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Russia After the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945-1957
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Comments/Reviews
Description: The years of late Stalinism are one of the murkiest periods in Soviet history, best known to us through the voices of Ehrenburg, Khrushchev, and Solzhenitsyn. Now at last we have a sweeping history of Russia from the end of the war to the Thaw by one of Russia's most respected younger historians. Drawing on the resources of newly opened archives as well as the recent outpouring of published diaries and memoirs, Elena Zubkova presents a richly detailed portrayal of the basic conditions of people's lives in Soviet Russia from 1945 to 1957. She deftly brings out the dynamics of postwar popular expectations and the cultural stirrings set in motion by the wartime experience versus the regime's determination to reassert command over territories and populations as well as the mechanisms of repression. her interpretation of the period establishes the context for the liberalizing and reformist impulses that surfaced in the post-Stalin succession struggle, characterizing what would be the formative period for a future generation of leaders: Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and their contemporaries.
Selected Contents:
I. Strategies of Survival
1. The Social Psychology of the War
2. The Victory and the Victors
3. "How to Live after the War?" The Conflict of Expectation and Reality
4. The Hungry Years: The Famine of 1946-1947
5. The Currency Reform of 1947: The Views from Above and Below
II. The Illusion of Liberalization
6. The State and the Peasant: Village Antagonism to the Collective Farm
7. Religion and Politics: The Revival of Religious Belief
8. The Political Temper of the Masses, 1945-1948
9. "Something Must be Done": The Intelligentsia and the Intellectual Mavericks
III. Repression
10. "The Situation Doesn't Change": The Crisis of Postwar Expectations
11. The Birth of the Anti-Stalinist Youth Movement
12. The Struggle with Dissent
13. The Wave of Repression, 1949-1953
14. The Evolution of Public Opinion: "Whose Fault Is It?"
IV. The Thaw
15. Without Stalin: The New Public Atmosphere
16. The Repudiation of the GULAG
17. Turning to the Individual: The Paths from Above and Below
18. The Decision on the Cult of Personality and Its Social Impact
19. Public Opinion and the "Hungarian Syndrome"
Review(s): An important contribution to the small literature on the period from the Russian side. ... Essential for all large history collections. Library Journal
There is a wealth of information on Soviet social history here. ... Deserves to be read by students of modern European and Russian history at all levels and arguably constitutes the starting point for any substantive reexamination of the last half-century of Russian history. Choice
A slightly unusual and refreshing look at history, and of a period well worth further study. British East-West Journal
The author's research is excellent. Few other historians have managed to write a history of postwar Russia "from below" and from the perspective of the "public"...this excellent book will be read widely. It affords a glimpse into the minds of people who lived in Russia after the war and explains why reform was condemned to failure. American Historical Review
Zubkova has written an excellent book...Teachers of Russian history should consider assigning this book to their students. There is no other in existence that gives such a vivid sense of what life was like in the Soviet Union during this most depressing era. Canadian Journal of History
The period of late Stalinism may well be the most obscure, least researched, and least understood years of the entire Soviet era. Here is one of the first book-length attempts by a Russian scholar to produce a social history of it. What makes this study virtually unique is its effort to explore popular attitudes, mind-sets, and 'public opinion'. Slavic Review
The first in-depth account of the early post-war era, and the best analysis to date of the war's impact on both the regime and society as a whole...Zubkova makes an enormous contribution to our understanding of the everyday world of what she calls 'that elusive abstraction, the [Soviet] people'...Russia After the War will be an invaluable aid to historians of the Soviet Union as they turn their attention to the post-war era, begin to study the process by which Stalinism became something else, and search for the roots of the socialist system's eventual decline and collapse. H-Net Reviews
This book is based on a revised version of Elena Zubkova's pioneering study Obshcheshtvo i reformy (1993), one of the first attempts to evaluate the impact of the war on Russian society and social psychology. It is excellent that this has now been translated and made available to the wider audience that it deserves...A short review cannot do justice to the wealth of empirical material assembled in this vivid, fascinating book. Zubkova's focus on social psychology and mass political attitudes is to be recommended, for it is surely these which are crucial to explaining both the potential for, and also the obstacles to, reforming the USSR. The Russian Review
The first in-depth account of the early post-war era, and the best analysis to date of the war's impact on both the regime and society as a whole. H-Net Reviews
This is a genuinely pioneering study, which sets an agenda for future research and for future approaches to the period. As such, it is a valuable addition to the English-language historical literature on Stalinism. Europe-Asia Studies
It is the first account of postwar Soviet society available in English and will be an invaluable source for historians and students irrespective of their field of specialization. ...Some of the source material is truly breathtaking and offers an unprecedented insight into popular attitudes and reactions during the last years of Stalin's rule. Journal of Modern History
    
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