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Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia's City of Steel
Students reading Scott have come away with a real appreciation of the hardships under which these workers built Magnitogorsk and of the nearly incredible enthusiasm with which many of them worked." --Ronald Grigor Suny
A genuine grassroots account of Soviet life--a type of book of which there have been far too few." --William Henry Chamberlin, New York Times, 1943
... a rich portrait of daily life under Stalin." --New York Times Book Review
General readers, students, and specialists alike will find much of relevance for understanding today's Soviet Union in this new edition of John Scott's vivid exploration of daily life in the formative days of Stalinism.
A genuine grassroots account of Soviet life--a type of book of which there have been far too few." --William Henry Chamberlin, New York Times, 1943
... a rich portrait of daily life under Stalin." --New York Times Book Review
General readers, students, and specialists alike will find much of relevance for understanding today's Soviet Union in this new edition of John Scott's vivid exploration of daily life in the formative days of Stalinism.
306 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1942
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856 people want to read
About the author
John Scott
1 book2 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
John Scott (1912-1976) was an American writer who worked in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. The OSS was the predecessor organization to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Scott migrated to the Soviet Union in 1932 and worked for many years in Magnitogorsk, writing Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia's City of Steel about his experiences there.
John Scott (1912-1976) was an American writer who worked in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. The OSS was the predecessor organization to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Scott migrated to the Soviet Union in 1932 and worked for many years in Magnitogorsk, writing Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia's City of Steel about his experiences there.
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October 5, 2015
An American worker goes to Magnitogorsk to "build socialism" during the First Five Year Plan. A memoir of a true believer.
December 9, 2025
This paperback has been sitting on my shelf since the early 90s, when I was supposed to have read this book for a Russian history class I dropped. Based on this book, I’m pretty happy with that decision, made over two decades ago. This is an autobiographical journaling of John Scott, son of American Communist sympathizers who was raised to idealize the “Workers’ paradise” of communism. He boldly decided to experience this paradise for himself by traveling to Magnitogorsk, the Gary, Indiana of the Urals at the ripe old age of 20 years.
Scott spent 5 years working in some of the harshest weather, working, and living conditions that an employed human being in 1930 could imagine. One might think that such a meager existence would sway his philosophy, but far from it, as Stephen Kotkin suggests in his introduction to this book, John goes to great lengths to rationalize the brutality and starkness of the life of a wage earner under the Stalin regime, as the ends to a glorious mean.
The beginning of this book is a story of adventure and is a delightful read, even when John is talking about living and working in conditions colder than a resident of the United States can barely fathom, with only a coal burning furnace to keep him and his roommate warm in wintertime nights where the lows commonly hover in the 20s… below zero.
He shares the experience of company-provided meals of watery soup and bread, every single day and night, trade school, and work politics which, in a very real sense, are an extension of party politics. Eventually, politically motivated purges get so bad that even John is basically “invited” to leave the country with his wife and two children. John waxes poetic about the Russian version of social safety nets, but I will be forgiven if I’m not exactly bowled over by the state of Russian resources of the day.
Smith twice receives visits from an American friend, who he proudly parades around Russia, to show his temporary nation framed in the most positive of lights. One must wonder what his American friend, who was endlessly curious about life in Stalinist Russia, must have made of these trips.
John unintentionally confesses to his rose colored glasses when he mentions that while beggars in the Soviet Union are almost unheard of, homeless and unemployed beggars he encountered while on a vacation in France were dressed better than he and his blue collar friends in Russia, and probably ate better, too.
The book is at its best when you see Soviet life through his eyes, but the book drags badly when he spends a good bit of time talking about the daily mechanics of working in a Soviet steel mill, which, I’m sorry to say, doesn’t really interest me. I’m not sure if there is a casual reader who this book would speak to, as it changes gears from vaguely interesting to coma-inducing and back. As a matter of history, though, its story isn’t without value. If you’re looking for a treatise on Russian politics, this may not be the book you’re looking for, as it deals with a biased view of a fan of Stalinist Communism. That said, as much of a fan as John is, even he can’t paint a pretty picture of the dualities of greedy excess and gripping want (even if many do not fully appreciate how dire their lives are), or the ruthless subversion of political and cultural enemies, real, imagined, or created. Towards the end of this book, John references a discussion with a comrade where he begins to question the experience and his colleague reminds him of the comparative evils of John’s nation of birth, such as slavery, proving that “Whataboutism” isn’t a recent or uniquely American development. This helps to reinforce John’s sympathy for Stalinist Russia. From the perspective of a sympathetic wanna-be comrade, it isn’t hard to imagine how the Soviet Union’s implementation of Communism failed so thoroughly. In fact, to the contrary, it is difficult to imagine how it survived as long as it did.
The irony of reviewing this book is that I realize that John Scott wouldn’t give a damned what I think.
Scott spent 5 years working in some of the harshest weather, working, and living conditions that an employed human being in 1930 could imagine. One might think that such a meager existence would sway his philosophy, but far from it, as Stephen Kotkin suggests in his introduction to this book, John goes to great lengths to rationalize the brutality and starkness of the life of a wage earner under the Stalin regime, as the ends to a glorious mean.
