New Directions in Soviet History [Paperback]

This volume presents work on the history of the Soviet Union.These original essays discuss Gorbachev and Soviet history, the changing nature of mass culture in the 1920s and 1930s, the politics of shopfloor culture between the wars, and the evolution of the political ?lite from the 1930s to the 1990s.These original essays discuss Gorbachev and Soviet history, the changing nature of mass culture in the 1920s and 1930s, the politics of shopfloor culture between the wars, and the evolution of the political ?lite from the 1930s to the 1990s.Soviet history has seldom been of such importance--both to historians and to a broader public in the USSR--as it now is. In this timely volume, scholars from both sides of the Atlantic, using a breadth of source material including Soviet archives and the local press, present the most recent thinking and up-to-date research available. The original essays discuss Gorbachev and Soviet history, the changing nature of mass culture in the 1920s and 1930s, the politics of shopfloor culture between the wars, and the evolution of the political elite from the 1930s to the present day.Introduction; Part I. The Politics Of Soviet History: 1. Gorbachev and history Pierre Broue; Part II. Social Change And Cultural Policy: 2. Revolutionary lives: public identities in Pravda during the 1920s Jeffrey Brooks; 3. Entertainment or enlightenment?: popular cinema in Soviet society, 19211931 Denise Youngblood; 4. The centre and the periphery: cultural and social geography in the mass culture of the 1930s James van Gelderen; Part III. Politics, Industry and Shopfloor Relations: 5. The crisis of productivity in the New Economic Policy: rationalization drives and shop floor responses in Soviet cotton mills, 19241929 Chris Ward; 6. The politics of industrial efficiency during NEP: the 1926 rezhim ekonomiki campaign in Moscow John Hatch; 7. The Moscow party and the socialist offensive: activists and workers, 19281931 Catherine Merridale; 8. The demise ofl7