts the system not as a socialist experiment but as a form of bureaucratic absolutism rooted in continuity with the tsarist past (and, one might add, re-emerging today).

In his analysis Lewin stands back from the ideological engagement that characterizes most foreign appraisals of Soviet times, so that he can recognize the paradox of modernization attempted by pre-modern means, not unlike Peter the Great.

This work is one half of the capstone of a distinguished career in interpreting Soviet reality. The other half is "the more systematic future work" that Lewin promises us.

Robert V. Daniels
Professor Emeritus of History
The University of Vermont