Stalinist Russia Grad Class Papers #3

Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s

Sheila Fitzpatrick 

Paperback: 304 pages

Published: 1999

ISBN-10: 0195050002

Sheila Fitzpatrick’s Everyday Stalinism is an all-encompassing account of urban every day life of ordinary Soviet citizens during the Stalinist period in the 1930s. The author takes a broad approach covering major themes and behaviors that were of historical significance during the decade. If she puts forward an argument it is one of the overbearing ubiquitous presence of the state and the Soviet people’s ways of dealing and adopting to its repressive methods as the only way to survive. Throughout the tumultuous and hungry ‘30s characterized by random purges , famine, shortages and rationing of consumer goods as well as acute shortage of housing, cumbersome and ineffective bureaucracy, state surveillance and witch-hunt atmosphere, brutal collectivization in the countryside and crash industrialization in the cities, Homo Soveticus, nonetheless, adopted and even strived for the luxury of the “normal life.”

The postwar Harvard refugee interview project studied attitudes and opinions of recent Soviet emigrants and underscored the dismal living conditions of the Soviet population in the 1930s. The living standards in cities were so poor that people did everything in their power –legal and illegal – not to just prosper but to even reach “normalcy.” One of the perennial problems of the Soviet system that persisted well beyond the ‘30s was the housing shortage spurred by the massive migration from the countryside. In large cities such as Moscow or Leningrad it was manifested in the so called communal apartments with often more than two families sharing one kitchen and bathroom and whole extended families sharing one small room. Writing denunciations of communal neighbors in an effort to move in into their “living space”, fictitious marriages as well as blat was used by many to improve cramped living conditions. 

Is there is one thing that is tantamount to the Soviet system from the revolution to its collapse in the early ‘90s - it is a shortage of everything. Urban services such as public transport, roads, power and water supply, even basic consumer goods, vacations, you name it were in short supply and ordinary citizens as well as the elites had to rely on alternative means to obtain them. One could stand in a long queue without certainty of obtaining the product or use his or her blat  or patronage connections to circumvent the system and procure goods or more importantly access. Most people chose the latter and it appears to have been an unspoken and widespread modus operandi in the Soviet Union. 

The Soviet populous even found a way of surviving if not adapting to life under the terror of the purges, including the Great Purges of the 1937-8,    with its random arrests that often resulted in deportations and death. The urban managerial elite was the most affected by the purges and those under the threat used tactics such as concealing their past, specifically any information that would jeopardize their loyalty to the regime, denounced others as “enemies of the people,” looked for scapegoats and distanced themselves from friends or colleagues who were being investigated or could be potentially incriminating. 

The Soviet government led an extensive surveillance of the popular mood though semi-open forms of public expressions - discussions, election meetings, and the authorities’ willingness to accept individual complaints and petitions (an important outlet for Soviet citizens to express their grievances). However, common Soviet clichés and slogans that were ridiculed, chastushki, political jokes and public outbursts became one way in which citizens expressed their pent up and true feelings about the regime that NKVD also understood and monitored.  

Sheila Fitzpatrick’s work is significant in the way she presents a grand view of every day life and the tremendous human suffering and arbitrary loss of life that occurred in the 1930s. She argues that despite the struggle for survival, the Soviet citizens were by no means without strategies of self-protection, albeit rooted in their sense of fatalism and lack of agency.

Dr. W: An excellent critique. A