The beginning of this book is a story of adventure and is a delightful read, even when John is talking about living and working in conditions colder than a resident of the United States can barely fathom, with only a coal burning furnace to keep him and his roommate warm in wintertime nights where the lows commonly hover in the 20s… below zero.
He shares the experience of company-provided meals of watery soup and bread, every single day and night, trade school, and work politics which, in a very real sense, are an extension of party politics. Eventually, politically motivated purges get so bad that even John is basically “invited” to leave the country with his wife and two children. John waxes poetic about the Russian version of social safety nets, but I will be forgiven if I’m not exactly bowled over by the state of Russian resources of the day.
Smith twice receives visits from an American friend, who he proudly parades around Russia, to show his temporary nation framed in the most positive of lights. One must wonder what his American friend, who was endlessly curious about life in Stalinist Russia, must have made of these trips.
John unintentionally confesses to his rose colored glasses when he mentions that while beggars in the Soviet Union are almost unheard of, homeless and unemployed beggars he encountered while on a vacation in France were dressed better than he and his blue collar friends in Russia, and probably ate better, too.
The book is at its best when you see Soviet life through his eyes, but the book drags badly when he spends a good bit of time talking about the daily mechanics of working in a Soviet steel mill, which, I’m sorry to say, doesn’t really interest me. I’m not sure if there is a casual reader who this book would speak to, as it changes gears from vaguely interesting to coma-inducing and back. As a matter of history, though, its story isn’t without value. If you’re looking for a treatise on Russian politics, this may not be the book you’re looking for, as it deals with a biased view of a fan of Stalinist Communism. That said, as much of a fan as John is, even he can’t paint a pretty picture of the dualities of greedy excess and gripping want (even if many do not fully appreciate how dire their lives are), or the ruthless subversion of political and cultural enemies, real, imagined, or created. Towards the end of this book, John references a discussion with a comrade where he begins to question the experience and his colleague reminds him of the comparative evils of John’s nation of birth, such as slavery, proving that “Whataboutism” isn’t a recent or uniquely American development. This helps to reinforce John’s sympathy for Stalinist Russia. From the perspective of a sympathetic wanna-be comrade, it isn’t hard to imagine how the Soviet Union’s implementation of Communism failed so thoroughly. In fact, to the contrary, it is difficult to imagine how it survived as long as it did.
The irony of reviewing this book is that I realize that John Scott wouldn’t give a damned what I think.
April 29, 2021
"I went into a restaurant and bought the best chateaubriand in the house. While I was eating it, two able-bodied French working men, obviously unemployed, came around asking alms. In all Russia you could not have found a piece of meat cooked and served as well as that chateaubriand, but you could have traveled the Soviet Union from one end to another and not found two able-bodied men anxious to work and unable to find a job." (pg 226, Socialist City)
This book is an extremely insightful, detailed, and mostly rational memoir by an American who worked for five years in Magnitogorsk, the Soviet Union's industrial stronghold deep in the Ural Mountains. He gives an account of the hardships and triumphs of the sped-up construction of blast-furnaces to make steel, which was crucial to have in a time of a brewing World War and Nazi invasion. Even though the author does not appear to be a socialist and actually seems to have been collaborating on some level with the US embassies to pass on information (see the Addendum), the book posits the Soviet project as the "blueprint of the future [of humanity]," and rightfully so.
Scott tells the story of a massive country of oppressed peasants and workers who lifted themselves up out of starvation and illiteracy into economic security and became humanity's first working class intellectuals. And he does so with an abundance of facts, historical context, lush detail, and little anecdotes about real people. You read about the Kazakh worker who attended night school to study engineering and steel production. Not 10 years before, he had never seen a set of stairs. You take note of the many oppressed national minority students, such as Tatar, Kazakh, and Kirzhigi students, who attended trade schools in their native language and who learned Russia as a second language. You get a snippet of the conversations between the author and the ardent communist Party foreman, who, when asked about the purges arresting thousands of dissenters and kulaks, sternly reminded Scott that the United States kept slavery around almost 100 years after its revolution. You learn about the very real sabotage attempts that were the basis for these arrests, such as the unviable, expensive German tanks ordered by untraceable administrators, the wrenches pushed into gas turbines by disgruntled kulaks, and glass shards put into the grease cups of heavy machinery.
You learn about the grueling working conditions created by a shortage of machine parts and technical know-how after petty-bourgeois technicians and engineers fled the Soviet Union in the 1920’s. You learn about the dedicated Party worker who taught a village of peasants to repair second-rate tractors, so they could feed not just their village but whole cities. You learn about the Party’s decision to focus on heavy industry to survive a time of war and its shortage of consumer goods. You learn about opportunist bureaucrats, some of whom were arrested and some of whom were never caught. You read about a Magnitogorsk theatre actress who was once a bandit. You even learn about Scott’s own wife, Masha, a daughter of peasants whose newfound economic freedom allowed her to go to school for mathematics.
