Life and Death Under Stalin: Kalinin Province, 1945-1953

By Kees Boterbloem

Investigations of Stalin's regime have usually concentrated on events in Moscow, Leningrad, and some of the rapidly developing industrial centres of the Soviet Union. In contrast, Kees Boterbloem provides an unprecedented look at the lives of Russians in a typical province which has remained largely unnoticed in Soviet, post-Soviet, and Western studies of these years even though developments in this province are emblematic of those in the Soviet Union as a whole during Stalin's time.

The first Western scholar to have access to the records of the Communist Party of the Kalinin province, Boterbloem supplements archival evidence with published accounts and interviews with those who survived the last years of Stalin's life, taking us into their lives. Covering a wide range of topics, such as industry, agriculture, party affairs, repression, and education, Life and Death under Stalin looks at the complicated relationship between the political elite of the Communist Party, its rank and file members, and the Russian population during what was perhaps the grimmest period in Soviet history.

The result is a fascinating study of how the postwar Stalinist regime dealt with those in the Kalinin Province, from ordinary Communist Party members and Red Army veterans to collective farmers and labour camp inmates.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0773518118
• ISBN13: 9780773518117
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.4" x 9.3"