---
product_id: 12512825
title: "Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s"
brand: "sheila fitzpatrick"
price: "222 zł"
currency: PLN
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 7
url: https://www.desertcart.pl/products/12512825-everyday-stalinism-ordinary-life-in-extraordinary-times-soviet-russia-in
store_origin: PL
region: Poland
---

# Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s

**Brand:** sheila fitzpatrick
**Price:** 222 zł
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

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- **What is this?** Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s by sheila fitzpatrick
- **How much does it cost?** 222 zł with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
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Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s

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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    A bit dated, but it is a good introduction to 1930s Russia
  

*by D***R on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 22, 2022*

In this informative survey of the Soviet Union in the 1930s, Sheila Fitzpatrick outlines a tale of struggle, hardship, and occasional triumph of the Soviet people in their everyday lives. This was an era of a growing and industrializing society full of its problems and accomplishments, and how its citizens had dealt with their lives in a decade that started with collectivization and ended with the winding down of the Terror and war scares. Fitzpatrick clarifies that this is a study about urban lives during the 1930s (she already covered rural lives in an earlier book). She defines ordinary lives for the Soviet context as shopping, travelling, celebrating, telling jokes, finding an apartment, getting an education, securing a job, advancing in one’s career, cultivating patrons and connections, marrying and raising children, writing complaints and denunciations, voting, and avoiding any contacts with the secret police. It sounds mundane for us in our contemporary lives, but for the industrializing Soviet society in the 1930s, it was usually an adventure remembered for better or worse. Consumer goods (with the occasional exception of food after the 1932-1933 famine) and housing were usually in short supply. Average citizens would live in crowded barracks, apartments, and dormitories either waiting to find bigger housing space or getting along with their neighbors. The citizens (especially the well-off) would attempt to make connections with Communist Party and government officials in order to improve their material conditions. Fitzpatrick does clearly outline that these times certainly were not a walk in the park, often times even difficult, however those were also times of great improvement for the Soviet people. Education was much easier (and free!) to access for the entire population (assuming that there is either space or availability where one citizen lives), greater access of cultural activities and leisure time never before in Russian history, and women were finally able to leave their old patriarchal lives and work or pursue a career they desired (despite reinforcement of Soviet family values and sexist values that no amount of government laws and decrees could eliminate). Everyday Stalinism uses both primary and secondary resources to outline the history of the 1930s Soviet Union. Primary sources range from the Soviet Archives (secret police files on public opinion was widely used), memoirs of people who lived during that time (many of which came from the Harvard Project), and from newspapers and articles from that time. Secondary sources were used to fill in the gaps provided (those sources were from studies from other scholars who focused on a specific aspect of the 1930s Soviet Union). This gives the book much credibility to the reader, although it has started to show its age. Part of Fitzpatrick’s thesis was that the general quality of life usually went worse in certain years of the decade, and public opinion, jokes, and quips from Soviet workers can attest to that. However, as Robert C. Allen reveals in his superb study of the Soviet economy Farm to Factory, Soviet life overall in the 1930s massively improved when compared to the tsarist era and the NEP period (the 1920s). Fitzpatrick does acknowledge that fact in her later studies if my knowledge is correct, some update in Everyday Stalinism can be useful. Fitzpatrick’s book is very useful when getting a general understanding of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. It does not go into exact detail of every aspect of that time period, but it points in the right direction for history students, scholars, and readers. It can be overwhelming at times, but it is certainly a good read.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Explains How Russia Survived Stalinism
  

