The Stalin Era by Philip s> Boobbyer (review)

Abstract

364 SEER, 8o, 2, 2002 ritual.Later,the movementwas radicalizedand turnedagainstthe Social Democrats.The two phasesare distinctlyseparatefrom each other.The radicalized movementalsoresortedto violence,whichreducedthesphereof itssupport. AtfirsteventheSocialDemocratshadbeenmerelylukewarm or formally criticaloftheclosures. Yetalongwiththegrowingviolencenotonly the bourgeoiscentre,but even the majorityof the supporters of the rightist parties,leftthemovement. Afterclosure,thehallsweremostlysoldinauctions.Inthegreatest number oftheestablished casesthenewproprietors wereSocialDemocratic organizations (8I cases).TheCivilGuard(suojeluskunnat), othernon-socialist organizationsandvariousprivatepersonsalsobecamenewlandlords in manycases. Quiteoftenthenewproprietor remainsunknown. Theauthorofthispieceof scrupulous researchhasbeen ablealsoto givesomeinteresting information aboutthe geographical andorganizational aspectsof the Lapuamovement. This is perhapsstillnot the finalnailin the construction of studiesintothe crisisofdemocracy inFinland, butitisanimpressive addition andcomplement totheconsiderable corpusofstudytodate. Renvall Institute TIMO VIHAVAINEN University ofHelsinki Boobbyer, Philip. TheStalinEra. Routledge Studies in History. Routledge, London and New York,2000. XX + 250 pp. Bibliography.Index. fI4.99 (paperback). WRITING about Stalinism has exploded over the last decade thanks to the conjuncture of newly-available archives in the defunct Soviet Union and history'sawakeninginterestin culturaland social theory.New scholarshiphas therefore been able to grafttheory on to rich new archival sources so that as Sheila Fitzpatrick,the doyenne of Staliniststudies,writesin herNewDirections inStalinism (London and New York,2000), 'the absorptionof vast amounts of new data was accompanied from the firstby active effortsat reconceptualization ' (p. i). Much of today'sresearchfocuses on the theme of subjectivity that is, how mentalities were constructed under Stalinism, and Philip Boobbyer's new book juxtaposes some of this new scholarship with the standard interpretations, such as Stalinism as 'revolution from above'. Boobbyer has produced an eclectic collection of primarysources,woven -as is the styleof Routledge's Studiesin History series into a singlenarrative. The chapters are thematic and include subjects such as 'The Family', 'Religion:the Russian Orthodox Church', 'Educationand Science', and 'The Artist and the State' alongside the standardcollectivization-industrializationterror -WorldWar II narrative. Most chapters follow their theme from the startof the FirstFiveYearPlanthroughto the post-waryears, so that thepostwar period is integrated into the full narrative of Stalinism a refreshing departure from the usual practice of separating 'late' Stalinism from its prewar incarnation.In addition to well-knownofficialdocuments such as Stalin's 'Dizzy with Success' article or the transcript of Bukharin's trial, the book includes the private and subjective reflections of Stalinism in memoir and REVIEWS 365 diarysources, as well as artefactsfrom the Stalinistculturalrepertoiresuch as poetry, photographs,paintings, and (slightlygrainy)stillshotsfromfilms. The choice of what to include in this book cannot have been easy, but for the most part it has been judicious. Only a few extracts seem misplaced:the inclusion of a definitionof 'Zek'and 'Zechka'from a dictionaryof slangseems ratherpointless, as Boobbyer gives no indication of how widespreadis the use of this slang. However, it is refreshingto see the choice of VarlamShalamov's KolymaTalesrather than Alexander Solzhenitsyn's OneDay in theLifeof Ivan Denisovich to representprison camp literature.Very occasionally, Boobbyer's own expertise as an intellectual historian has caused him to include an odd selection, such as the 'LiteraryCalendar' for I937 (pp. I66-67), the contents of which need lengthy explanation and contextualization for someone less versed than he in European cultural history. (The 'Calendar' also seems misplaced in the chapter on 'The Family'ratherthan the one on 'Education and Science'). These minorpoints aside, TheStalinErawillbe usefulforhistory students both for its breadth of extracts from primary sources and for its surveyof the secondaryliterature. Boobbyer's final chapter, 'The Problem of Ends and Means', tackles the difficult subject of conscience, and loss of conscience, in Stalinist society. Here, he cites recent work on the 'Stalinist subject' by scholars likeJochen Hellbeck ('The Diary of Stepan Podlubnyi, 1931-1939', Jahrbucher fur Geschichte Osteuropas, 44:4, I996) to explain how it might have been possible for ordinary people to accept the Terror. Unfortunately, however, he has not applied these insights to the documents cited in earlier chapters, such as the 'Enthusiasm for Stalin' expressed in Galina Shtange's diary (pp. II5-I6), 'Bukharin'sLetter to Stalin' (pp. 69-70), or the 'Letter'from the wife of the best locomotive driver in the Magnitogorsk factory to the wife of the worst (pp. 59-60). Had the authors of these documents (which were intended for both private and public consumption) learned to 'speak Bolshevik'(Stephen Kotkin's term, cited p. 59) solely in order to abide by 'the rules of the game' (Kotkin...