Copyright © 1999 by Hugo S. Cunningham
A few of these books were brought to our attention through the comrades at Beverly Hills rayon Party Center for Preservation of Documents and other Historical Material (BevGorRaiKom TsXDiDIM)
Index
Jeanne Vronskaya and Vladimir Chuguev, "Kto Est' Kto v Rossii i Byvshem SSSR" ("Who's Who in Russia and the Former USSR"), "Terra," Moscow, 1994.
I believe the same book is available in English.
Donald Filtzer, Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization: The Formation of Modern Soviet Production Relations 1928-1941, Pluto Press, London, 1986; cloth, 338 pp.
An excellently documented analysis of Stalin's campaign to cut wages and degrade the living conditions of industrial workers, and of how they adapted. Explains how shoddy production was workers' inevitable response to the unrealistic speed-up of the Five Year Plans, and why huge Stalinist production gains tend to disappear when evaluated for quality.
The author, possibly of Left-wing Anarchist sympathies, wrote favorably of Russia's 1917 Communist revolution, but considers Stalinism a betrayal of that revolution.
Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times, Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1999; cloth, 288 pp.
The author has some "revisionist" background, but lines between anti-Stalin scholars and "revisionists" have in some cases grown blurred in the late 1990s. This is not a pro-Stalin book.
It has footnotes that lead to many interesting sources.
Victor A. Kravchenko (with Eugene Lyons), I Chose Freedom: The Personal and Political Life of a Soviet Official, Garden City Publishing Co (Charles Scribners Sons), Garden City NY, 1946 (Reprinted in 1988, it is currently available from Transaction Publishers). [Kravchenko]
Excellent first-hand account of Collectivization (pp. 91-131) by a low-ranking official, of Stalinist purges (pp. 132-147, 206-277) by a low-to-mid-ranking target, and of Stalinist degradation of industrial workers.
The pro-Stalin Left denounced and threatened defector Kravchenko when this book came out in 1946, but every major point in dispute would later be shown to be true.
Nikolai Krementsov, Stalinist Science, Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ, 1997; cloth, 371 pp. [Krementsov]
A somewhat revisionist view, pointing out that, apart from the egregious example of T.D. Lysenko vs. genetics, various Soviet scientific establishments were largely able to get their own way behind a screen of politically-correct verbiage. Written for a scholarly audience.
I intend to mine his Appendix A ("Stalinist Scientific 'Newspeak': A Glossary," pp. 293-299) for some additions to my own glossary of Soviet insults
Nadezhda Mandelshtam, Hope Against Hope: A Memoir (translated from the Russian by Max Hayward), Atheneum, New York, 1970; pp. 322-325 [Mandelstam]
Mandelstam describes the last four years of her husband, poet Osip Mandelstam, before his arrest (1938) and death.
Edvard Radzinsky, Stalin (translated by H.T. Willets), Doubleday (Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.), 1540 Broadway New York NY 10036, 1996; pp. 430-432. [Radzinsky]
Yakov Rapoport, The Doctors' Plot of 1953 (translated by N.A. Perova and R.S. Bobrova), Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1991.
Dr. Rapoport had been arrested as one of the "killer doctors" on 3 Feb 1953. His book is partly a personal account, but mostly a broader study. [Rapoport]
Harold Swayze, Political Control of Literature in the USSR, 1946-1959, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1962; cloth, 301 pp. [Swayze]
Arkadij Vaksberg, Stalin Protiv Evreev: Sekrety Strashnoj E^poxi, Liberty Publishing House, New York, 1995; paper, 416 pp.
J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning editors, Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, Cambridge University Press, 1993. [Getty & Manning]
V.A. Kovalev, Dva Stalinskix Narkoma ("Two Stalinist Commissars"), Izdatel'skaya Gruppa "Progress," Moscow, 1995. [Kovalev]
A dual biography of OGPU-NKVD chiefs Genrikh Grigor'evich Yagoda (1934-36) and N.I. Ezhov (1936-38)
Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism (Revised and expanded edition edited and translated by George Shriver), Columbia University Press, New York, 1989; pp. 358-361. [Medvedev]
Though not officially approved, Medvedev was allowed to conduct research in the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s, gathering statements from many people (including senior party officials) who would no longer be around in the "Glasnost'" 1990s.
Vadim Zakharovich Rogovin; 1937: Stalin's
Year of Terror; Mehring Books Inc., 25900 Greenfield Road, Oak Park MI 48237; 1998. [Rogovin]
A Trotskyite, Rogovin takes the unusual view that there really was an effective Trotskyite opposition in 1936-38, and that, by Stalinist standards, the 1936-38 purge was needed to maintain Stalinist control. Most historians scoff at the notion, considering that by 1936, the exiled Trotsky was hopelessly out of touch with the USSR and his former followers were atomized and intimidated.
Arkadij Vaksberg, Carica Dokazatel'stv: Vyshinskij i ego Zhertvy, AO«Kniga i Biznes», Moskva, 1992; paper, 350 pp plus 16 pp. of photos.
Overall Soviet History