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Moscow, 1937
Moscow, 1937: the soviet metropolis at the zenith of Stalin's dictatorship. A society utterly wrecked by a hurricane of violence. In this compelling book, the renowned historian Karl Schlögel reconstructs with meticulous care the process through which, month by month, the terrorism of a state-of-emergency regime spiraled into the 'Great Terror' during which 1 1/2 million human beings lost their lives within a single year. He revisits the sites of show trials and executions and, by also consulting numerous sources from the time, he provides a masterful panorama of these key events in Russian history. He shows how, in the shadow of the reign of terror, the regime around Stalin also aimed to construct a new society. Based on countless documents, Schlögel's historical masterpiece vividly presents an age in which the boundaries separating the dream and the terror dissolve, and enables us to experience the fear that was felt by people subjected to totalitarian rule. This rich and absorbing account of the Soviet purges will be essential reading for all students of Russia and for any readers interested in one of the most dramatic and disturbing events of modern history.
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First published January 1, 2006
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About the author
Karl Schlögel
45 books60 followersKarl Schlögel (born 7 March 1948 in Hawangen, Bavaria, Germany) is a noted German historian of Eastern Europe who specialises in modern Russia, the history of Stalinism, the Russian diaspora and dissident movements, Eastern European cultural history and theoretical problems of historical narration.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
August 8, 2023
Citing his inspirational methods early (Eisenstein, The Arcade Project) the author hopes to to encompass the Great Terror as an event, as it impacted the city of Moscow. Schlögel achieves the impossible if only in an irreverent manner. He gives the madness myriad courses of confluence, dispelling any recourse to eschatological evil, plumbing into all sorts of records, an archivist practicing alchemy amidst planned economies and universal literacy. Something was forged in the Soviet Experiment, it is best to accept both the two primary definitions of the term. Transformation led to elevated expectations which provoked resentment if reality fell short. The failed harvest of 1936 was likely crucial to the events which followed.
Chapters ensue: parsing of the Moscow Directory, the detailing of the Aviation Mania of the 1930s and especially the fate of the 1937 census all reverberate. The auto industry became an interesting flashpoint between newly arrived workers from the countryside and established workers and managers. Truly an epic undertaking with often all too human catalysts.
Matters begin with Bulgakov and end with Bukharin. This is a resounding achievement.
Chapters ensue: parsing of the Moscow Directory, the detailing of the Aviation Mania of the 1930s and especially the fate of the 1937 census all reverberate. The auto industry became an interesting flashpoint between newly arrived workers from the countryside and established workers and managers. Truly an epic undertaking with often all too human catalysts.
Matters begin with Bulgakov and end with Bukharin. This is a resounding achievement.
October 15, 2022
I was genuinely sorry to finish this book. Professor Schlögel has written a vast tapestry-like description of life in all its aspects in Moscow during the Great Terror. We see the city from almost every angle: from the cultural salons and the hotel dining rooms to the inmates of the gulag adjacent to the city where they were building the Moscow-Volga canal under the most brutal of conditions. There are the lives of the political and cultural elite, and there are the workers of the Stalin Automobile Factory, whose standards of living are so primitive that some of them sleep beneath their factory machines at night for lack of other accommodations. And hanging above them all, the constant threat of arrest and murder at the hands of the NKVD, who killed around a million people and imprisoned another 3-4 million during these years, the vast majority of whom, it needs to be said, were guilty of absolutely nothing. Why was this monstrous crime carried out? To create fear? To find those "guilty" of sabotage in a society that barely functioned, but where it was unthinkable to blame the system, so somebody had to be "wrecking?" To make sure that, in a country surrounded by "capitalist enemies" that no one could form a 5th column? Maybe all of the above. Schlögel has erected a minor monument to those who were lost with this beautifully-written tour-de-force of Moscow and how she was changing in this era of revolutionary violence of almost unthinkable scope.
January 8, 2019
Retrato exhaustivo del Moscú de 1937: La historia social, la vida cotidiana, las purgas, la deformación de las leyes, corrupción judicial, encarcelamientos masivos... Totalitarismo en suma. Una obra monumental sobre un trágico periodo histórico.