In “Socialist City,” the author visits France and the United States after years in the USSR. In Paris, he’s dumbfounded by the sight of two working class men begging, having lost their jobs. In my favorite part of the whole book, he reflects that you could travel the entire Soviet Union and not see such a sight. The revolution had eliminated unemployment.
The author doesn’t mention this, but meanwhile, in the United States in 1937, 11 million people were unemployed. Wall Street had sent American society into the Great Depression, with millions taking the streets to demand unemployment insurance. Socialism was lifting Soviet workers and peasants to unprecedented levels of collective prosperity and production. At the same time, capitalism was sinking Americans into the utter depths of poverty.
Though Scott is mostly fair, he does fumble, in my opinion, in the last two chapters. Here he skews some facts and neglects to tell crucial parts of the story. For instance, he states the Soviet people didn't oppose the armistice with Germany because "they knew what was and what was not their business" when in fact the armistice was only signed because no other country aside from the Soviet Union was willing to go to war with Germany. After a whole book vividly describing all the huge advances made by the Soviet people, Scott's last-minute doubts, to me, rang false.
That notwithstanding, this book still somehow reads like a love letter to the hard-won progress of the Soviet Revolution. Though he does so with unjustified disdain, Scott even attributes this to the leadership of Joseph Stalin's administration and its steadfast steering of the USSR through the stormy waters of the second World War.
It was not an easy task for Stalin's administration to determine that the industrial stronghold of the USSR needed to be deep within its terrain, in the infertile mountains of the Urals, instead of the verdant and populous lands around Leningrad, to keep these factories out of Hitler's reach. It was even harder to unite the entire USSR around this vision, leading to the arrests of tens of thousands of counter-revolutionaries, wreckers, spies, and dissenters. But it was all necessary to realize the proletarian government's goals of providing for the people and for winning World War II at the same time. Weirdly enough, this comes through in Scott's book.
I heard from a student recently that their anticommunist history class was studying this book. I find this counter-productive and somewhat funny; I'm sure the teacher will go out of their way to miss the point. Sure, Scott spends parts of his chapter on the purges preoccupied with the loss of civil rights for the rich. But he readily admits multiple times that it was necessary for the Soviet people to live free of unemployment, with enough to eat and money to spare, educations for all of their children, free medical service, paid maternity leave. And to win a World War set on exterminating Slavic workers and the first socialist country.
History absolved them. The Soviet people, and the captain of their ship, Joseph Stalin, were proven right. And despite the personal leanings of this author, his book makes a good case for how.
This book is an extremely insightful, detailed, and mostly rational memoir by an American who worked for five years in Magnitogorsk, the Soviet Union's industrial stronghold deep in the Ural Mountains. He gives an account of the hardships and triumphs of the sped-up construction of blast-furnaces to make steel, which was crucial to have in a time of a brewing World War and Nazi invasion. Even though the author does not appear to be a socialist and actually seems to have been collaborating on some level with the US embassies to pass on information (see the Addendum), the book posits the Soviet project as the "blueprint of the future [of humanity]," and rightfully so.
Scott tells the story of a massive country of oppressed peasants and workers who lifted themselves up out of starvation and illiteracy into economic security and became humanity's first working class intellectuals. And he does so with an abundance of facts, historical context, lush detail, and little anecdotes about real people. You read about the Kazakh worker who attended night school to study engineering and steel production. Not 10 years before, he had never seen a set of stairs. You take note of the many oppressed national minority students, such as Tatar, Kazakh, and Kirzhigi students, who attended trade schools in their native language and who learned Russia as a second language. You get a snippet of the conversations between the author and the ardent communist Party foreman, who, when asked about the purges arresting thousands of dissenters and kulaks, sternly reminded Scott that the United States kept slavery around almost 100 years after its revolution. You learn about the very real sabotage attempts that were the basis for these arrests, such as the unviable, expensive German tanks ordered by untraceable administrators, the wrenches pushed into gas turbines by disgruntled kulaks, and glass shards put into the grease cups of heavy machinery.
You learn about the grueling working conditions created by a shortage of machine parts and technical know-how after petty-bourgeois technicians and engineers fled the Soviet Union in the 1920’s. You learn about the dedicated Party worker who taught a village of peasants to repair second-rate tractors, so they could feed not just their village but whole cities. You learn about the Party’s decision to focus on heavy industry to survive a time of war and its shortage of consumer goods. You learn about opportunist bureaucrats, some of whom were arrested and some of whom were never caught. You read about a Magnitogorsk theatre actress who was once a bandit. You even learn about Scott’s own wife, Masha, a daughter of peasants whose newfound economic freedom allowed her to go to school for mathematics.
In “Socialist City,” the author visits France and the United States after years in the USSR. In Paris, he’s dumbfounded by the sight of two working class men begging, having lost their jobs. In my favorite part of the whole book, he reflects that you could travel the entire Soviet Union and not see such a sight. The revolution had eliminated unemployment.
