I really do have to commend Moshe Lewin for providing an accurate and not demonizing the USSR in his book, The Soviet Century, however you clearly saw his acrimony for Stalin in many of the opening chapters. Lewin only lived in the USSR for a few years during WWII before returning to Poland and emigrating to France. So while he didn't see first-hand most of the Stalin-ism atrocities, he did focus heavily on them during the first half of Soviet Century. Georgian-born revolutionary Joseph Stalin rose to power upon Lenin’s death in 1924. The dictator ruled by terror with a series of brutal policies, which left millions of his own citizens dead. During his reign—which lasted until his death in 1953—Stalin transformed the Soviet Union from an agrarian society to an industrial and military superpower. Although as a good social historian, Lewin continues to emphasise the broader context that supported Stalin’s authoritarianism, there is much more weight put on Stalin’s character. Reference is made to Stalin’s desire for absolute power, to be recognised as the indisputable authority on history, politics, ideology, etc., that lay behind the decision to destroy the Bolshevik Old Guard and indeed anyone whose historical memory might undermine Stalin’s version of events. Lewin claims that Stalin had the Great Terror of 1936–38 in mind as early as 1933. The references to Stalin’s ‘mania’, ‘paranoia’, ‘political pathology’ and their impact on the system more generally brought Khrushchev’s Secret Speech to mind. The Secret Speech is often presented as an élite cynical ploy to lay systemic failings at an individual’s door and to give a rationale for continuing to believe in the USSR. However, Lewin’s reading of events may lead us to see the Secret Speech as an honest attempt to understand what really happened in the change from Lenin’s leadership to Stalin’s.

The Soviet Century is a great monument to the vanished Soviet world. Rich, witty, and entertaining, the book offers a comprehensive textual museum that is all the more important because no such real-life museum exists in Russia or elsewhere, and I doubt that it will be created anytime soon. The more difficult it is to go to the White Sea Canal, the Lenin Mausoleum, or a Russian dacha, the more enjoyable is this book.”—Alexander Etkind, Central European University El siglo soviético se presenta como un libro que cubre (casi) todos los aspectos de lo que sucedió en la Unión Soviética. No resulta fácil cubrir 70 años de historia (bastante movidita, además) en un país que tiene miles de kilómetros y multitud de etnias. El autor lo repite varias veces a lo largo de la obra. WOW! This was one heavy, dense book on Soviet economics, which is not for the casual reader. It started out as more of a historical account of how Bolshevik-ism transformed into the Soviet system that was well known during the middle part of the 20th Century. However, it seemed too often to get lost in the weeds of specificity.

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Rich in its insights and original in its perspectives, Moshe Lewin’s superb new book provides a master-class in understanding the structures and intricate workings of the Soviet system. Ian Kershaw This leads him to another question, among the grandest 'ifs' in contemporary history. Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB, succeeded the brain-dead Brezhnev as general-secretary of the party in 1983, but fell mortally ill and died the following year. Suppose he had lived! This was true above all of Marxism. Marxism was precisely a system of thought that could be applied to Stalin’s USSR in a critical manner, but it was precisely this type of Marxism that was suppressed. In its place was put an empty phraseology that failed, over time, to command allegiance or respect. In Political Undercurrents in Soviet Economic Debates (London 1975), Lewin outlined how, in the post-Stalin period, Soviet scholarship was beginning to develop a critique of Stalinism and to offer alternatives. The scholars of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s turned to the alternatives to Stalin of the 1920s and early 1930s. Deteriorating relations between the Soviet Union and neighboring China and food shortages across the USSR eroded Khrushchev’s legitimacy in the eyes of the Communist party leadership. Members of his own political party removed Khrushchev from office in 1964. Sputnik and the Soviet Space Program