February 28, 2019
Wer sich für die russische Geschichte der 1. Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts interessiert kommt an Schlögel eigentlich nicht vorbei und das es gut so, denn alle seine Werke - so auch dieses - sind ausgesprochen eingängig geschrieben (man braucht auch die 100 Seiten Endnoten nicht zu lesen), lehrreich und vor allem Dingen bemüht, die verschiedenen Stränge des soziologischen Phänomens Geschichte zu erfassen.
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November 7, 2017L’universo dei libri è un sistema organizzato, in cui un testo richiama l’altro. Capita così di trovare continui legami e richiami tra i libri che si leggono. Questa volta, intrapresa la lettura di Novantatré di Victor Hugo, ispirato ai fatti del Terrore che seguirono la Rivoluzione francese, mi trovo tra le mani un saggio che cerca di dare un quadro esauriente di un altro Terrore seguito a una rivoluzione: il Terrore staliniano del 1937. Tanto il romanzo di Hugo quanto il saggio di Schlögel si concentrano su un anno preciso: il titolo Novantatré indica proprio l’anno 1793; il sottotitolo al saggio di Schlögel è "Mosca 1937". Si tratta di anni in cui particolari regimi hanno dato sfogo a tutta la violenza di cui erano capaci.
Prima di parlare del sottotitolo, e quindi della Mosca del ’37 che è l’argomento del saggio, è interessante soffermarsi sul titolo: L’utopia e il terrore (Terror und Traum, terrore e sogno, nell’originale tedesco). Schlögel fa notare già nel titolo il legame indissolubile che esiste tra il tentativo di piegare la realtà secondo un disegno preciso e gli atti di violenza: negare la realtà o volerla corrispondente ai propri desideri genera sempre violenza (lo ha insegnato Raskol’nikov, e non a caso Dostoevskij subì un deciso ostracismo in epoca sovietica). Nella recensione a Vita e destino, che a ben vedere tratta lo stesso problema, ricordavo O’Brian che in 1984 afferma: "libertà è la libertà di dire che due più due fa quattro"; negata la realtà, al contrario, la libertà non esiste, e si cade nel terrore.
Schlögel analizza tutte la forme di questo terrore, tutti gli ambiti in cui vi si è fatto ricorso nella Mosca del ’37: si parla del partito, ma anche della vita quotidiana: lo sport, la musica, la letteratura (Puškin in particolare), la creazione di infrastrutture ecc ecc… Le azioni della polizia politica vengono spiegate anche alla luce del contesto in cui il Terrore ha avuto luogo: la violenza non si è sviluppata nel vuoto, ma nel contesto delle crescenti tensioni internazionali con l’attesa di una guerra imminente, del ventesimo anniversario della Rivoluzione, e in seguito alla promulgazione della Costituzione staliniana nel 1936, che indiceva elezioni "libere, universali e segrete" per l’anno successivo, dando per scontato l’avvenuto superamento della società divisa in classi. Dal momento che la società era ancora diversificata, era necessario agli occhi del potere eliminare tutte quelle componenti che la rendevano tale:
"La messa in scena delle elezioni libere, universali e segrete e la purga della società erano due facce della stessa medaglia, del processo finalizzato a compiere l’unità del popolo sovietico."
A questo mira anche il realismo socialista che si impone in questi stessi anni: non a ritrarre la realtà, ma a rappresentare la realtà come dovrebbe essere, e come sarà con l’affermazione del sistema comunista. Chi nega questa "realtà futura" è un nemico, chi viene incolpato, spesso a torto, per il malfunzionamento di qualunque ingranaggio dello stato diventa un sabotatore che ostacola la costruzione di una società sovietica perfetta. L’uomo nuovo, l’uomo sovietico, deve essere conforme a un’idea precisa di cittadino. La cosa ancora più terribile è che spesso neanche questo bastava, dal momento che per ogni regione si erano fissate quote di persone da eliminare, e bastava trovarsi al posto sbagliato nel momento sbagliato per finire nella lista.
Quest’atmosfera di terrore è restituita con grande precisione da Schlögel: anche gli argomenti più conosciuti vengono approfonditi, documentati e messi in relazione tra loro. Quello che invece non mi è piaciuto, e che si deve in parte alla versione originale del saggio e in parte alla traduzione italiana, è la sciatteria nella traslitterazione delle parole e dei nomi russi. Nella maggior parte dei casi si seguono le regole di pronuncia del tedesco invece delle regole di traslitterazione standard; in più, capita che lo stesso nome venga riportato secondo due diverse traslitterazioni (per esempio avtozavodCij e avtozavodSij, entrambe traslitterazioni sbagliate di avtozavodcy)… è un peccato che un lavoro tanto meticoloso sia fiaccato da trascuratezze del genere.