The author doesn’t mention this, but meanwhile, in the United States in 1937, 11 million people were unemployed. Wall Street had sent American society into the Great Depression, with millions taking the streets to demand unemployment insurance. Socialism was lifting Soviet workers and peasants to unprecedented levels of collective prosperity and production. At the same time, capitalism was sinking Americans into the utter depths of poverty.
Though Scott is mostly fair, he does fumble, in my opinion, in the last two chapters. Here he skews some facts and neglects to tell crucial parts of the story. For instance, he states the Soviet people didn't oppose the armistice with Germany because "they knew what was and what was not their business" when in fact the armistice was only signed because no other country aside from the Soviet Union was willing to go to war with Germany. After a whole book vividly describing all the huge advances made by the Soviet people, Scott's last-minute doubts, to me, rang false.
That notwithstanding, this book still somehow reads like a love letter to the hard-won progress of the Soviet Revolution. Though he does so with unjustified disdain, Scott even attributes this to the leadership of Joseph Stalin's administration and its steadfast steering of the USSR through the stormy waters of the second World War.
It was not an easy task for Stalin's administration to determine that the industrial stronghold of the USSR needed to be deep within its terrain, in the infertile mountains of the Urals, instead of the verdant and populous lands around Leningrad, to keep these factories out of Hitler's reach. It was even harder to unite the entire USSR around this vision, leading to the arrests of tens of thousands of counter-revolutionaries, wreckers, spies, and dissenters. But it was all necessary to realize the proletarian government's goals of providing for the people and for winning World War II at the same time. Weirdly enough, this comes through in Scott's book.
I heard from a student recently that their anticommunist history class was studying this book. I find this counter-productive and somewhat funny; I'm sure the teacher will go out of their way to miss the point. Sure, Scott spends parts of his chapter on the purges preoccupied with the loss of civil rights for the rich. But he readily admits multiple times that it was necessary for the Soviet people to live free of unemployment, with enough to eat and money to spare, educations for all of their children, free medical service, paid maternity leave. And to win a World War set on exterminating Slavic workers and the first socialist country.
History absolved them. The Soviet people, and the captain of their ship, Joseph Stalin, were proven right. And despite the personal leanings of this author, his book makes a good case for how.
January 21, 2018
Author Scott lived and worked and married and had children in ussr working as a welder then in a chemical plant and went to higher education in red learning and sciences. The descriptions of building the biggest steel mills/blast furnaces anywhere in the middle of nowhere ( Magnitogorsk) are detailed, gritty, and don’t white wash anything. Neat look at ussr before wwii.
January 24, 2018
A must read for anyone wanting to understand the hope that communism inspired. Also a must read for anyone wanting to understand how communism also crushed those hopes.
January 17, 2021
"If I am not mistaken, you in America tolerated chattel slavery for nearly a century after your great constitution of freedom went into force. Your elections were travesties of universal suffrage during the first decades after your revolution. Our Soviet constitution is a blueprint of the future. It is a picture of what we are building, and we will build it too. Now our elections are ludicrous of course. Civil liberties are restricted. But we are not yet one generation old and we are at war now. Do not forget it!" - the response of a worker friend of Scott to his criticism of Soviet power in practise.
This is perhaps the best first hand account of the period of Stalinist industrialisation in English by an outsider. John Scott traveled to the USSR out of curiosity and enthusiasm for what the infant workers state was reported to be doing. A skilled metal and construction worker he found himself in Magnitogorsk which until a few years earlier had been little but an inhospitable wasteland but now was the site of what was to be a gargantuan steel works constructed to exploit the rich local resources and supply the steel to revolutionise production and defend the USSR. Scott arrived at an inhospitable construction site which, as Kotkin in his preface notes, "Paradoxically, the nascent world of socialism, looked more like a sordid scene out of the old world of nineteenth century capitalism such as Marx or Engels might have described it". However, it seems Scott, and thousands of others (despite the staggeringly high turnover of workers) were not deterred by the conditions they found. Many were prepared to suffer what they saw as short term hardship to build a better future. For many, as Scott notes, this hard life was already a step up for peasants who were now being educated and learning a trade and gradually experienced improvements in their outlook and standard of living. He writes "Tens of thousands of people were enduring the most intense hardship in order to build blast furnaces, and many of them did it willingly, with boundless enthusiasm, which infected me from the day of my arrival".
In his preface Kotkin makes the important point that "...unlike the authors of many foreigners accounts of the period, Scott refuses to whitewash what he and others had seen, he also refuses to engage in sensationalism. He confronts the deprivation and terror squarely, but without making it the focus of the book" . The day to day annoyances are recorded as are the familiar hacks that workers found to hoodwink obstructionist and aloof management. With regard to the purges during his time in the USSR Scott states "The purge caused many arrests, but the Soviet Union was large, and millions of Russians who had not been involved personally in the purge took it more or less as it came without allowing it to permanently influence their attitude towards Soviet power...". He further notes that initially there was "general support for the NKVD" as initial targets were thieves, embezzlers and bandits who preyed upon the insecurity of the new system. Also popular were the purges of the Magnitogorsk management who had literally built themselves an Animal Farm goodlife at the expense of the workers, "The workers were often quite gleeful about the arrest of some 'big bird' ". The Party too was subject to purging to remove undesirables, however, Scott states that while "...the party sometimes blundered, and often made trouble with its intriguing and heresy hunting [...] by and large, Magnitogorsk would not have been built as quickly or as well without it".
