Donald Raleigh's Soviet Baby Boomers traces the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of Russia into a modern; highly literate; urban society through the fascinating life stories of the country's first post-World War II; Cold War generation. For this book; Raleigh has interviewed sixty 1967 graduates of two "magnet" secondary schools that offered intensive instruction in English; one in Moscow and one in provincial Saratov. Part of the generation that began school the year the country launched Sputnik into space; they grew up during the Cold War; but in a Soviet Union increasingly distanced from the excesses of Stalinism. In this post-Stalin era; the Soviet leadership dismantled the Gulag; ruled without terror; promoted consumerism; and began to open itself to an outside world still fearful of Communism. Raleigh is one of the first scholars of post-1945 Soviet history to draw extensively on oral history; a particularly useful approach in studying a country where the boundaries between public and private life remained porous and the state sought to peer into every corner of people's lives. During and after the dissolution of the USSR; Russian citizens began openly talking about their past; trying to make sense of it; and Raleigh has made the most of this new forthrightness. He has created an extraordinarily rich composite narrative and embedded it in larger historical narratives of Cold War; de-Stalinization; "overtaking" America; opening up to the outside world; economic stagnation; dissent; emigration; the transition to a market economy; the transformation of class; ethnic; and gender relations; and globalization. Including rare photographs of daily life in Cold War Russia; Soviet Baby Boomers offers an intimate portrait of a generation that has remained largely faceless until now.
#175201 in Books 1992-11-12Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 5.00 x .40 x 7.50l; .37 #File Name: 0198780672144 pages
Review
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. ExcellentBy Jane PekI thoroughly recommend this. It manages to give a clear and insightful analysis of the politics of the Soviet Union in the given time period. Because it's a determinist view; it looks at broad factors - which groups held the powers of authority and coercion; the nature of Marxist/communist ideology - and hardly at the individual leaders. Lenin died with nary a whisper; and Stalin was rarely mentioned even throughout the chapter on the great purges - the focus; rather; was on the common people and the idea of all rules breaking down; such that there were no longer logical reasons for who was caught and denounced.It introduces; but doesn't go into detail about; a variety of viewpoints from various schools of thought - the West vs. contemporary Russian thinkers vs. past Russian politicians (Trotsky; Bukharin) - and highlights the fundamental problems with the Russian communist political ideology.How could a vanguard party guide and lead without controlling the apparatus? How could such a party maintain its purity if it was supposed to embrace all social groups? And if they believed; as Lenin and Krushchev did; that there was one common aim and only one right way of moving forward - who was to decide what it was? Also; if there was only one right way; by definition all opposition had to be wrong - and therefore unnecessary; which resulted in a dangerous lack of checks-and-balances within the system.4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. A nice summary of Soviet Politics.By Kevin M QuiggOne of my friends saw me reading this book; and stated that such a short book could not adequately cover Soviet politics. This book is the exception and McAuley points out the main themes of the politics of the Soviet Union. For those who want both a basic and advanced educaion on the Soviet political system; this is a nice book. McAuley breaks the Soviet period down into eight chapters and covers the stages of Soviet politics. The following were the basic stages: Revolution; State Building; Industrialization and Collectivization; Terror; Khrushchev and Party Rule; the Administrative-Command System under Brezhnev; and Perestroika and the End of Party Rule.I found this book a nice analysis of the Soviet Union's politics. It covered in few pages what other authors would convey in 500 pages. This is a nice concise analysis of the subject.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Short on words--long on contentBy Bob VAs Raygun pointed out...impossible to find a more concise history of the Soviet Period. Short on words long on content. There is a reason this book is still commanding $40+ new. A must for anyone seeking to understand the Soviet system.
