Mark B Smith: Exit Stalin, Gebunden

Klappentext

In the aftermath of Joseph Stalin's ironfisted rule, the Soviet Union was at a crossroads. Would it break from the dictator's brutal regime or continue the campaign of violence and fear? As historian Mark B. Smith shows in Exit Stalin , the answer was both. Smith tells the story of the Soviet Union from Gagarin to Gorbachev, shedding light on how a moderated ideology of Bolshevism and the practices of central planning played out in the everyday lives of Soviet citizens. As he reveals, the Soviet world encompassed a host of contradictions, featuring nomenklatura restaurants, children's Pioneer camps, May Day parades, and collective farms alongside corruption scandals, KGB crackdowns, espionage, and censorship. The result was the emergence of a distinctive and functioning civilization, a far cry from the vicious totalitarian state of the West's imagination. A brilliantly original narrative of everyday life in the late Soviet Union, Exit Stalin also presents a new account of its end, showing how a series of unexpected decisions unraveled the entire project.