What we get is a day by day account of life as a worker, albeit a relatively privileged foreign worker, in a vast social experiment at war with itself. Eventually Scotts life in Magnitogorsk became impossible and he was banned from working in an increasingly security obsessed Soviet industrial sector. On returning from a trip home to the USA in 1937 he found the purges in full swing especially against foreigners, those with foreign passports leaving where possible for their countries and "those who had taken Soviet citizenship for Siberia under arrest". At the end of the book is a quite staggering appendix containing what was surely highly valuable HUMINT passed to the US embassy in Moscow by Scott detailing all aspects of Soviet society but especially industrial, economic and penal policy. If this was the sort of information that friends were passing to the capitalist powers it might be possible to see how paranoia of the centre was not entirely unjustified.
In one of his reports to the US embassy Scott concludes prophetically "The future of the Soviet Union does not look bright to me. Unless the Party is restored to at least some of its former position as a leading face in the country and permitted to propagate certain basic socialist principles, there will be no cement to prevent demoralisation and breakdown, no ideology to act as a religion or faith for youth".
This book is an incredible first hand account of real life with its trials and tribulations in one of the world's great social experiments and most traumatic revolutionary upheavals. Scott brings a day to day normality to life that is often lacking from politically partisan works. This is well worth reading alongside Stephen Kotkin's epic Magnetic Mountain also about the development of Magnitogorsk.
This is perhaps the best first hand account of the period of Stalinist industrialisation in English by an outsider. John Scott traveled to the USSR out of curiosity and enthusiasm for what the infant workers state was reported to be doing. A skilled metal and construction worker he found himself in Magnitogorsk which until a few years earlier had been little but an inhospitable wasteland but now was the site of what was to be a gargantuan steel works constructed to exploit the rich local resources and supply the steel to revolutionise production and defend the USSR. Scott arrived at an inhospitable construction site which, as Kotkin in his preface notes, "Paradoxically, the nascent world of socialism, looked more like a sordid scene out of the old world of nineteenth century capitalism such as Marx or Engels might have described it". However, it seems Scott, and thousands of others (despite the staggeringly high turnover of workers) were not deterred by the conditions they found. Many were prepared to suffer what they saw as short term hardship to build a better future. For many, as Scott notes, this hard life was already a step up for peasants who were now being educated and learning a trade and gradually experienced improvements in their outlook and standard of living. He writes "Tens of thousands of people were enduring the most intense hardship in order to build blast furnaces, and many of them did it willingly, with boundless enthusiasm, which infected me from the day of my arrival".
In his preface Kotkin makes the important point that "...unlike the authors of many foreigners accounts of the period, Scott refuses to whitewash what he and others had seen, he also refuses to engage in sensationalism. He confronts the deprivation and terror squarely, but without making it the focus of the book" . The day to day annoyances are recorded as are the familiar hacks that workers found to hoodwink obstructionist and aloof management. With regard to the purges during his time in the USSR Scott states "The purge caused many arrests, but the Soviet Union was large, and millions of Russians who had not been involved personally in the purge took it more or less as it came without allowing it to permanently influence their attitude towards Soviet power...". He further notes that initially there was "general support for the NKVD" as initial targets were thieves, embezzlers and bandits who preyed upon the insecurity of the new system. Also popular were the purges of the Magnitogorsk management who had literally built themselves an Animal Farm goodlife at the expense of the workers, "The workers were often quite gleeful about the arrest of some 'big bird' ". The Party too was subject to purging to remove undesirables, however, Scott states that while "...the party sometimes blundered, and often made trouble with its intriguing and heresy hunting [...] by and large, Magnitogorsk would not have been built as quickly or as well without it".
What we get is a day by day account of life as a worker, albeit a relatively privileged foreign worker, in a vast social experiment at war with itself. Eventually Scotts life in Magnitogorsk became impossible and he was banned from working in an increasingly security obsessed Soviet industrial sector. On returning from a trip home to the USA in 1937 he found the purges in full swing especially against foreigners, those with foreign passports leaving where possible for their countries and "those who had taken Soviet citizenship for Siberia under arrest". At the end of the book is a quite staggering appendix containing what was surely highly valuable HUMINT passed to the US embassy in Moscow by Scott detailing all aspects of Soviet society but especially industrial, economic and penal policy. If this was the sort of information that friends were passing to the capitalist powers it might be possible to see how paranoia of the centre was not entirely unjustified.
In one of his reports to the US embassy Scott concludes prophetically "The future of the Soviet Union does not look bright to me. Unless the Party is restored to at least some of its former position as a leading face in the country and permitted to propagate certain basic socialist principles, there will be no cement to prevent demoralisation and breakdown, no ideology to act as a religion or faith for youth".