Prima di parlare del sottotitolo, e quindi della Mosca del ’37 che è l’argomento del saggio, è interessante soffermarsi sul titolo: L’utopia e il terrore (Terror und Traum, terrore e sogno, nell’originale tedesco). Schlögel fa notare già nel titolo il legame indissolubile che esiste tra il tentativo di piegare la realtà secondo un disegno preciso e gli atti di violenza: negare la realtà o volerla corrispondente ai propri desideri genera sempre violenza (lo ha insegnato Raskol’nikov, e non a caso Dostoevskij subì un deciso ostracismo in epoca sovietica). Nella recensione a Vita e destino, che a ben vedere tratta lo stesso problema, ricordavo O’Brian che in 1984 afferma: "libertà è la libertà di dire che due più due fa quattro"; negata la realtà, al contrario, la libertà non esiste, e si cade nel terrore.
Schlögel analizza tutte la forme di questo terrore, tutti gli ambiti in cui vi si è fatto ricorso nella Mosca del ’37: si parla del partito, ma anche della vita quotidiana: lo sport, la musica, la letteratura (Puškin in particolare), la creazione di infrastrutture ecc ecc… Le azioni della polizia politica vengono spiegate anche alla luce del contesto in cui il Terrore ha avuto luogo: la violenza non si è sviluppata nel vuoto, ma nel contesto delle crescenti tensioni internazionali con l’attesa di una guerra imminente, del ventesimo anniversario della Rivoluzione, e in seguito alla promulgazione della Costituzione staliniana nel 1936, che indiceva elezioni "libere, universali e segrete" per l’anno successivo, dando per scontato l’avvenuto superamento della società divisa in classi. Dal momento che la società era ancora diversificata, era necessario agli occhi del potere eliminare tutte quelle componenti che la rendevano tale:
"La messa in scena delle elezioni libere, universali e segrete e la purga della società erano due facce della stessa medaglia, del processo finalizzato a compiere l’unità del popolo sovietico."
A questo mira anche il realismo socialista che si impone in questi stessi anni: non a ritrarre la realtà, ma a rappresentare la realtà come dovrebbe essere, e come sarà con l’affermazione del sistema comunista. Chi nega questa "realtà futura" è un nemico, chi viene incolpato, spesso a torto, per il malfunzionamento di qualunque ingranaggio dello stato diventa un sabotatore che ostacola la costruzione di una società sovietica perfetta. L’uomo nuovo, l’uomo sovietico, deve essere conforme a un’idea precisa di cittadino. La cosa ancora più terribile è che spesso neanche questo bastava, dal momento che per ogni regione si erano fissate quote di persone da eliminare, e bastava trovarsi al posto sbagliato nel momento sbagliato per finire nella lista.
Quest’atmosfera di terrore è restituita con grande precisione da Schlögel: anche gli argomenti più conosciuti vengono approfonditi, documentati e messi in relazione tra loro. Quello che invece non mi è piaciuto, e che si deve in parte alla versione originale del saggio e in parte alla traduzione italiana, è la sciatteria nella traslitterazione delle parole e dei nomi russi. Nella maggior parte dei casi si seguono le regole di pronuncia del tedesco invece delle regole di traslitterazione standard; in più, capita che lo stesso nome venga riportato secondo due diverse traslitterazioni (per esempio avtozavodCij e avtozavodSij, entrambe traslitterazioni sbagliate di avtozavodcy)… è un peccato che un lavoro tanto meticoloso sia fiaccato da trascuratezze del genere.
June 13, 2024
Extraordinary book, insightful look at one year in the life of Moscow/Stalin/the Soviet Union as it gradually descended into the horrors of the trials/purges. It is the sort of book only a German could write - fascinating, penetrating, but not always an easy read. Of particular interest is the contrast between what was really happening and what the great anti-fascist but a bit-of-a-dick Lion Feuchtwanger wrote in his book about Moscow in 1937. Of course no one (well maybe except Germans) remember what a towering figure Lion was in literature throughout Europe and the USA* - I'll be honest I didn't know - which is refreshing when you see all the so called 'celebrities' of today. A great, fascinating book, but maybe not for everyone. I'd like to reread it again but wonder if I will ever find the time.