*by G***3 on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 16, 2008*

After years of reading about Stalin and the repressive, impoverished terror state he created, I was always baffled how any society could survive such upheaval, repression and suffering, and even meet its greatest test, the German invasion of the USSR, and triumph over it.Sheila Fitzpatrick answers my question, in this fine book, showing how the average urban citizen of the USSR confronted the almost unbelievable difficulties of life in that country under its megalomaniacal dictator.It first must be understood that Stalin was a genius in knowing how to crush a country's population without leading to a revolt or total collapse into apathy.  For example, it is mistakenly believed that all expressions of dissatisfaction with the regime were ruthless punished. While it is true that any criticism of Stalin was dealt with in a most harsh manner, the citizenry was actually encouraged to complain about corrupt or inefficient minor officials and functionaries.  Satirical publications like Krokodil would print cartoons lampooning corruption and inefficiency in Soviet society.  Citizens could write letters to high officials with complaints about bad treatment they had received from bureacrats and officials (this doesn't mean, however, that anything would be done about the complaint). Fitzpatrick includes examples of these cartoons in the book.  The government realized that this was a good way to have the population let off steam without pushing them towards revolt.Another important point Fitzpatrick makes is that the regime saw to it that a few members of the peasantry or working class would be given rewards for being super-productive (the Stakhanovites) and would become entitled to receive extra food or consumer goods not available to the general public.  This made everyone else think that may, they too, might some day have the chance to move up in society. Fitzpatrick also describes at length how "blat" (connections) gave some average people who had contact with priviledged members of society the ability to get extra "goodies" such as consumer goods, entrance to good schools, etc.  Thus, many people felt that they were somehow "benefitting" from the system and it was in their interest to support it.  Massive propaganda campaigns were also mounted showing statistics claiming that things were supposedly getting better and that in the near future, there would be a marked improvement in the standard of living ("just a little more sacrifice and paradise will be just around the corner").  Fitzpatrick points out that the regime generally opposed implementing a system of rationing, because rationing is an open admission that an item is in short supply, whereas abolishing rationing and instead having everyone stand in long lines to obtain the item leads people to think that the shortage is local or temporary.Of course, the question still remains how millions of people could be carted off to the GULAG in Siberia or shot without the people rising up against this. The answer is that people in different social groups in society had little contact with those outside the group and there was a general indifference about what happened to people in those other groups. Stalin was careful not to purge all sectors of society at one time.  First he started with the peasants during the collectivization campaign in the early 1930's, where he eliminated millions of "Kulaks".  He also went after the urban workers in the "Five Year" Plan campaign that started in 1929.  By the mid-1930's, he had eased up on them, and then turned on the intelligentsia and Communist Party members.  After them, he went after the military.  Fitzpatrick quotes people from that period who actually thought the purge of the intelligentsia was a good thing because workers saw that arrogant bosses and managers were being elminated.  Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a student at the time and he commented that most students didn't care what happened to their professors...it might mean they wouldn't have to take a difficult exam if their teacher disappeared one day.  After purging the intelligentsia, Stalin turned back on the workers and instituted draconian punishments on people who were more than 20 minutes late to work (too bad if there wasn't room on the streetcar-that is no excuse!).One colorful point Fitzpatrick makes is that during Stalin's time, people stopped giving their children traditional Russian names which were associated with the Church and peasantry such as Trofim and Marfa, and instead tended to give "higher-class" names often taken from 19th century Russian literature such as Anatoly, Gennadi, Yevgeny, Svetlana and the such.  Enthusiastic Communist Party members would invent names such as MELSOR (for "Marx, Engels,Lenin, Stalin, October Revolution"), Ninel ("Lenin" spelled backwards), or Vladlen (contraction of "Vladimir Lenin"- a friend of mine born in the USSR has a brother-in-law with that name).This book is highly recommended for anyone interested in this horrific part of history.  The most important thing to remember is the final line of the book - the Soviet citizen under Stalin is best understood as a survivor.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    The Survivors and the Condemned
  

*by G***R on Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 9, 2017*

In 1929 the economies of the capitalist world crashed. In the same year the First Five Year Plan  pushed the USSR to extraordinary growth. By 1936 Hitler crushed democracy and passed the Nuremberg Laws, in that year Stalin delivered a new Constitution, guaranteeing rights of dissent and religious freedom. Many on the left enthused about this great experiment in socialism, perhaps no longer an experiment, but actually working.They were wrong of course. The 1930s were bleak for citizens of the Soviet Union. Here we read their testimony. She takes her evidence from diaries and letters, to interviews, to memories.  The focus is on the urban experience and on everyday life,  everyday life in extraordinary times.We begin in 1929, when private trading was criminalized. Shops and stalls, merchants and traders vanished – as did the goods and services they had purveyed. Scarcity became the central fact of life.Lives were also lived in fear. The Soviet regime was exceptionally punitive in its approach to control. The book ends with a climax of terror, the Great Purges.But that was not the whole story. Through education the system offered opportunity. People from poor backgrounds had increased life chances. There were millions of new and challenging jobs. It was a very mobile society. Enthusiasm for modernization was high among young people, hardship accepted as the price for the cause. The regime managed to represent the nation, as shown in the Great Patriotic War. Beyond that in day-to-day living people negotiated their way through bureaucratic incompetence and shortages. They got by, they survived. Connections and contacts – so-called blat – kept the wheels turning. There were as many ways to avoid the NKVD as to get a bigger room for your family or shoes for your children.But many were outcast and persecuted and everyone had to be careful. Loss of job, eviction from your home, exile, prison and ultimately execution – all might follow from an argument with a neighbour, who then denounced you to the secret police.It is not easy to categorize this state. “a peculiar hybrid”. She invokes  analogies – a prison [of course], a conscript army, a boarding school and even a soup kitchen. Soviet citizens too were many kinds of people – “ a string-puller, an operator, a mouther of slogans..But above all ,a survivor”. Of course, not all survived.

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*Last updated: 2026-01-26*