This book is an incredible first hand account of real life with its trials and tribulations in one of the world's great social experiments and most traumatic revolutionary upheavals. Scott brings a day to day normality to life that is often lacking from politically partisan works. This is well worth reading alongside Stephen Kotkin's epic Magnetic Mountain also about the development of Magnitogorsk.
March 13, 2021
I couldn't put it down. An excellent account of the Soviet Union's 1930s industrialization from inside, and from a person who wanted to build socialism in earnest. John Scott details the ups and downs, the victories and the failures. Peasants from families who have always been illiterate getting education, healthcare, and employment. Almost everyone studying their asses off in evening classes.
The Stalin era was remarkable in that it seemingly had a radical pioneering spirit as well as the brutality of the Purges and forced labor systems at the same time, coexisting. He made an absolutely harrowing speech about the necessity of Russia industrializing faster than any country had ever industrialized before so that it would not be destroyed. Even though many people died in the chaos history may have vindicated that choice since Hitler would end up invading, and it is thanks to the brute force and incredible pace of industrialization that the Soviet people had a snowball's chance in hell.
A rock and a hard place. The Soviet Union had to either do 50 years of progress in 10 years or it would be wiped from the face of the earth. Workers struggled to learn new professions, and sometimes had to steal railway ties for the fireplace to keep warm. They died in workplace accidents, falling from icy scaffolds or inhaling toxic fumes, always keeping a stash of hard crusts to eat when the bread didn't show up. Inside, a blast furnace is operated by men some of whom saw a staircase or a hammer for the first time less than a year prior when they immigrated in from their traditional life on the steppe.
Schools operated programs in minority languages for workers from a wide range of cultures. John watches NKVD officers at night visibly exhausted from the intensity of their workload purging political enemies, many real and many imagined. John's American friend remarks that "they will catch some spies, but it will take generations to undo the paranoia being created."
The Stalin era was remarkable in that it seemingly had a radical pioneering spirit as well as the brutality of the Purges and forced labor systems at the same time, coexisting. He made an absolutely harrowing speech about the necessity of Russia industrializing faster than any country had ever industrialized before so that it would not be destroyed. Even though many people died in the chaos history may have vindicated that choice since Hitler would end up invading, and it is thanks to the brute force and incredible pace of industrialization that the Soviet people had a snowball's chance in hell.
A rock and a hard place. The Soviet Union had to either do 50 years of progress in 10 years or it would be wiped from the face of the earth. Workers struggled to learn new professions, and sometimes had to steal railway ties for the fireplace to keep warm. They died in workplace accidents, falling from icy scaffolds or inhaling toxic fumes, always keeping a stash of hard crusts to eat when the bread didn't show up. Inside, a blast furnace is operated by men some of whom saw a staircase or a hammer for the first time less than a year prior when they immigrated in from their traditional life on the steppe.
Schools operated programs in minority languages for workers from a wide range of cultures. John watches NKVD officers at night visibly exhausted from the intensity of their workload purging political enemies, many real and many imagined. John's American friend remarks that "they will catch some spies, but it will take generations to undo the paranoia being created."
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June 29, 2023Feel so lucky to have found this book lying on the side of the road. Actually an incredible historical document and personal testament. The conditions many of these workers had to deal were deeply stark and yet they started with nothing. I really felt this was an earnest portrayal that points out many of the negative aspects of the Soviet Union while still acknowledging the progress they made. At the end of the day you have to respect how all the work that is described basically led up to the Soviet Union saving the rest of the world from the Nazis. The book was published in 1942 and Scott accurately predicts the USSR victory over Germany based on what he experienced. You kind of have to slog through the in-depth descriptions of mechanical/steel processes but at the same time this info is definitely relevant if you're someone who believes history is driven by materialism.
June 20, 2021
Extremely detailed, fascinating to read about the industrialisation of the USSR. It was nice to read about one of the provincial cities, versus Moscow or Peter. I found him to be quite a balanced author, talking about the passion and life force the Revolution inspired, along with acknowledging the flaws and fear it induced.
February 19, 2018
Great account of the hardships of workers in the Soviet Union who are motivated by the cause of building socialism. Super interesting to see the evolution of their initial unreserved support for the Bolsheviks' communism and their patronisation of those who had to "suffer" capitalism to their eventual acceptance of privation and growing skepticism of the "greater cause."
Though I like the neutral-observer characteristic of the American author immersing himself in this completely different society, it would have been even more interesting with first-hand accounts by Russian-born workers who had witnessed the entire revolution interspersed.
Though I like the neutral-observer characteristic of the American author immersing himself in this completely different society, it would have been even more interesting with first-hand accounts by Russian-born workers who had witnessed the entire revolution interspersed.
July 27, 2017
3.5 stars, but I'll round up.
