Stephen Kotkin Livres

In 1929, Joseph Stalin, having already achieved dictatorial power over the vast Soviet Empire, formally ordered the systematic conversion of the world's largest peasant economy into "socialist modernity," otherwise known as collectivization, regardless of the cost. What it cost, and what Stalin ruthlessly enacted, transformed the country and its ruler in profound and enduring ways. Building and running a dictatorship, with life and death power over hundreds of millions, made Stalin into the uncanny figure he became. The wholesale collectivization of some 120 million peasants necessitated levels of coercion that were extreme even for Russia, and the resulting mass starvation elicited criticism inside the party even from those Communists committed to the eradication of capitalism. But Stalin did not flinch. By 1934, when the Soviet Union had stabilized and socialism had been implanted in the countryside, praise for his stunning anti-capitalist success came from all quarters. Stalin, however, never forgave and never forgot, with shocking consequences as he strove to consolidate the state with a brand new elite of young strivers like himself. Stalin's obsessions drove him to execute nearly a million people, including the military leadership, diplomatic and intelligence officials, and innumerable leading lights in culture. While Stalin revived a great power, building a formidable industrialized military, the Soviet Union was effectively alone and surrounded by perceived enemies. The quest for security would bring Soviet Communism to a shocking and improbable pact with Nazi Germany. But that bargain would not unfold as envisioned. The lives of Stalin and Hitler, and the fates of their respective dictatorships, drew ever closer to collision, as the world hung in the balance

Masterly, a riveting tale, written with pace and aplomb. [of volume one] New York Times

In his biography of Stalin, Kotkin rejects the inherited wisdom about Stalin's psychological makeup, showing us instead how Stalin's near paranoia was fundamentally political and closely tracks the Bolshevik revolution's structural paranoia, the predicament of a Communist regime in an overwhelmingly capitalist world, surrounded and penetrated by enemies. At the same time, Kotkin posits the impossibility of understanding Stalin's momentous decisions outside of the context of the history of imperial Russia.

In January 1928 Stalin, the ruler of the largest country in the world, boarded a train bound for Siberia where he would embark upon the greatest gamble of his political life. He was about to begin uprooting and collectivization of agriculture and industry across the entire Soviet Union. This book offers an explanation yet of Stalin's power.

An account of what Stalinism meant to the masses of ordinary people who lived it. It argues that Stalinism offered itself as an opportunity for enlightenment. It depicts a whole range of life: from the blast furnace workers who labored in the iron and steel plant, to the families who struggled with the shortage of housing and services.

Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. In one of modern history’s most miraculous occurrences, communism imploded–and not with a bang, but with a whimper. Now two of the foremost scholars of East European and Soviet affairs, Stephen Kotkin and Jan T. Gross, drawing upon two decades of reflection, revisit this crash. In a crisp, concise, unsentimental narrative, they employ three case studies–East Germany, Romania, and Poland–to illuminate what led Communist regimes to surrender, or to be swept away in political bank runs. This is less a story of dissidents, so-called civil society, than of the bankruptcy of a ruling class–communism’s establishment, or “uncivil society.” The Communists borrowed from the West like drunken sailors to buy mass consumer goods, then were unable to pay back the hard-currency debts and so borrowed even more. In Eastern Europe, communism came to resemble a Ponzi scheme, one whose implosion carries enduring lessons. From East Germany’s pseudotechnocracy to Romania’s megalomaniacal dystopia, from Communist Poland’s cult of Mary to the Kremlin’s surprise restraint, Kotkin and Gross pull back the curtain on the fraud and decadence that cashiered the would-be alternative to the market and democracy, an outcome that opened up to a deeper global integration that has proved destabilizing.

History's cruel tricks -- Reviving the dream -- The drama of reform -- Waiting for the end of the world -- Survival and cannibalism in the rust belt -- Democracy without liberalism? -- Idealism and treason.

Students reading Scott have come away with a real appreciation of the hardships under which these workers built Magnitogorsk and of the nearly incredible enthusiasm with which many of them worked." --Ronald Grigor Suny A genuine grassroots account of Soviet life--a type of book of which there have been far too few." --William Henry Chamberlin, New York Times, 1943 ... a rich portrait of daily life under Stalin." --New York Times Book Review General readers, students, and specialists alike will find much of relevance for understanding today's Soviet Union in this new edition of John Scott's vivid exploration of daily life in the formative days of Stalinism.

In 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Hoover Institution began a historic twelve-year effort to microfilm and publish the records of the Soviet Communist Party and State--ten million pages of newly opened archives documenting the history of Soviet communism.

Kotkinovy dějiny Magnitogorsku jsou monstrózní mikrohistorickou sondou do stalinské každodennosti. V polovině dvacátých let se kolem Magnetické hory rozkládala pustá step. O pár let později tu již stálo gigantické průmyslové centrum pulzující životem. Jak se to mohlo stát? Jací lidé se k tomuto místu vydali a budovali jej? A proč? A jak v krajině bičované mrazivými větry dokázali přežít a zabydlet se? Stephen Kotkin si všímá každičkého detailu životů magnitogorských obyvatel. Strašlivé zimy, vítr, nehygienické životní podmínky, tvrdá práce na vysokých pecích, volnočasové aktivity, bytová nouze, šmelina, zburžoaznění městské stranické elity, udávání, teror konce třicátých let atd. – Kotkinově pozornosti neunikne nic. Jeho magnitogorská sága inspirovaná Michelem Foucaultem bezesporu započala novou fázi ve výzkumu sovětských sociálních dějin.