At home, however, Khrushchev initiated a series of political reforms that made Soviet society less repressive. During this period, later known as de-Stalinization, Khrushchev criticized Stalin for arresting and deporting opponents, took steps to raise living conditions, freed many political prisoners, loosened artistic censorship, and closed the Gulag labor camps. Stalin implemented a series of Five-Year Plans to spur economic growth and transformation in the Soviet Union. The first Five-Year Plan focused on collectivizing agriculture and rapid industrialization. Subsequent Five-Year Plans focused on the production of armaments and military build-up. In 1949, the U.S., Canada and its European allies formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO). The alliance between countries of the Western bloc was a political show of force against the USSR and its allies.Increasingly, the system which had turned a vast rural, semi-feudal empire into a modern industrial powerhouse transformed itself into a great engine of wastefulness, buying its citizens off with the promise of an easy, quiet life in exchange for their tacit consent. ‘We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us’ became the defining feature of the stagnation which set in during 1970s. Utilising cutting edge research and analysis, Moshe Lewin reveals that the Soviet leadership were often completely aware of the problems that beset them, but, having discarded the tools of mass coercion, were completely incapable of responding effectively. As the great machine of the planned economy began to wind down in the second half of the 20th century, the people operating it were unable to do anything other than manage its decline. The Soviet Union possessed vast reserves of resources in areas with no surplus labour to exploit them, while at the same time maintained huge levels of overstaffing and in areas with massive labour surpluses, leading to plummeting productivity. In Lewin (and Lenin)'s perspective, the bolshevik party was in danger of losing its identity and being consumed if it got too involved in bureaucratic administration following the end of the civil war. Rapid urbanization and mass growth in administrative infrastructure, coupled with the large influx of uneducated party members without any strong attachment to the revolutionary struggle, was a powerful social process that undermined the position of the party. Why, then, a lot of characterizations of Stalin are not sourced? Why is Stalin attributed a quote that potentially doesn't exist? It's baffling to me that citations are that weak in a source that is recommended by academics. There are loads of instances where Lewin says something like "Historians seem agreed" and "In a very gloomy letter" and "In a handwritten note" without attribution of the source. La estructura del libro es un verdadero desastre. Sin paliativos. Arranca con el ascenso de Stalin (circa 1923) y dedica una buena cantidad de páginas a ello. Del Imperio Ruso, la Revolución y Lenin apenas se dice nada (si quiere saber algo sustancial sobre todo esto tendrá que esperarse a la página 300 del libro). A mitad de libro hay una sección de "biografías"... Me dio la impresión de que el autor había cogido artículos suyos y los había ensamblado en forma de libro, resultando todo ello en un extraño collage. Throughout the book, the reader is enlighten on several crucial aspects on how Stalin betrayed Lenin while destroying the Bolshevik Party, and dismounting its accomplishments to accommodate both the party and the state to his own personal goals; which relied on eliminating any kind of connection between the revolutionary cadres that seized power in 1917, both physically -trough slandering, smearing, framing and forced confessions to the ultimate bloodshed of Lenin's comrades- and incorporating new waves of cadres that had nothing to do with the revolution, that were careerists and useful scapegoats at the same time; on top of this, falsifying history to make room for his cult.

At times it is dense with statistical read-outs that would have been better communicated with charts or graphs with accompanying commentary. Additionally, I found the writing style to be overly complex, parenthetical, and oddly self-referential. The Soviet Union is gone, but its ghostly traces remain, not least in the material vestiges left behind in its turbulent wake. What was it really like to live in the USSR? What did it look, feel, smell, and sound like? In The Soviet Century, Karl Schlögel, one of the world’s leading historians of the Soviet Union, presents a spellbinding epic that brings to life the everyday world of a unique lost civilization. Schlögel – assisted by his excellent translator, Rodney Livingstone – is an eloquent writer and a captivating travel guide around this Soviet “lost world”."—Stephen Lovell, Times Literary Supplement Throughout the book, the reader is enlighten on several crucial aspects on how Stalin betrayed Lenin while destroying the Bolshevik Party, and dismounting its accomplishments to accommodate both the party and the state to his own personal goals; which relied on eliminating any kind of connection between the revolutionary cadres that seized power in 1917, both physically -trough slandering, smearing, framing and forced confessions to the ultimate bloodshed of Lenin's comrades- and incorporating new waves of cadres that had nothing to do with the revolution, that were careerists and useful scapegoats at the same time; on top of this, fal

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This isn't a book for beginners. There's an assumption that the reader has a certain level of knowledge about the Soviet Union, which I do not possess, so it was heavy going for me but very much worth the effort. C. He focuses a lot on the Party- who were its cadres, how were they recruited, to what extent they were veterans of the Revolution and the Civil War, when the terror turned on it. His sympathies are with the Old Bolsheviks, the idealists. They began to be pushed aside in the initial Five-Year Plans, and then were decimated in the terror of the late 1930s. He is sensitive to the erosion of the Bolshevik culture of intraparty debate, but not to the erosion of debate beyond the limits of the Party.