" . . . a comprehensive look at an enigmatic era . . . " -Choice
"This provocative collection of essays certainly takes some of the polish off Soviet socialism's golden age." -Journal of Interdisciplinary History
"The authors and editors of this splendid volume deserve great praise. Their work moves the field of Soviet history several large steps forward." -Slavic Review
Lenin's New Economic Policy of the 1920s, although a relatively free and open potential alternative to Soviet communism, was also a time of extreme tension, as Russian society and culture were rocked by the forces of resistance and change. These essays examine the social and cultural dimensions of NEP in urban and rural Russia in the years before Stalin and rapid industrialization.
Preface
I. Introduction: NEP Russia as a Transitional Society
William G. Rosenberg
II. The Problem of Class Identity in NEP Society
Sheila Fitzpatrick
III. Class and Consciousness in a Socialist Society: Workers in the Printing Trades during NEP
Diane P. Koenker
IV. Labor Conflict in Moscow, 1921-1925
John B. Hatch
V. Workers' Artels and Soviet Production Relations
Hiroaki Kuromiya
VI. Private Trade and Traders during NEP
R.E. Johnson
VII. Family Life in Moscow during NEP
VIII. Working-Class Women and the Withering Away of the Family: Popular Responses to Family Policy
Wendy Z. Goldman
IX. Razmychka? Urban Unemployment and Peasant In-migration as Sources of Social Conflict
Douglas R. Weiner
X. Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: From Defending the Revolution to Building Socialism
Mark von Hagen
XI. Policing the NEP Countryside
Neil Weissman
XII. Insoluble Conflicts: Villiage Life Between Revolution and Collectivization
Helmut Altrichter
XIII. The Quiet Revolution in Soviet Intellectual Life
Katrina Clark
XIV. The Press and Its Message: Images of America in the 1920s and 1930s
Jeffrey Brooks
XV. Popular Literature of the 1920s: Russian Peasants as Readers
Regine Robin
XVI. Popular Song in the NEP Era
Robert A. Rothstein
XVII. Bolshevik Ritual Building in the 1920s
Richard Stites
XVIII. Conclusion: Understanding NEP Society and Culture in the Light of New Research
William G. Rosenberg
Selected Bibliography
Lori A. Citti
Contributors
Index
