TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 539 Raymond G. Stokes of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has woven a fascinating tapestry of the variegated threads that made up postwar German industry. Each zone is taken in turn, as Stokes analyzes America’s compulsion with decentralization, Britain’s embrace of business-as-usual, and France’s “sacred task” to safeguard against future German aggression. The pages bristle with data. Once estab lished, the three I. G. successor groups return to world competitive ness. Stokes takes the reader through three stages of recovery, from 1947 to 1951, in a masterful comparative study of German industries reminiscent of the pathbreaking work of Jurgen Kocka, Hans Pohl, and, more recently, Wilfred Feldenkirchen. The book is elegantly written, though sometimes to the point of obfuscation, and several areas, such as I. G.’s wartime participation in the Nazi horrors or the effects of America’s magnificent Marshall Plan on Germany’s eco nomic miracle, are left unclear or are dealt with in passing. Despite these minor complaints (including the book’s exorbitant price), Stokes’s Divide and Prosper is a detailed and significant study of the development of I. G. Farben’s successors and an illumination of modern German business history. In the end, it is also an examination of national prejudices and policies, and the ability of I. G. Farben, which has prospered under kaiser and ftihrer, to survive them all. Arnold Krammer Dr. Krammer, professor of history at Texas A&M University, is the author of several books and numerous articles on modern German history. He is a past contributor to Technology and Culture in the areas of synthetic fuel development and the German fuel industry. Stalin’s Industrial Revolution: Politics and Workers, 1928—1932. By Hiroaki Kuromiya. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Pp. xviii + 364; illustrations, notes, appendix, bibliography, index. $44.50. Bolshevism swept away the old in Russia with little conception of how to create the new. Debate over the future social order was ended by the victory of Stalin, who initiated the impossible targets of the First FiveYear Plan (FFYP) (1928—32) and the disaster of forced collectivization. Hiroaki Kuromiya’s account of the vast transformation of industrial life under the FFYP is richly documented and well argued. It responsibly reflects the manifold complexity of the period, which included unrealizable targets, draconian yet unenforceable legisla tion, inconsistent and imperfect implementation of policies, and the chaos of a society in turmoil. The period produced fundamental features of Soviet political economy that have survived to this day, including the paradox between the massive apparatuses of control and citizens’ avoidance of their directives. 540 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Kuromiya argues that Stalin sought to mobilize the population by presenting the industrialization drive as class war. As deteriorating living standards, “dilution” of the labor force, and “deskilling” of the labor process ended the former empathy between the leadership and the skilled workers, the attack on perceived enemies was made all the more attractive to the former. The FFYP was supported, he argues convincingly, by those frequently younger workers, party members, and others who had become “ideologically, emotionally, and perhaps also materially” dissatisfied with the earlier New Economic Policy (p. 135). By the summer of 1930 there was an economic crisis in which output in some industries actually fell, encouraging Stalin’s use of the police to remove alleged enemies from administration of the econ omy. The leadership contained working-class discontent by prioritiz ing workers’ receipt of foodstuffs and, Kuromiya argues, directing their discontent at “enemies” in the distribution network. In 1931, the leadership sought to correct the dysfunctional aspects of the newly created economy. But it was the “class-war ideology” that, though it split the nation, enabled Stalin to harness the support of “particular political constituencies, the Communists, Komsomols, and industrial workers by pitting them against the alleged class enemies” and “created a basis for the survival of the regime” (p. 316). The work is admirably supported by a wide range of published, mainly Soviet, sources from the period: the bibliography lists nineteen newspapers and seventy-sixjournals plus a plethora of other sources. The nuggets of gold from within the dross of all of them...