Peasant Metropolis: Social Identities in Moscow, 1929–1941

During the 1930's, 23 million peasants left their villages and moved to Soviet cities, where they comprised almost half the urban population and more than half the nation's industrial workers. Drawing on previously inaccessible archival materials, David L. Hoffmann shows how this massive m...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hoffmann, David L. (Author)
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:English
Published: Ithaca, NY Cornell University Press [2018]
Subjects:
Online Access:DE-859
DE-860
DE-739
DE-473
DE-1046
DE-1043
DE-858
Volltext
Summary:During the 1930's, 23 million peasants left their villages and moved to Soviet cities, where they comprised almost half the urban population and more than half the nation's industrial workers. Drawing on previously inaccessible archival materials, David L. Hoffmann shows how this massive migration to the cities—an influx unprecedented in world history—had major consequences for the nature of the Soviet system and the character of Russian society even today.Hoffmann focuses on events in Moscow between the launching of the industrialization drive in 1929 and the outbreak of war in 1941. He reconstructs the attempts of Party leaders to reshape the social identity and behavior of the millions of newly urbanized workers, who appeared to offer a broad base of support for the socialist regime. The former peasants, however, had brought with them their own forms of cultural expression, social organization, work habits, and attitudes toward authority. Hoffmann demonstrates that Moscow's new inhabitants established social identities and understandings of the world very different from those prescribed by Soviet authorities. Their refusal to conform to the authorities' model of a loyal proletariat thwarted Party efforts to construct a social and political order consistent with Bolshevik ideology. The conservative and coercive policies that Party leaders adopted in response, he argues, contributed to the Soviet Union's emergence as an authoritarian welfare state
Item Description:Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 19. Feb 2019)
Physical Description:1 online resource
ISBN:9781501725661

There is no print copy available.

Interlibrary loan Place Request Caution: Not in THWS collection! Get full text