Synopses & Reviews
Review
"In the midst of a growing number of rather unsatisfactory political histories of the Soviet Union, here is a book with a new and more appropriate orientation: a rare balance of social history and politics. McClellan treats the experience of the Soviet public at the hands of the leviathan state, and he thus gives a good account of the question how the people lived—and suffered. Yet, in spite of the welcome new emphasis on social history, the coverage is relatively comprehensive, considering the scope of the book, on nearly the whole panoply of Soviet subjects. There are brief but reasonable accounts of foreign policy and cultural developments, and there is adequate description of such topics as Babi Yar, the Katyn Forest massacre, and the Warsaw uprising. The style of the book is narrative and descriptive, and this is one of its strengths. On the other hand, the selection of a narrative style of presentation (as of any other) necessarily entails some sacrifices, and what is sacrificed here is sufficient topical analysis to clarify fully the interplay of practical and ideological imperatives in three crucial policy decisions that made the Soviet regime what it is, i.e., War Communism, the New Economic Policy, and the first Five-Year Plan. (For this reason, it would be useful to accompany the book with Sheila Fitzpatrick's The Russian Revolution, 1917—1932 [1984], which deals analytically with those three decisions.) One other drawback is that the background of the revolution is treated too briefly to be comprehensible. The book is lucid and lively, engaging without being condescending or elementary." Reviewed by Robert Jackson, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)