*Of all the German anti-Nazi exiles in the USA Feuchtwanger was by far the best known amongst ordinary newspaper readers and book buyers. His now almost completely forgotten but his novels far outsold Thomas Mann. In Los Angeles he lived in a far greater state then the Mann's and was acknowledged as doyen the German exile community.
*Of all the German anti-Nazi exiles in the USA Feuchtwanger was by far the best known amongst ordinary newspaper readers and book buyers. His now almost completely forgotten but his novels far outsold Thomas Mann. In Los Angeles he lived in a far greater state then the Mann's and was acknowledged as doyen the German exile community.
December 18, 2020
Historical analysis and description doesn’t get better than this.
May 5, 2020
Apparently nobody in my local library was interested anymore in this book, as it was sold for 1 Euro at the annual book sale. Focusing on approximately one year and one place, it explores both the exploits of the year (the records of the pilots, the grand Pushkin festival and World Exhibition building, exploration of the Arctic, ..) and the terror (the show trials and the arrests on a mass scale of the enemies of the people). The author wants to prove that terror and dream can't be seen separate from each other. The new 1937 Stalin constitution for instance (for the first time attributing the right to vote to former enemies of the state) is seen as an impulse to hunt down and kill those same class enemies. We give them the right to vote, so we need to arrest and kill them.
June 8, 2019
Wat een geweldig boek! Schlögel onderzoekt het stalinisme aan de hand van telefoonboeken, brieven, plattegronden, fotoboeken, toeristenbrochures en nog veel meer. De totale en totale krankzinnigheid en wreedheid van deze periode dringt zo steeds meer binnen.
January 17, 2022
Un paseo por el tiempo y el espacio, en todas sus concepciones, que sigue un ritmo constante que a veces extenúa por su nivel de detalle. Sin duda, es una radiografía social, política, cultural, científica... cargada de fuentes primarias y documentación de lo que representaron las purgas y procesos de 1937-1938 en un estado en constante construcción como la URSS.
September 11, 2024
Although I can't quit bring myself to give this work five stars, I come away very impressed with Schlogel's attempt to capture the spirit of Moscow in 1937, which was an age of wonders and horrors, as utopia still seemed possible, and Soviet society descended into the maelstrom of the Great Purge. Why the purge? To cut to the chase, Schlogel argues that the higher Party leadership was so out of touch with the social impact of collectivization and the Five Year Plans that, with a genuine national election in the offing, the realization that accountability was hanging over their heads like the Sword of Damocles concentrated minds in the Politburo. Add to this the rising threat of a new general war creating the need for at least forced social solidarity, the solution was to sacrifice the expendable to the mobs and create new cadres from people who had been brought up in the Soviet system.
The note that Schlogel ends his work on is the rebuilding of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in central Moscow, which was to have been the site for the grand Palace of the Soviets, with Schlogel's open question being what symbolic void is being filled. Almost a generation down the pike, the answer would seem to be that the malign inheritance of Stalinism still seems to fill that space.
The note that Schlogel ends his work on is the rebuilding of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in central Moscow, which was to have been the site for the grand Palace of the Soviets, with Schlogel's open question being what symbolic void is being filled. Almost a generation down the pike, the answer would seem to be that the malign inheritance of Stalinism still seems to fill that space.
September 28, 2024
Terrifying.
September 5, 2014
Schloegel, Karl. Moscow 1937, Polity Press, New York, 2013, Trans by Rodney Livingstone (653pp.$35)
In the year of the Great Terror, a brilliant piece of reportage about America appeared in the Soviet Union and became in its time one of the most widely read bits of travel journalism, popular with everyone in Russia. The political newspaper Pravda commissioned two journalists, Il’ia Il’f and Evgenii Petrov, to travel in the United States and write an account of the country.
Called “Little Golden America”, the resulting book was an unambiguous hymn of praise to America, with which the Soviet Union had a complex relationship---both countries curiously counterposed as God’s gift to mankind, and both threatened by Fascism.
