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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Socialism & left-of-centre democratic ideologies
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Steeltown U. S. S. R. (Paperback, Revised)
Loot Price: R1,104
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Steeltown U. S. S. R. (Paperback, Revised)
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No one, not even Mikhail Gorbachev, anticipated what was in store
when the Soviet Union embarked in the 1980s on a radical course of
long-overdue structural reform. The consequences of that momentous
decision, which set in motion a transformation eventually affecting
the entire postwar world order, are here chronicled from inside a
previously forbidden Soviet city, Magnitogorsk. Built under Stalin
and championed by him as a showcase of socialism, the city remained
closed to Western scrutiny until four years ago, when Stephen
Kotkin became the first American to live there in nearly half a
century.
An uncommonly perceptive observer, a gifted writer, and a
first-rate social scientist, Kotkin offers the reader an
unsurpassed portrait of daily life in the Gorbachev era. From the
formation of "informal" political groups to the start-up of
fledgling businesses in the new cooperative sector, from the
no-holds-barred investigative reporting of a former Communist party
mouthpiece to a freewheeling multicandidate election campaign, the
author conveys the texture of contemporary Soviet society in the
throes of an upheaval not seen since the 1930s.
Magnitogorsk, a planned "garden city" in the Ural Mountains, serves
as Kotkin's laboratory for observing the revolutionary changes
occurring in the Soviet Union today. Dominated by a
self-perpetuating Communist party machine, choked by industrial
pollution, and haunted by a suppressed past, this once-proud city
now faces an uncertain future, as do the more than one thousand
other industrial cities throughout the Soviet Union.
Kotkin made his remarkable first visit in 1987 and returned in
1989. On both occasions, steelworkers and schoolteachers, bus
drivers and housewives, intellectuals and former victims of
oppression--all willingly stepped forward to voice long-suppressed
grievances and aspirations. Their words animate this moving
narrative, the first to examine the impact and contradictions of
"perestroika" in a single community. Like no other Soviet city,
Magnitogorsk provides a window onto the desperate struggle to
overcome the heavy burden of Stalin's legacy.
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