Description: States of Anxiety assesses the effects of the great scarcities and enormous losses that revolutionary Russia experienced between 1914 and 1921. Focusing on the effects of food insecurity, scarcities of other essential goods, and the losses of war in their various forms, it represents a new approach to understanding the period's politics and ideologies. In contrast to the traditional concentration on the period's politics and ideology, this imaginative reinterpretation argues for greater attention to its emotional dimensions and contributes to the historical study of emotions and its complex methodologies.
Review Quotes: "In States of Anxiety: Scarcity and loss in revolutionary Russia, William G. Rosenberg offers a wide-lens treatment of state-society relations in the era of war and revolution, as successive regimes wrestled with the the problem of maintaining the supply of food and other resources." -- Stephen Lovell, Times Literary Supplement
"States of Anxiety crafts a fresh and nuanced perspective on Russia's revolutionary experience between 1914 and 1922. Undertaking what seems an impossible task: to bring to life the feelings of people from the past, Rosenberg not only succeeds but also establishes a valuable framework for future scholars to rethink the period. He underscores the importance of examining how people in revolutionary Russia interpreted their experiences and acknowledges the significant role these emotions and experiences and emotions played in shaping history. The book revisits well-known narratives from a new angle, thereby offering an alternative view on the Soviet state-building during the interwar period which was marked by "the worst possible" circumstances "of scarcity and anxiety"." -- Maria Fedorova, Canadian-American Slavic Studies"Crowning a career of outstanding contributions to the study of the Russian revolution, William G. Rosenberg's magisterial work, States of Anxiety: Scarcity and Loss in Revolutionary Russia, elevates the narrative of the people's suffering to an equal plane with traditional liberal, moderate socialist, and Bolshevik "great stories" of the world war, revolution, and civil war in Russia. This work will be useful to graduate students studying for doctoral exams and scholars revising lectures." -- Barbara Allen, Slavic Review"By leading us to more material concerns, Rosenberg has hopefully provided rich fodder to help others overcome this lingering scarcity in the his-toriography and repossess the natural world with its power over human affairs." --, Andy BrunoJournal of Modern History