The authors met with Franklin Roosevelt, saw the electric chair at Sing Sin prison in New York, explored General Motors and met with countless Americans in different walks of life, from black singers and dancers in the South to hobos, working stiffs and religious leaders. Everywhere they went, the two journalists reported Americans’ intense interest in the Soviet project. After all, both countries had a dream.
The story of “Little Golden America” and its journalist authors is just one of many panoramic views of “total history” brought forth in Karl Schloegel’s revolutionary, majestic and groundbreaking new work, “Moscow 1937”. Compelling in every way (save perhaps in some if its stumbling translations from the German), the book startles the mind and stirs the imagination in the way that only poetry and music can sometimes do.
Take, for example, Schloegel’s brilliant analysis of the 1936 Moscow Directory (a kind of sophisticated phone book, cultural repository and government handbook), which brims with the names and addresses of people and things that were soon to disappear into the maw of the Great Terror, a situation that “encapsulates a moment in time in which the accusers and the accused, the perpetrators and the victims, the executioners and the executed of the morrow still sit side by side.”
Or, on the macabre side, consider Schloegel’s inventory of the luxuries in the apartment of executed NKVD (Secret Police) head Genrikh Yagoda: 1,229 bottles of wine, mainly imported vintages from 1897, 1900 and 1902; 3,915 pornographic photos and films; and 11,057 imported cigarettes, including Egyptian and Turkish ones.
This great panorama of Moscow during 1937 (with views of 1936 and ’38) marries sweep with depth, analyzing (with photos) Moscow’s gigantic railroad yards; its massive construction projects, which mirrored those of Hausmann in 19th century Paris; and its efforts to turn rivers around, dig canals, destroy churches, mosques, and “old Moscow’s” many convoluted squares in favor of rationality and power.
Schloegel takes us inside the Census of 1937 to uncover its sinister purposes and goals (its bureaucrats were all executed), the great Pushkin Jubilee celebrations of February 937, the Party Plenum meetings, U.S.S.R. Pavilion at the International Exhibition of that same year, Soviet Deco architecture and the grand masked balls given by the NKVD in honor of its own activities.
Included in the book are unparalleled views of Soviet high society, the opening of the Moscow-Volga Canal (its engineers were all executed later), Soviet polar exploration and flight, and drama in the theater-mad city, all against the backdrop of fear, paranoia, denunciation, mass arrests, suicides and executions.
Schloegel’s sources come as an almost complete surprise. For example, he analyzes the tenant records of the famous “House on the Embankment”, a luxury apartment wehre in a single year its nearly 2,500 residents (most of them government officials or part big-wigs) almost entirely disappeared: imprisoned, executed or driven to suicide. Likewise, Scloegel analyzes the glittering salons of the N KVD, where Shostakovich and Babel hobnobbed with brutal murderers, and its nearly limitless maze of offices, garages, shooting ranges, isolation cells, interrogation chambers and main prison, Lubyanka.
Like the Christian enterprise, the Communist enterprise sought to transform the natural world and its human inhabitants, the latter in service to a dream that became a terror. Like other transformative books of its kind (DeVoto’s “Year of Decision, 1846” or Braudel’s “The Mediterranean in the Age of Phillip II”), “Moscow 937 radicalizes and transforms our view of reality. Along with its fabulous maps and photographs, it is an instant classic.
In the year of the Great Terror, a brilliant piece of reportage about America appeared in the Soviet Union and became in its time one of the most widely read bits of travel journalism, popular with everyone in Russia. The political newspaper Pravda commissioned two journalists, Il’ia Il’f and Evgenii Petrov, to travel in the United States and write an account of the country.
Called “Little Golden America”, the resulting book was an unambiguous hymn of praise to America, with which the Soviet Union had a complex relationship---both countries curiously counterposed as God’s gift to mankind, and both threatened by Fascism.
The authors met with Franklin Roosevelt, saw the electric chair at Sing Sin prison in New York, explored General Motors and met with countless Americans in different walks of life, from black singers and dancers in the South to hobos, working stiffs and religious leaders. Everywhere they went, the two journalists reported Americans’ intense interest in the Soviet project. After all, both countries had a dream.
The story of “Little Golden America” and its journalist authors is just one of many panoramic views of “total history” brought forth in Karl Schloegel’s revolutionary, majestic and groundbreaking new work, “Moscow 1937”. Compelling in every way (save perhaps in some if its stumbling translations from the German), the book startles the mind and stirs the imagination in the way that only poetry and music can sometimes do.
