Map Chronology Technical Note Glossary Introduction: The Other Archipelago Part I: The Destruction of the Kulaks 1: The Preemptive Strike: The Liquidation of the Kulak as a Class 2: Banishment: The Deportation of the Kulaks 3: No Pretensions to Reality: Forced Labor and the Bergavinov Commission 4: Pencil Points on a Map: Building the Special Settlements Part II: Life and Labor in the Special Settlements 5: The Penal-Economic Utopia: "Reforging through Labor" 6: Flight and Rebellion: The OGPU Takeover 7: Hunger onto Death: The Famine of 1932/33 8: The Second Dekulakization: Rehabilitation and Repression 9: earing the Evil from the Root: War, Redemption, and Stigmatization Conclusion Appendix Notes Research Note Bibliography Acknowledgments Index
Lynne Viola is Professor of History at the University of Toronto. She is the author of The Best Sons of the Fatherland and Peasant Rebels Under Stalin , and the co-editor of The Tragedy of the Soviet Countryside.
This scholarly, nuanced work shines light on Stalin's forced resettlement of two million Soviet peasants in the 1930s. A professor of history at the University of Toronto, Viola shows how a combination of repressive central government policies and out-of-control regional officials ruined the lives of so many Soviet citizens by deporting them to these "special settlements" to perform forced labor in the harsh tundra. Viola draws on newly opened archives to paint a complete portrait of the lives of the citizens, labeled "kulaks," or wealthy peasants. Hundreds of thousands died of disease or famine. As one child later remembered: "People began to swell and die" and were buried "without coffins, in collective graves." Viola writes clearly, but she is often understandably focused on larger, political questions, such as the nature of the Soviet state and how much of the repression was ordered by Stalin, and how much was ad hoc and locally ordered. This focus might limit Viola's readership, but this book is likely to become the scholarly standard on one of the 20th century's most horrific crimes. 25 b&w photos. (Apr.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.
"After years of archival and field research, Viola reproduces whole an obscured segment of Stalinism's barbarity in which half a million perished and nearly two million agonized."--Foreign Affairs "Magnificently wide-ranging."--Times Literary Supplement "A path-breaking and authoritative work."--Douglas Smith, The Seattle Times "This scholarly, nuanced work shines light on Stalin's forced resettlement of two million Soviet peasants in the 1930s. Likely to become the scholarly standard on one of the 20th century's most horrific crimes."--Publishers Weekly "Historians have long been aware of the scale of collectivization and the exile of the kulaks. But The Unknown Gulag provides the human voices that were secreted away for decades in formerly closed archives. Ms. Viola's painstaking research lays the foundation for a compelling and, in certain ways, surprising narrative."--The Wall Street Journal "A seamless and quite moving narrative. A social historian at the top of her game."--Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Slavic Review
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
