The Soviet Century, Moshe Lewin
The Soviet Century, Moshe Lewin
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The Soviet Century

Author: Moshe Lewin, Gregory Elliott

Narrator: Rich Miller

Unabridged: 16 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/07/2024


Synopsis

This classic Soviet Union history traces the USSR from 1917, to its fall, offering "a master class in understanding the structures and intricate workings of the Soviet system" (Ian Kershaw, historian and Hitler biographer).

Today, the Soviet Union remains the most extraordinary but tragic attempt to create a society beyond capitalism. Yet its history was one that for a long time proved impossible to write.

In The Soviet Century, Moshe Lewin follows this history in all its complexity, guiding us through the inner workings of a system which is still barely understood. In the process, he overturns widely held beliefs about the USSR's leaders, the State-Party system, and the powerful Soviet bureaucracy.

Departing from a simple linear history, The Soviet Century traces all the continuities and ruptures that led from the founding revolution of October 1917, to the final collapse of the late 1980s and early 1990s, passing through the Stalinist dictatorship, the impossible reforms of the Khrushchev years, and the glasnost and perestroika policies of Gorbachev.

About Moshe Lewin

Moshe Lewin was a hugely respected historian of the Soviet Union. Professor of Soviet studies at the University of Pennsylvania, his books include Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison and The Making of the Soviet System: Essays in the Social History of Interwar Russia.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Maziyar on February 24, 2022

موشه لووین نویسنده یهودی متولد لهستان در کتاب سخت خوان ، سنگین و پر حجم قرن شوروی نگاهی دقیق به درون و جامعه شوروی انداخته ، او کار چندانی با وقایع خارجی ، جنگ داخلی و یا نقش شوروی در جنگ دوم و سپس جنگ سرد نداشته ، آنچه برای نویسنده اهمیت داشته و در این کتاب به آن پرداخته مردم و جامعه روسیه بوده است......more

Goodreads review by Matt on August 20, 2015

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. Lewin's main focus is on institutions. The Party, the Ministries, the trade unions and......more

Goodreads review by Rob on April 06, 2023

One of the great contradictions of the Soviet system was that its most terrifying moments of excess generated within itself its most exceptional periods of dynamism, while the latent humanism of the system pushed it towards stagnation and decline. The horrific force of Stalinism, under pressure from......more

Goodreads review by Ari on January 12, 2024

I think that I have to start this review with a disclaimer: I am not a Stalinist, and by no means am I defending Stalin. That said, I found that some of the criticisms that Lewin presents are good and factual, while some are purely polemical, and I was left wondering why this book is recommended on......more