Everyday Stalinism by Sheila Fitzpatrick
Everyday Stalinism gives a better image of the way daily urban life was like under Stalinist Russia in its early decades. Fitzpatrick chooses to focus on the lives of urban people and not divide them along the lines of class, since class definitions under the Stalinist society had become too distorted. “Relations between classes were comparatively unimportant in Stalinist society.” 1 Most urban citizens living in the Soviet Union in the 1930s were struggling to live normal and ordinary lives despite the extraordinary circumstances that surrounded them such as chronic food shortages, social upsets, and political instability. Fitzpatrick shows how these normal citizens strived to survive and how they understood and interpreted what was happening. Stalin showed major characteristics in his rule such as communism, Marxist Leninist ideologies, bureaucracy, over production of goods and their distribution, police surveillance and personalized arrangements where people at every level of the society only sought to protect themselves and cater for their personal needs and obtain a part of the scarce goods. 2
The Soviet Union wanted to remove the private sector from its economy as a strategy of socialism. They used state planning and overproduction of goods to try to spark an increase in development. They invested too much on the heavy industry leaving little focus for consumer goods and lowering living standards for the public in order to fund their endeavors. Many peasants lost their land, animals, and homes and exiled to distant parts as a form of persecution by the Stalinist regime. This left many of them to flee into cities leading to shortages and rationing of food and overpopulation. Soviet citizen’s tempers were tried every day due to the incompetent state officials, clerks who were working for the state.Those who participated in assaults such as habitual criminals and troublemakers were executed, and others confined in Gulag. “Each region of the Soviet Union was given a quota; for the Soviet Union as a whole, the target figure for executions was 70,000 (including 10,000 “socially dangerous elements” already in Gulag) and for dispatch to Gulag almost 200,000.” 3 Most of the younger portion of these normal citizens believed that they were part of a history in the making through the building of socialism in soviet Russia. The people accepted to be blinded by the fake promises from the government.
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Fitzpatrick approach to the soviet power threatened to dissolve it. He describes how hard it was to live under Stalinism in the 1930s. From the collectivization, forced-draft industrialization left most normal citizens living below normal living standards. His point of view shows all the evils that emanated from this idealism and how it affected the people and demoralized them in every possible way. People would struggle to line up at 2am in the morning to get 16 grams of bread with no shoes. Bread shortages appeared again throughout the country in 1939–40. “Iosif Vissarionovich,” wrote a housewife from the Volga to Stalin, “something just awful has started. For bread, you have to go at two o’clock at night and stand until six in the morning to get two kilograms of rye bread.” 4 He shows how soviet power forced normal citizens to become hero laborers by overwhelming them with work and took them through years of brutality and hardships. Therefore, his work highlights all the reasons why the system used by Stalin was unrealistic and required to be dissolved.
Fitzpatrick also highlights how the state officials desired to transform Soviet Union. They encouraged the remodeling of individuals through work. Before the imposition of socialism, most of these people did not enjoy working but after its introduction, they were made to believe that it was the only way to gain meaning in life. They believed that work could transform even the worst criminals into worthy citizens, similar to what most of the transformed individuals had confessed in interviews. Even so, this was not the case but just a propaganda used to more of the citizens to accept this concept. The transformation also required that citizens become more cultured. Most of the Soviet Union citizens were peasants and workers. They were described to be backwards in terms of economical stand and culture. In that sense, most people wanted to rise from these titles. There was misrecognition of the true heroes where elites believed that they were better than most of the population. Stalin further supported such ideologies by using terms such as intelligentsia to refer to the Soviet elites who he referred to be more cultured and advanced amongst a backward society.
Speaking Bolshevik by Kotkin
It is often hard to write about evil tyrants in world history. However, Kotkin thought that highlighting the evil nature of characters such as Stalin would not allow people to understand what made them tick. He suggests that historians should look beyond the tyrant rule and explain how Stalinism and Bolshevism came into place and operated. Despite looking at the character of Stalin in the wrong things that he did, people should focus more on how the soviet union was unique under him and how the concept of socialism was based on the complete opposites of Capitalism that were being seen in other parts of the world. The society was based on how industrialization and transformation of peasants could lead to a successful soviet society, which would be free from all the negativities of capitalism. However, the society had been aided by capitalism in its rise but still referred to itself as anti-capitalist. Kotkin uses the new socialist city and Magnitogorsk steel mill to explain the new society. The new society had been set upon based on capitalist ideologies such as better social welfare, new urban planning, a shadow market, ‘Bolshevik’ language and state religion based on values that were promoted by terror.
The Magnitogorsk factory had been built with the help of western technical expertise and Stalin’s will to create an industrial stronghold out of Soviet Russia. It embodied the principles of the Marxist-Leninist ideology in Russia. Kotkin wanted to use this example of the factory based in the industrial city of Magnitogorsk to show that Stalin was not only a political extremist but also a person who was eyeing civilization and a way for life for the people. The socialist city of Magnitogorsk was built around this steel mill and worked in a way that it would create new soviet identities for the peasants and workers who were working there. All these people were part of the master plan that urged the society to accept socialism and industrialization as a new way of “speaking” in Bolshevik. “The center of the Stakhanovite movement in Magnitogorsk was the blooming mill, where behind the celebrated records lay much sweat and blood. Nowadays working in the blooming mill has become very difficult physically.” 5 This hence created the ideology of bolshevism where people started referring to themselves in a manner that reflected it. This language paved the new way for a new society that was in line with the socialism concept that Stalin wanted. Most of the residents had come to gain more trust in this socialist project and had to learn the Bolshevik language in order to interact with others from the new soviet society. This meant living past livelihoods to adopt this new way of life. Kotkin focuses on how this new way of life had been imposed on the people from all levels of life from the war that had begun against peasantry and eradicating it.
Kotkin’s approach helped to maintain the Soviet power. Unlike Fitzpatrick, his approach in the book tries to explain and understand Stalin’s obsession with his ideologies. He tries to explain the new Soviet civilization under Stalin from its property relations, economic organization to the evolution of new language. His work is a complete opposition to that of Fitzpatrick. “What was necessary,” he writes, “was that she recognize... behave as the wife of a Soviet locomotive driver should.” 6 He says that their reviews seek to show Stalinism as the end of the soviet revolution instead of somewhat of a beginning. Kotkin’s point of view is that Stalinism was an attempt to change Russia into a better country and develop it without ignoring the social conservatism.
Kotkin created an impressive analysis of the Stalinist regime. However, his work is mostly contrasted with the makings of a system that eventually collapsed after it was unable to sustain itself. People had been forced to live under terrible conditions and unreasonable situations indicating the inefficiency and abuse of power that clouded Stalinist Russia. Moreover, this new socialist city of Magnitogorsk was a den for illegal activities and trades. He brings more understanding of how the society continued to function even with the massive killings that were happening. Kotkin helps readers understand the importance of persuasion in a system and its use in the Soviet Socialism experiment by Stalin.
References
Fitzpatrick, Sheila. 2000. Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kotkin, Stephen. 1997. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. California: University of California Press.
1 Fitzpatrick, Sheila. 2000 . Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s . New York: Oxford University Press. 12
2 Ibid., 3-4
3 Ibid., 127
4 Ibid., 43
5 Kotkin, Stephen. 1997 . Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization . California: University of California Press. 208
6 Ibid., 220