This was one of the more enjoyable non-fiction books I've read (though I don't read many). It followed John Scott as he lived and learned in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. It was definitely revealing, giving an insider perspective from an outsider, and Scott created a nice balance between personal narrative and history. It was quite informative and easy to read, all in all, a pleasant experience.
This was one of the more enjoyable non-fiction books I've read (though I don't read many). It followed John Scott as he lived and learned in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. It was definitely revealing, giving an insider perspective from an outsider, and Scott created a nice balance between personal narrative and history. It was quite informative and easy to read, all in all, a pleasant experience.
November 24, 2019
Very interesting take on the Soviet Union's industrial revolution, from an american guy who was there in the 1930s. Though he was not a great writer, his firsthand account of that period is fascinating when he is not quoting statistics about production accomplishments of the industrial city of Magnitogorsk, where he lived then.
October 25, 2007
This book is not for everyone. But...if you are interested in history without being a fanatic, this is a good read. It is written as a memoir to some extent and deals with life in post-revolution Russia (USSR, whatever) and the people who immigrated there with big ideals.
November 27, 2011
An interesting story of ex-patriot moving to the freshly minted Soviet Union during the Great Depression. A little heavy on statistical data, but telling of the enduring hardships faced against the weather and the Soviet bureaucracy in forming their new government.
June 19, 2012
Interesting account of the early years of the Soviet Union told by an American who went to the USSR shortly after the revolution.
April 28, 2015
An interesting book that takes on a decidedly different tone once you get to the appendices and find the dispatches the author sent back to the US State Dept during his stay in the USSR.
November 8, 2017
A thorough, if romantic, portrait of High Stalinism in the Ural Stronghold.
November 7, 2018
Interesting and well written, an excellent on-the-ground look at life in the Soviet Union at a time when people were convinced that a workers' paradise could, and would, be built. Scott did not skip the brutality and injustice behind the propaganda, and he did not simply rationalize it away as a necessary cost of reaching the ultimate goal, but it did not stop him from pouring his heart and soul into his work. Despite hunger, intense cold, and dangerous working conditions he persevered, making friends and marrying a Russian woman. In the end, however, he was caught up in the paranoia as the country descended into the madness of the purges. It took four years for him to finally get permission for his wife and child to leave the country with him, and it was an uncomfortable time, denied permission to work and, like all Russians, living in fear of the knock on the door that would lead to arrest, torture, abjuration by friends and family, and probably death.
Marxism was entirely theoretical (Marx couldn’t lead a revolution; he couldn’t even support his family, and spent most of his life sponging off Engels). Leninism was Marx’s theoretical structure put brutally into practice. It could be argued that Communism was always going to be a human rights disaster, since from the beginning Lenin was an enthusiastic proponent of terror as a tool of social control. There were, however, dedicated, compassionate true believer party members who were certain they could remake humankind. Socialism was only a promise, and in the end one that was bitterly betrayed, but under the czars most Russians never had any hope at all of a better life. Scott’s wife, for instance, was born into a large family of poor farmers, and without the revolution almost certainly would have remained impoverished and illiterate her entire life. The Communists, recognizing that they needed to industrialize the country quickly, were great proponents of education, and she was able to move from school to school, getting the support she needed to continue her studies, until she finally ended up with a college degree in engineering. She would not have said that Communism was an unmitigated disaster.
Today we view Communism through the historical prism of its actual deeds. We know that everywhere it was tried it was violent, repressive, xenophobic, brutal, and reactionary. It is hard for us to see it as John Scott would have, with the great, shining promise it seemed to offer. If ever there was an ideology that could have changed the world, it was Communism, and it attracted the best and the brightest, the most dedicated and hardest working. Of all its terrible failings, the betrayal of these ideals is one of Communism’s greatest crimes.
Marxism was entirely theoretical (Marx couldn’t lead a revolution; he couldn’t even support his family, and spent most of his life sponging off Engels). Leninism was Marx’s theoretical structure put brutally into practice. It could be argued that Communism was always going to be a human rights disaster, since from the beginning Lenin was an enthusiastic proponent of terror as a tool of social control. There were, however, dedicated, compassionate true believer party members who were certain they could remake humankind. Socialism was only a promise, and in the end one that was bitterly betrayed, but under the czars most Russians never had any hope at all of a better life. Scott’s wife, for instance, was born into a large family of poor farmers, and without the revolution almost certainly would have remained impoverished and illiterate her entire life. The Communists, recognizing that they needed to industrialize the country quickly, were great proponents of education, and she was able to move from school to school, getting the support she needed to continue her studies, until she finally ended up with a college degree in engineering. She would not have said that Communism was an unmitigated disaster.
Today we view Communism through the historical prism of its actual deeds. We know that everywhere it was tried it was violent, repressive, xenophobic, brutal, and reactionary. It is hard for us to see it as John Scott would have, with the great, shining promise it seemed to offer. If ever there was an ideology that could have changed the world, it was Communism, and it attracted the best and the brightest, the most dedicated and hardest working. Of all its terrible failings, the betrayal of these ideals is one of Communism’s greatest crimes.
