Description: Terror and Democracy in Stalin's Russia is the first book devoted exclusively to popular participation in the "Great Terror," a period in which millions of people were arrested, interrogated, shot, and sent to labor camps. In the unions and the factories, repression was accompanied by a mass campaign for democracy. Party leaders urged workers to criticize and remove corrupt and negligent officials. Workers, shop foremen, local Party members, and union leaders adopted the slogans of repression and used them, often against each other, to redress long-standing grievances. Using new, formerly secret archival sources, Terror and Democracy in Stalin's Russia shows how ordinary people moved in clear stages toward madness and self-destruction. Wendy Z. Goldman is a professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University. She is author of Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936 (Cambridge, 1993), winner of the Berkshire Conference Book Award, as well as Women at the Gates: Gender and Industry in Stalin's Russia (Cambridge, 2002).
Brief description: Wendy Z. Goldman is the author of Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936 (Cambridge, 1993), winner of the Berkshire Conference Book Award, as well as Women at the Gates: Gender and Industry in Stalin's Russia (Cambridge, 2002). She has published numerous articles on Soviet social and political life and serves as the director of an exchange between Carnegie Mellon University and Russian State University for the Humanities. She has received grants from the Social Science Research Council, the International Research and Exchanges Board, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Council for East European and Eurasian Research. She has served on the editorial boards of Social Science History, Gender and History, and International Labor and Working Class History.
Review Quotes: "This is an important study not only for Soviet historians but for historians interested in labor history, social history, and modern Europe. It will also be of interest to political scientists and sociologists interested in political violence, popular mobilization, and populist components of terror. Goldman captures the complexity of the 1930s, and her book elegantly tells a story that, like real life, is not easy to tell. Avoiding simplistic approaches, she provides a realistic account characterized by confusion, unintended consequences, shifting alliances, and chaos. In doing so, she makes extensive and skillful use of heretofore unexploited and inaccessible archival collections. She uses these unique documents to tell the story of terror and populist 'democracy' in the party organizations and factories of Moscow."
- J. Arch Getty, Professor of History, University of California, Los Angeles