The first history of the Soviet home front experience during World War II and of the civilians who bore the burden of total war and played a critical role in the global victory over fascism. After Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, German troops conquered the heartland of Soviet industry and agriculture and turned the occupied territories into mass killing fields. The country's survival hung in the balance. In Fortress Dark and Stern, Wendy Z. Goldman and Donald Filtzer tell the epic tale of the Soviet home front during World War II. Against the backdrop of the Red Army's early retreats and hard-fought advances after Stalingrad, they present the impact of total war behind the front lines in a chronicle of spirited defense efforts, draconian state directives, teeming black markets, official corruption, and selfless heroism. In one of the greatest wartime feats in history, Soviet workers rapidly evacuated factories, food, and people thousands of miles to the east. After long and dangerous journeys in unheated boxcars, they built a new industrial base beyond the reach of German bombers. As the Soviet state reached the height of its power, imposing military discipline and sending millions of people to work thousands of miles from home, ordinary people withstood starvation, epidemics, and horrific living conditions to supply the front and make the Allied victory possible This book examines the dark and painful war years from a new perspective, telling the stories of evacuees, refugees, teenaged and women workers, runaways from work, prisoners, and deportees. Based on a vast trove of new archival materials, Fortress Dark and Stern reveals a history of suffering, sacrifice, and ultimate triumph largely unknown to Western readers.

Donald Filtzer's new book is the study of industry and labor during Late Stalinism, covering the entire post-war period from 1945 to Stalin's death. He has uncovered a wealth of previously inaccessible archive material and analyzes it to show that the post-war period was one of "political victory and historical defeat". This subtle and compelling study will be of interest to all scholars of Russian history.

This is the first detailed study of the standard of living of ordinary Russians following World War II. It examines urban living conditions under the Stalinist regime with a focus on the key issues of sanitation, access to safe water supplies, personal hygiene and anti-epidemic controls, diet and nutrition, and infant mortality. Comparing five key industrial regions, it shows that living conditions still lagged some fifty years behind Western European norms. The book reveals that, despite this, the years preceding Stalin s death saw dramatic improvements in mortality rates thanks to the application of rigorous public health controls and Western medical innovations. While tracing these changes, the book also analyzes the impact that the absence of an adequate urban infrastructure had on people's daily lives and on the relationship between the Stalinist regime and the Russian people, and, finally, how the Soviet experience compared to that of earlier industrializing societies.

This volume brings together the latest work in Russian labour history, based on exciting materials from previously closed archives and collections. Sixteen essays, focusing on peasants and workers, explore the lives and struggles of working people. Ranging over a century of dramatic upheaval, from the late 1800s to the present, the essays are organized around three broad themes: workers' politics, incentives and coercion within industrial and rural workplaces, and household strategies. The volume explores the relationship between the peasantry and the working class, a nexus that has been central to state policy, oppositional politics, economic development, and household configuration. It profiles a working class rent by divisions and defined not only by its relationship to the workplace or the state, but also by its household strategies for daily survival. The essays explore many topics accessible for the first time, including the motivations of women workers, roots of revolutionary activism, the revolutionary movement outside the great cities, socialist opposition to the Soviet regime, reactions of workers to Stalinist terror, socialist tourism, peasant families in forced exile, and work discipline on the collective farms.

Soviet Workers and and the Collapse of Perestroika is a comprehensive analysis of the role of labour policy in the development and ultimate collapse of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Filtzer argues that initially perestroika was designed to modernize the Soviet economy while keeping the existing political and property relations of society intact, which required a thoroughgoing restructuring of the labour process within Soviet industry. When ultimately this policy failed, the regime in mid-1990 opted to move to a full-scale restoration of capitalism, a task which could not be fulfilled so long as the traditional work practices and work relations within industry remained unchanged. Filtzer argues that the collapse of the USSR has brought the solution to this problem no nearer, and that post-Soviet capitalism is rooted in corruption and speculation and cannot ensure long-term economic growth.

Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism is a study of labour and labour policy during the critical period of the Soviet Union's postwar recovery and the last years of Stalin. It is also a detailed social history of the Soviet Union in these years, for non-Russian readers. Using previously inaccessible archival sources, Donald Filtzer describes the tragic hardships faced by workers and their families right after the war; conditions in housing and health care; the special problems of young workers; working conditions within industry; and the tremendous strains which regime policy placed not just on the mass of the population, but on the cohesion and commitment of key institutions within the Stalinist political system, most notably the trade unions and the procuracy. Donald Filtzer's subtle and compelling book will interest all historians of the Soviet Union and of socialism.

This is the first comprehensive study of the position of Soviet industrial workers during the Khrushchev period. Donald Filtzer examines the main features of Khrushchev's labor policy within the overall context of "de-Stalinization" and provides a detailed analysis of shop floor relations between workers and managers, the position of women workers and their specific role in the Soviet economy. In his conclusions, the author relates the labor problems of the Khrushchev years to those faced by Mikhail Gorbachev and perestroika, thus helping to explain the failure of Gorbachev's policies.

Soviet Workers and the Collapse of Perestroika is a comprehensive analysis of the role of labor policy in the development and ultimate collapse of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Filtzer argues that initially perestroika was designed to modernize the Soviet economy while keeping the existing political and property relations of society intact, requiring a thorough restructuring of the labor process within Soviet industry. He contends that the collapse of the USSR has brought the solution to this problem no nearer, and that post-Soviet capitalism is rooted in corruption and speculation and cannot ensure long-term economic growth.

This is a detailed study of the position of Soviet industrial workers during the Khrushchev period. Dr Donald Filtzer examines the main features of labour policy, shop floor relations between workers and managers, the position of women workers and their specific role in the Soviet economy. Filtzer argues that the main concern of Khrushchev's labour policy was to remotivate an industrial population left demoralized by the Stalinist terror. This de-Stalinization had to be carried out without undermining the essential power and property relations on which the Stalinist system had been built. The author convincingly demonstrates how labour policy was thus limited to superficial gestures of liberalization and tinkering with incentive schemes. Rather than achieving any lasting effects, the Khrushchev period saw the consolidation of a long-term tendency towards economic stagnation. In his conclusions, Filtzer shows how the labour problems under Khrushchev were the same as those which confronted Mikhail Gorbachev and perestroika, thus helping to explain the failures of Gorbachev's policies.