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Sheila Fitzpatrick teaches modern Russian history at the University of Chicago. A former President of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, and a co-editor of The Journal of Modern History, she is also the author of The Russian Revolution, Stalin's Peasants, and many other books and articles about Russia. She lives in Chicago.
Exploring the social history of Russia's urban areas in the 1930s, this impressive study shows how Stalin's introduction of collectivization and the first five-year plan utterly transformed the lives of the people. Here 'ordinary life' could never be ordinary. As peasants fled the collectivized villages, cities soon suffered acute lack of housing, while the abolition of the market led to shortage of food, clothing and all kinds of consumer goods. Citizens were forced to live in a world dominated by the secret police and waves of terror like the Great Purges of 1937, while at the same time trying to shop, travel, make entertainment, find jobs, marry and raise families. Modern history professor Fitzpatrick's extensive research includes work in the recently opened Soviet archives, and this poineering and accessible study of day-to-day life in an extraordinarily corrupt world is a major contribution to our understanding of the real history of Russia. (Kirkus UK)
