Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization

by Stephen Kotkin

Book Overview

This study is the first of its kind: a street-level inside account of what Stalinism meant to the masses of ordinary people who lived it. Stephen Kotkin was the first American in 45 years to be allowed into Magnitogorsk, a city built in response to Stalin's decision to transform the predominantly agricultural nation into a "country of metal." With unique access to previously untapped archives and interviews, Kotkin forges a vivid and compelling account...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520208234
• ISBN13: 9780520208230
• Release Date: February 1997
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 728 Pages
• Weight: 2.24 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Great history

This is an incredible work of scholarship that is also incredibly entertaining. Kotkin paints a detailed portrait of life in the Soviet Union's steel city under Stalin and places it in a challenging and profound theoretical framework. Maybe a bit heavy on Foucault, but stunning nonetheless.

Very important!!

That's an important book on Stalinism and Soviet Union. It presents new extremely interesting and well documented information about key aspects of life and politics mainly during the Stalinist period. What makes this book really important though is that this information is used in a structured way to substantiate a well-defined interpretation of Stalinism as civilization. Kotkin is not the first researcher to analyze USSR in these terms (many people see the Soviet regime as a peculiar type of theocracy), but it is one of the first attempts to study the civilizational aspect in such depth. Another achievement of the author is he manages to transcend the ideological commitments and polarizations that are connected with his broader theme. "The Magnetic Mountain" is a sober, academic study of Stalinism and therefore, it is bound to displease those who are looking for excuses for the Soviet regime or those who looking for stongly worded condemnations and connections with present enemies. My only criticism is that, unless I missed the references to it, Kotkin does not mention E. Wallerstein's essay "Capitalist civilization". I believe that the approaches of the two authors have many parallels and it would have been interesting to compare them.

Narrow and Illuminating Study

Kotkin has done excellent work here in Magnetic Mountain. This is a landmark study on the building of an industrial city in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era. It's extremely bizarre that some have taken the view that it is a pro-Stalin work. I can only conclude that they haven't read Magnetic Mountain but only certain reviews or are so head-in-the-sand dogmatic that they render any view outside of cold war totalitarian model as pro-Stalinist. Especially ironic is the Stalinist tone of many who oppose any view outside this strict cold war construction. Like it or not the facts are many who lived in the Soviet Union during that era believed in communism as their salvation and future. I've lived in Russia and have seen the older generation protesting in pro-Stalin demonstrations in St Petersburg's Palace Square. Stating this doesn't make Kotkin pro anything. It makes him a historian.Kotkin's rendering of Magnitogorsk is great history. From the initial idealistic workers that established the city, he quickly shows the disillusionment that occurred when theory and practical organization clashed. Labor shortages abound in this workers paradise ironically because workers couldn't stand the conditions. Kotkin shows how internal passports and party cards gradually began to be used to make sure workers could not move freely or that party members could be monitored.Not that all was oppression. He correctly describes how many used the opportunities that were available to proceed with gaining an education in the evening technical programs that proliferated in the Magnitogorsk community. Kotkin does not shy away from the effects of the purges, but he does describe them as being focused particularly on party members. With the benefits of communist party membership came the dangerously increased odds of being targeted in the purges. He's especially effective in his description of how the balance of power was structured between the technical experts running the factories, the local communist organization and the NKVD. This is good history. It may ruffle feathers, but more importantly it illuminates the complexity of life in the Soviet Union. Citizens in the SU were much more involved, benefited from and bought into the dogma of Soviet marxism much more than the Conquest cold war scholarship of that era showed. Having spoken to many of the older Russian generation myself I've seen the confirmation in the discussions. Ignore the lock-step cold warriors; if you are a historian of left, middle or right wing views you'll find this is history well worth reading.

Excellent Social History

This book is about building socialism, Soviet style. Magnitogorsk was the site of an outcrop of rich iron ore and Soviet economic planners elected to construct a whole new steel manufacturing center with accompanying city on that site. The site lacked easy access to coal, required extensive damming of the neighboring river, was hundreds of miles off the main Russian railroad system, and was sparsely populated. The rational approach would have been to develop an iron mine and expand the rail lines connecting to established industrial centers; a Soviet equivalent of the once important iron mines in nothern Minnesota. In keeping with the goal of erecting a whole new industrial civilization, the new Soviet state treated the site as a physical and social tabula rasa, developing not only a whole new vertically integrated production complex but also a whole new society. Kotkin's book is a social history of that enterprise. Based on extensive archival research and using extensive secondary sources, Kotkin describes the social experience of building the factory/city and life within Magnitogorsk. This is an excellent book. The quality of writing and documentation is excellent. Readers will get a vivid sense of the Soviet experience during this period of Russian history. The underlying theme of the book is the efforts of the Soviet state to transcend capitalism and totally transform human existence. The resulting efforts to break the social mold and develop rational modes of social organization are described well. The Soviet emphasis on heavy industry, central planning, and subordination of the individual to social goals is demonstrated through close analysis of the system of factory construction, housing organization, and many aspects of daily life. The remarkable brutality, inefficiency, and corruption of Soviet life are described very well. At the same time, Kotkin is careful to point out that the Bolshevik/Soviet system enjoyed a real measure of popular support. It brought full employment and bread to millions at a time when the Great Depression had idled factories all across Europe and North America. The emergence of fascist states in Europe also seemed to vindicate Marxist predictions of the terminal throes of capitalism. One criticism of Kotkin is that he attempts to emphasize the ways in which common people responded to the actions of the state. To paraphrase Eugen Weber, Kotkin attempts to present common people as subjects of history rather than objects of history. While this is a laudable attempt to avoid presenting most people as mere victims of impersonal forces, readers will be struck with how the Soviet state intruded itself into all aspects of human life. This is not surprising as the avowed goal of the Soviets was to re-engineer human society. A good deal of recent social history attempts to avoid the image of common people as passive victims but I feel that Kotkin has gone a little too far in this direction. Kotkin is v

Stunning Analysis

Excellent, critical analysis of Magnitogorsk, an often-referred-to but usually overlooked centre of a major twentieth-century civilisation. Based on a fantastic amount of research, informed by theory, and carefully analyzed, the book shows that Stalinism was not just an evil, paranoid dictatorship, but a world that has largely escaped our understanding. Kotkin does a good job in "correcting" our understanding and providing with something much more careful, openminded and comprehensive than every other soviet historian has done so far.