This is a glorious bitter sweet homage to the tragi-comedy that was so much a part of the Soviet Union. From one of its enemies we find heartfelt sentiment of beauty and kindness of a life lived intertwined with the fate of that civilization.

Schlögel argues that over its sixty-eight years of existence, the Soviet Union did succeed in its goal of creating a “new Soviet person” ( novy sovetsky chelovek ). But, as he puts it,Spears’ vulnerability shines through as she describes her painful journey from vulnerable girl to empowered woman. The Soviet Union is gone, but its ghostly traces remain, not least in the material vestiges left behind in its turbulent wake. What was it really like to live in the USSR? What did it look, feel, smell, and sound like? In The Soviet Century, Karl Schloegel, one of the world's leading historians of the Soviet Union, presents a spellbinding epic that brings to life the everyday world of a unique lost civilization. Even here, the enormous human toll involved in Soviet modernization should not, Schlögel suggests, be seen in isolation. Of the 250,000 people, most of them prisoners, 1 involved in building the 227-kilometer White Sea Canal, around 12,800 are confirmed to have died in the process. Even if the actual number is higher, as it probably is, it is hardly extraordinary when set against the 28,000 people who died in the construction of the 80-kilometer Panama Canal (or the 20,000 who had died in an earlier, failed French attempt to build it), or the tens of thousands killed digging the Suez Canal. Schlögel does not push the point this far, but it is worth noting that slave labor in mines and building projects, forced starvation of millions through food requisitions, and the destruction of traditional lifeworlds were all central features of the colonial projects that underwrote the building of modernity in the U.S. and Western Europe. To see the mass death caused by Soviet policies in the first decades of Communist rule in a global light—alongside the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the genocide of Indigenous peoples in Africa and the Americas, and the great famines in South Asia—is to see it not as the inevitable consequence of socialist utopianism, but of rapid modernization undertaken without concern for human life. Perhaps what makes the crimes of the Soviet Union so difficult for those of us raised in the West to comprehend is the egalitarianism with which they were carried out. As each rose to a position of global economic, political, and military predominance, the British Empire and the United States divided the world into “white” people, who had certain inalienable rights, and “colored” people who did not. The USSR, rising later and faster, made no such distinctions. An Old Bolshevik who had served the revolution for decades was just as likely to end their life freezing on the taiga as a Russian aristocrat or a Kazakh peasant. A work of deep scholarship and significant breadth about a relatively brief period of recent history when it seemed that there might be an alternative economic system to capitalism."—Joseph Brady, Society

Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? Fiecare capitol e o călătorie fascinantă: poliție secretă, artă, revoluție, mega șantiere (Magnitogorsk și altele) închisori/gropi comune, natură schimbată/modelată/distrusă fără limite, inginerie de vârf cu prețul a mii de vieți, educația foștilor țărani mutați forțat în orașe muncitorești/industriale, cum erau locuințele, prietenia cu americanii în primii ani staliniști când au avut nevoie de ingineri/tehnică/educație, cum se trăia în orașele create artificial cu popi, hoți, prostituate, intelectuali și criminali condamnați la muncă silnică, cum se mânca și primele cărți care i-au învățat un minim de civilizație, cum au trecut de la refolosit sticla și hârtia maro de împachetat la a arunca peste tot gunoi și plastic…sărmanele păduri, râuri, lacuri🥲*inclusiv în orașe aveau gropi cu deșeuri nucleare…cum pe rând toți care deveneau “elite” și torționari temporari cădeau după o perioadă și-și găseau sfârșitul în urma unor procese ridicole🤦🏻‍♀️ Pragmatism and passion were certainly present in the development of the USSR, but they were not the only inputs. Perhaps the crucial factor was the almost limitless cheap labor supplied by impoverished peasants driven off their land, petty criminals, and political undesirables who could be press-ganged into service as part of their “reeducation.” This labor served two purposes. The first was to do the actual work of building blast furnaces and digging canals. The second was to produce the gold used to pay for American technology and expertise, either by growing grain sold on global markets, or by entering the mines of the Kolyma gold fields. Between 1932 and 1937, the output of the Dalstroy mine went from 511 kilograms of gold to 51.5 tons. The price of this astonishing growth was paid by the bodies of the prisoners, of whom there were 163,000 by the end of the decade. The writer Varlam Shalamov, Schlögel’s guide through this frozen Malebolge, explains it this way: A superb blend of social history and material culture, essential for students of 20th-century geopolitics. The area of central Moscow – within walking distance of the Kremlin – housed all key Soviet institutions responsible for foreign policy decision making. These included the headquarters of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the villa of the Soviet Solidarity Committee.The main strength of 'The Soviet Century' is that it covers countless seemingly insignificant aspects of Soviet life that nevertheless speak volumes: from cookbooks and new 'red calendars' to perfumes, prison tattoos and Beriozka hard-currency stores, from which ordinary Soviet citizens were barred. (I was the first Soviet journalist to expose such shops when I was reporting for Krokodil magazine in the late 1980s). Its like reading the works of a Roman author, like Juvenal or Tacitus, decrying the follies and crimes of an Empire they so are extricable a part of. The criticism and cynicism in the dissident view of the Soviet Union, within the Soviet Union was also one of the great achievements of the Soviet Union. THE SOVIET CENTURY IS AN ECLECTIC BOOK, and its eclecticism is as often a weakness as a strength. But for all its digressions, it is not without a central thesis. Schlögel makes the argument that the Soviet Union is best understood not primarily as the manifestation of rigid Communist ideology, but as an attempt to transform an agrarian peasant society into a fully modern state. “A ‘Marxist theory,’” he writes, “yields very little for an understanding of the processes of change in postrevolutionary Russia. We get somewhat nearer the mark if we explore the scene of a modernization without modernity and of a grandiose civilizing process powered by forces that were anything but civil.” In other words, the interminable debates about whether Lenin was the St. Paul of communism or its Judas Iscariot are beside the point: As a Marxist might put it, the history of the Soviet Union is best explained by material conditions. The Soviet Union is gone, but its ghostly traces remain, not least in the material vestiges left behind in its turbulent wake. What was it really like to live in the USSR? What did it look, feel, smell, and sound like? In The Soviet Century, Karl Schlögel, one of the world’s leading historians of the Soviet Union, presents a spellbinding epic that brings to life the everyday world of a unique lost civilization. The ethnic diversity of the USSR was a fundamental aspect of the lifeworlds of millions of Soviet citizens, and yet Schlögel barely mentions it. Nor does he provide much of an account of the USSR’s policy toward religions beyond Christianity. It is hard to gain precise figures, but some estimates suggest that by the time of the 1979 census, as many as one in six Soviet citizens was Muslim, and yet The Soviet Century mentions the words “Muslim” and “Islam” a combined total of six times. His chapter on “the country beyond the big cities” is about the depopulation of the villages and the categorical failure of Soviet agriculture—a central topic in Soviet history, and one that deserves more space than he gives it—but it does not mention that the countryside in many parts of the USSR was also overwhelmingly non-Russian. As is often the case with books about the Soviet Union, it takes life in Moscow and Leningrad to be representative of the whole. But as my friends in Mari El used to say, “Moscow is another country.”

Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil. The Soviet Century is a great monument to the vanished Soviet world. Rich, witty, and entertaining, the book offers a comprehensive textual museum that is all the more important because no such real-life museum exists in Russia or elsewhere, and I doubt that it will be created anytime soon. The more difficult it is to go to the White Sea Canal, the Lenin Mausoleum, or a Russian dacha, the more enjoyable is this book.”—Alexander Etkind, Central European University A museum of—and travel guide to—the Soviet past, The Soviet Century explores in evocative detail both the largest and smallest aspects of life in the USSR, from the Gulag, the planned economy, the railway system, and the steel city of Magnitogorsk to cookbooks, military medals, prison camp tattoos, and the ubiquitous perfume Red Moscow. The book examines iconic aspects of Soviet life, including long queues outside shops, cramped communal apartments, parades, and the Lenin mausoleum, as well as less famous but important parts of the USSR, including the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, the voice of Radio Moscow, graffiti, and even the typical toilet, which became a pervasive social and cultural topic. Throughout, the book shows how Soviet life simultaneously combined utopian fantasies, humdrum routine, and a pervasive terror symbolized by the Lubyanka, then as now the headquarters of the secret police. I was excited to read this book because I love learning about life in the Soviet Union. I think it was a fascinating period of modern history that is often portrayed with caricatures and the premise of this book felt novel to me: approach the Soviet Union like a fallen civilization, and explore different facets of life within it to show what everyday life was like for normal citizens.Whole societies do not collapse because of differences of opinion or true or false guidelines or even the decisions of party bosses. They perish when they are utterly exhausted and human beings can go on living only if they cast off or destroy the conditions that are killing them. But I often forget that the richness of Russian culture doesn’t end when Khrushchev took over, and especially now that Soviet Russia is dead (in a way) and its archives are open (in a way), it’s the perfect opportunity for a skilled historian to offer some perspective on that era. That’s where Karl Schlogel’s Soviet Century: An Archeology of a Lost World comes in. Karl Schlögel provides us with a literary masterpiece of nostalgia, not only for lost civilization but also for his own life that was so intertwined in its decline. As a historian Schlögel was enmeshed in the world of the dissident history of the Soviet Union, and he was as much a part of that world he was a critique of.