September 9, 2022
Russia on the inside
The western view of Russia is critical of its lack of individual freedoms; the mock justice system, and the fear of being denounced with a one way ticket to Siberia.
This book is a first hand experience of an American working in the Urals to build a large steel factory. It relates that most of the Russian workers believed they were building a better future. They were proudly patriotic; they loved their homeland.
It shows the evil genius of Stalin and his determination to industrialized the country at any and all costs. And his realization that to protect these industrial centre's in the Urals and Siberia far away from the range of enemy aircraft.
This strategy paid off in the defeat of Germany.
The book shows the vast mineral deposits of the country.
But the book fails to explain why the Russian people are so easily controlled. First by Stalin and today by Putin.
The western view of Russia is critical of its lack of individual freedoms; the mock justice system, and the fear of being denounced with a one way ticket to Siberia.
This book is a first hand experience of an American working in the Urals to build a large steel factory. It relates that most of the Russian workers believed they were building a better future. They were proudly patriotic; they loved their homeland.
It shows the evil genius of Stalin and his determination to industrialized the country at any and all costs. And his realization that to protect these industrial centre's in the Urals and Siberia far away from the range of enemy aircraft.
This strategy paid off in the defeat of Germany.
The book shows the vast mineral deposits of the country.
But the book fails to explain why the Russian people are so easily controlled. First by Stalin and today by Putin.
February 28, 2019
Behind the Urals is about an American worker moving to Russia during the cold war to work in the factories. He decides to go to Russia to experience the contrary norms of society to America. There he goes through harsh everyday tasks, slowly integrating into the society. There he works hard, form bonds, get a family, goes to school, and does everything like the people there.
This book gave me a good insight into what it was like to be working in factories, and living life generally as a person at the bottom of society. It was very interesting how they manage through harsh life and still seek out the motivation to work and go to school to educate themselves.
From a historical perspective, it reveals the effects of communism and how the change of powers impact the workers in factories and farms.
This book gave me a good insight into what it was like to be working in factories, and living life generally as a person at the bottom of society. It was very interesting how they manage through harsh life and still seek out the motivation to work and go to school to educate themselves.
From a historical perspective, it reveals the effects of communism and how the change of powers impact the workers in factories and farms.
March 13, 2022
An interesting account of John Scott's time in Magnitogorsk Russia. It is very informative with regards to everyday life in 1930s Soviet Union. He does randomly jump around in the "plot" of his life like when he just mentions that he met someone and got married in like one sentence. Like....okay I guess that wasn't a big deal.
Anyway the thing that's really weird about the book is that it is not very critical of communism, but when John Scott came back to the US he ended up becoming like an anti-communist advocate or something. So it kind of makes the whole book feel like a lie. That's just me though.
*read dates will not be accurate bc I can't remember
Anyway the thing that's really weird about the book is that it is not very critical of communism, but when John Scott came back to the US he ended up becoming like an anti-communist advocate or something. So it kind of makes the whole book feel like a lie. That's just me though.
*read dates will not be accurate bc I can't remember
December 17, 2025
This complements Eugene Lyons's Assignment in Utopia for a great panoramic view of Stalin's first five-year plan through resident American eyes. Not to duplicate some long reviews here, I will only say that 1. you need to have basic understanding of steel production to appreciate the book 2. if you are allergic to rationalizing or relativizing Stalinist genocide/classicide/mass incarceration, you will have difficulty finishing the book. If you fall under #2, I recommend compartmentalizing your fully respectable attitude for the moment, as the book is informative enough to justify it.
October 11, 2024
A rare firsthand account of soviet crash-industrialization in the 1930s. Even better for the story is the author is American, as well as an average person, writing about what he experienced as a welder, student, husband, and father in the magnetic mountain city Magnitogorsk. Great technical detail on the heavy industry output, first and second Five Year Plans, and the experience on the ground of the Great Purge. Highly recommend to history buffs
May 1, 2021
Must read if you want to read more into what it was like in Magnitogorsk, John Scott is a hopeful American who goes to the Soviet Union in search of work and falls in love with a Russian woman. If you're interested in reading about that time then it is definitely a good read. Had to read for my Russian History class but I enjoyed reading it and would read again.
May 17, 2020
Very exciting to get the inside perspective of an American working in Stalin's USSR. For anyone interested I'd warn that there's a lot of boring technical talk about soviet industry (but I really liked that too). I learned a lot, but am too tired to write about it now.
October 23, 2025
This was really interesting seeing how an American did in the socialist world of Russia. While it was still a lot of really boring stuff, there were aspects that I latched onto and could connect with
April 10, 2019
Probably the best primary source account of the building of the socialist city.
September 24, 2021
A classic description of Stalinist industrialization.
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February 21, 2023this was for school & that’s pretty much everything i have to say about that
**i don’t rate nonfiction because i find it strange to rate other people’s life experiences**
**i don’t rate nonfiction because i find it strange to rate other people’s life experiences**
November 29, 2023
Easy read that covers so much info and perspective on Soviet Russia. Cool story of John’s life
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