Research Catalog

Title

Factory and community in Stalin's Russia : the making of an industrial working class / Kenneth M. Straus.

Author

Straus, Kenneth M., 1952-

Publication

Pittsburgh, PA : University of Pittsburgh Press, [1997], ©1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xiv, 355 pages : illustrations; 24 cm.

Summary

• Straus argues that the keys for interpreting Stalinism lie in occupational specialization, on the one hand, and community organization, on the other.
• He focuses on the daily life (byt) of the new Soviet workers in the factory and community, arguing that the most significant new trends saw peasants becoming open hearth steel workers, housewives becoming auto assembly line workers and machine operatives, and youth training en masse rather than in individualized apprenticeships for all types of occupations categories in the vocational schools in the factories, the FZU.
• Tapping archival material only recently available and a wealth of published sources, Straus presents Soviet social history within a new analytical framework, suggesting that Stalinist forced industrialization and Soviet proletarianization is best understood within a comparative European framework, in which the theories of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber best elucidate both the broad similarities with Western trends and the striking exceptional aspects of the Soviet experience.

Series Statement

Pitt series in Russian and East European studies

Uniform Title

Series in Russian and East European studies.

Subjects

• Working class > Political activity > Soviet Union
• Communism > Soviet Union
• Working class > Soviet Union > History
• Soviet Union > Social conditions > 1917-1945

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction: State and Society Revisited -- 1. From Revolutionary Russian Proletariat to Quiescent Soviet Working Class -- 2. Moscow's Proletarian District and the Hammer and Sickle Steel Plant -- 3. Recruiting Workers: The Labor Market Turned Upside Down -- 4. Attaching Workers: The Stick, the Carrot, and the Labor Market -- 5. Training Workers: From Apprenticeship to Mass Methods -- 6. R-r-r-r-revolutionary Shock Work and Socialist Competition -- 7. The Factory as Social Melting Pot -- 8. The Factory as Community Organizer -- 9. The Red Directors Transform Soviet Industrial Relations -- 10. The Making of the New Soviet Working Class -- Bibliographical Essay: The Factory Newspaper and the Gor'kii Files.

ISBN

0822940485 (acid-free paper)

LCCN

97021046

OCLC

ocm36994502

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries