History of the Soviet Union

History of the Soviet Union
Geoffrey Hosking

Originally published in 1992 and now available as an ebook.This edition does not include any images.WINNER OF THE 'LOS ANGELES TIMES' BOOK AWARD FOR HISTORYNow that the great Soviet empire has finally unravelled, and with the future of the Commonwealth of Independent States looking precarious at best, and violent at worst, as long-subdued territorial conflicts flourish from Moldova to Siberia, never has it been so important to understand the vast continued bureaucracy that for seventy years held so many disparate peoples together. How it did so, and the tactics it employed, form the spine of this acclaimed study of the world's last great land empire.Geoffrey Hosking traces the evolution of the Soviet political system from its revolutionary origins in 1917 to the collapse instigated by the reforms of Gorbachev's 'perestroika'. He shows how power was rarely devolved outside a particularly tightly knit ruling elite, and focuses on the forms of contact that existed between rulers and ruled. He places special emphasis on the experience of the peasantry, urban workers and the professional class, drawing on a mass of monographs and memoirs to show how they generated their own informal practices to adjust to changing Soviet social structures, and how, more often than is commonly realized in the West, they resisted repression and deprivation. This Final Edition obliges us to reflect on the enormity of the changes witnessed in the lands of the Soviet Union in the past five years.By providing a vivid picture of what it has felt like to be a Soviet citizen during the prodigious upheavals of the twentieth century, it reminds us that we cannot afford to ignore the impact of this empire, globally and locally – an impact whose legacy will be with us well into the twenty-first century.

Geoffrey Hosking

A History of

the Soviet Union

1917–1991

Final edition

Copyright (#ulink_61c88bcc-a6e8-59b1-826d-9704d0997e29)

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

A Fontana Press Original 1985

Revised edition published by Fontana Press 1990

This Final Edition published 1992

Copyright © Geoffrey Hosking 1985, 1990, 1992

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780006862871

Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2017 ISBN: 9780007545285

Version 2017–01–19

Contents

Cover (#u866895d3-6fa2-5603-9c7d-1ce68b176d30)

Title Page (#u11382415-3e96-5754-915b-cf2ed212fb05)

Copyright (#ulink_9093c183-d828-5f02-bf2e-16798eafbfbf)

Maps: (#ulink_8778386b-53a7-55aa-a4a8-1479e7e518cd)

The Soviet Union (#ulink_565996a7-8e61-5852-bc12-148cd5cccf59)

The Soviet Union in the Second World War (#ulink_2d1729bc-0082-5651-85c1-c10eb2fc83b3)

The Soviet Union in Eastern Europe (#ulink_56005107-7d72-5ec8-b7ec-d5135051b9d4)

Prefaces (#ulink_83dbb391-f8cb-5b34-8f55-831ec634b52d)

1. Introduction (#ulink_864f1555-6b76-5704-b8b2-a2d79403ce46)

2. The October Revolution (#ulink_53d63ff9-06b3-518a-8b06-7e560d7e3e49)

3. War Communism (#ulink_912b5581-cbb1-5340-ac38-0a6b382b40ac)

4. The Making of the Soviet Union (#ulink_3616782a-685b-5663-aad0-e0402e3c6072)

5. The New Economic Policy and Its Political Dilemmas (#ulink_cba09355-2b9d-59d6-8387-8b90f141c3d4)

6. Revolution from Above (#litres_trial_promo)

7. Stalin’s Terror (#litres_trial_promo)

8. Stalinist Society (#litres_trial_promo)

9. Religion and Nationality under the Soviet State (#litres_trial_promo)

10. The Great Fatherland War (#litres_trial_promo)

11. The Last Years of Stalin (#litres_trial_promo)

12. Krushchev and De-Stalinization (#litres_trial_promo)

13. Soviet Society under ‘Developed Socialism’ (#litres_trial_promo)

14. Religion, Nationality and Dissent (#litres_trial_promo)

15. The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union (#litres_trial_promo)

Chronology (#litres_trial_promo)

Statistical Tables (#litres_trial_promo)

Bibliography (#litres_trial_promo)

Index (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

A HISTORY OF THE SOVIET UNION

Geoffrey Hosking has been Professor of Russian History at the School of Slavonic Studies, University of London, since 1984. Born in Scotland in 1942, he studied Russian at Cambridge and European History at Oxford before gaining his doctorate in modern Russian history on the basis of archive work done in Moscow and Leningrad. He has taught at the universities of Essex, Wisconsin, Cambridge and Cologne, and has been a Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University in New York. Amongst his other books are The Russian Constitutional Experiment: Government and Duma, 1907–1914 (1973) and Beyond Socialist Realism: Soviet Fiction since ‘Ivan Denisovich’ (1980). In 1986, A History of the Soviet Union won the Los Angeles Times history book prize. In 1988, Professor Hosking was invited to give the annual Reith Lectures; he spoke on the subject of Change in Contemporary Soviet Society.

Maps (#ulink_39be9d09-d6b0-5773-925f-62f585c1f1cf)

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Adapted from Martin Gilbert, Russian History Atlas (1972)