Take, for example, Schloegel’s brilliant analysis of the 1936 Moscow Directory (a kind of sophisticated phone book, cultural repository and government handbook), which brims with the names and addresses of people and things that were soon to disappear into the maw of the Great Terror, a situation that “encapsulates a moment in time in which the accusers and the accused, the perpetrators and the victims, the executioners and the executed of the morrow still sit side by side.”
Or, on the macabre side, consider Schloegel’s inventory of the luxuries in the apartment of executed NKVD (Secret Police) head Genrikh Yagoda: 1,229 bottles of wine, mainly imported vintages from 1897, 1900 and 1902; 3,915 pornographic photos and films; and 11,057 imported cigarettes, including Egyptian and Turkish ones.
This great panorama of Moscow during 1937 (with views of 1936 and ’38) marries sweep with depth, analyzing (with photos) Moscow’s gigantic railroad yards; its massive construction projects, which mirrored those of Hausmann in 19th century Paris; and its efforts to turn rivers around, dig canals, destroy churches, mosques, and “old Moscow’s” many convoluted squares in favor of rationality and power.
Schloegel takes us inside the Census of 1937 to uncover its sinister purposes and goals (its bureaucrats were all executed), the great Pushkin Jubilee celebrations of February 937, the Party Plenum meetings, U.S.S.R. Pavilion at the International Exhibition of that same year, Soviet Deco architecture and the grand masked balls given by the NKVD in honor of its own activities.
Included in the book are unparalleled views of Soviet high society, the opening of the Moscow-Volga Canal (its engineers were all executed later), Soviet polar exploration and flight, and drama in the theater-mad city, all against the backdrop of fear, paranoia, denunciation, mass arrests, suicides and executions.
Schloegel’s sources come as an almost complete surprise. For example, he analyzes the tenant records of the famous “House on the Embankment”, a luxury apartment wehre in a single year its nearly 2,500 residents (most of them government officials or part big-wigs) almost entirely disappeared: imprisoned, executed or driven to suicide. Likewise, Scloegel analyzes the glittering salons of the N KVD, where Shostakovich and Babel hobnobbed with brutal murderers, and its nearly limitless maze of offices, garages, shooting ranges, isolation cells, interrogation chambers and main prison, Lubyanka.
Like the Christian enterprise, the Communist enterprise sought to transform the natural world and its human inhabitants, the latter in service to a dream that became a terror. Like other transformative books of its kind (DeVoto’s “Year of Decision, 1846” or Braudel’s “The Mediterranean in the Age of Phillip II”), “Moscow 937 radicalizes and transforms our view of reality. Along with its fabulous maps and photographs, it is an instant classic.
October 11, 2014
Pats sau pavydžiu, kad perskaičiau šią knygą.
Nors niekada Maskvoje ir nebuvau, tačiau Maskva 1937-aisiais man tiek pat vaizdinga, kaip ir mano paties prisiminimai iš įvairių kelionių. Knygoje labai tiksliai perteikiami vaizdai, pvz. paskutinis skyrius apie Tarybų rūmų statybų projektą - pirma aprašytą Kristaus Išganytojo soboras, jo istorija, sprogdinimo darbai, tada aprašyta grandiozinių planų Tarybų rūmams kūrimo istorija, ir tos istorijos atomazga - Kristaus Išganytojo soboras atstatyttas 1995-2000 metais.
Kalbant apie istorinius reikalus, tai ši knyga nušvietė ketvirtojo dešimtmečio teroro įvykius kiek kitokioje šviesoje negu buvau įpratęs tą terorą matyti. Sensacingiausias atradimas buvo tas, kad sovietai vykdė savo žmonių terorą, ne todėl, kad jie buvo žiaurūs ir labai stiprūs, bet dėl to, kad jie buvo
žiaurūs ir silpni. Teroras turėjo veikti, kaip liaudį suvienijanti jėga, nes, pasirodo, valdžia kitos jėgos ir neturėjo liaudies suvienijimui...
Kitas svarbus knygos aspektas tai yra svajonės. Svojonės buvo Maskvos varomoji jėga aprašomu laikotarpiu. Tarybų valdžiai prijaučiantys svajojo apie tobulos visuomenės sukūrimą, svajojo apie grandioziniu projektus, e.g. Tarybų rūmai, Maskvos pavertimas "Penkių jūrų miestu"... Kaimiečiai atvykę į miestą svajojo apie šviesesnį rytojų kai jie galės ramiai gyventi nejausdami nepriteklių. Jie atvykę į miestą tiesiog rinkdavosi prie gamyklų ir fabrikų vartų ir čia iškart būdavo įdarbinami. Nors tas darbas buvo ir kraupiai sunkus, ir miegoti tekę tiesiog po tomis pačiomis staklėmis prie kurių visą dieną dirbta, bet tai buvo vienintelis kelias į geresnį gyvenimą, todėl entuziasmo buvę daug. Sportininkai, lakūnai, keliautojai, atradėjai svajojo pasiekti visus pasaulio rekordus savo Tarybų šaliai. Visi turėjo utopinių vilčių.
Apibendrinant, knyga tikrai verta dėmesio. Net jei istorija ir nėra mėgstamiausia tema, tai knygą galima skaityti ir kaip grožinį veikalą. Nes vien jau pirmame skyriuje kalbant apie Michailo Bulgakovo "Meistrą ir Margaritą", buvo suformuota mintis, kad tais laikais Maskvos dėjosi stačiai neįtikėtini dalykai.
Nors niekada Maskvoje ir nebuvau, tačiau Maskva 1937-aisiais man tiek pat vaizdinga, kaip ir mano paties prisiminimai iš įvairių kelionių. Knygoje labai tiksliai perteikiami vaizdai, pvz. paskutinis skyrius apie Tarybų rūmų statybų projektą - pirma aprašytą Kristaus Išganytojo soboras, jo istorija, sprogdinimo darbai, tada aprašyta grandiozinių planų Tarybų rūmams kūrimo istorija, ir tos istorijos atomazga - Kristaus Išganytojo soboras atstatyttas 1995-2000 metais.
Kalbant apie istorinius reikalus, tai ši knyga nušvietė ketvirtojo dešimtmečio teroro įvykius kiek kitokioje šviesoje negu buvau įpratęs tą terorą matyti. Sensacingiausias atradimas buvo tas, kad sovietai vykdė savo žmonių terorą, ne todėl, kad jie buvo žiaurūs ir labai stiprūs, bet dėl to, kad jie buvo
žiaurūs ir silpni. Teroras turėjo veikti, kaip liaudį suvienijanti jėga, nes, pasirodo, valdžia kitos jėgos ir neturėjo liaudies suvienijimui...
Kitas svarbus knygos aspektas tai yra svajonės. Svojonės buvo Maskvos varomoji jėga aprašomu laikotarpiu. Tarybų valdžiai prijaučiantys svajojo apie tobulos visuomenės sukūrimą, svajojo apie grandioziniu projektus, e.g. Tarybų rūmai, Maskvos pavertimas "Penkių jūrų miestu"... Kaimiečiai atvykę į miestą svajojo apie šviesesnį rytojų kai jie galės ramiai gyventi nejausdami nepriteklių. Jie atvykę į miestą tiesiog rinkdavosi prie gamyklų ir fabrikų vartų ir čia iškart būdavo įdarbinami. Nors tas darbas buvo ir kraupiai sunkus, ir miegoti tekę tiesiog po tomis pačiomis staklėmis prie kurių visą dieną dirbta, bet tai buvo vienintelis kelias į geresnį gyvenimą, todėl entuziasmo buvę daug. Sportininkai, lakūnai, keliautojai, atradėjai svajojo pasiekti visus pasaulio rekordus savo Tarybų šaliai. Visi turėjo utopinių vilčių.
Apibendrinant, knyga tikrai verta dėmesio. Net jei istorija ir nėra mėgstamiausia tema, tai knygą galima skaityti ir kaip grožinį veikalą. Nes vien jau pirmame skyriuje kalbant apie Michailo Bulgakovo "Meistrą ir Margaritą", buvo suformuota mintis, kad tais laikais Maskvos dėjosi stačiai neįtikėtini dalykai.
January 10, 2010
Schlögels Buch hat mich über mehrere Monate begleitet. Da die einzelnen Kapitel als Referenzpunkt zwar das Jahr 1937 haben, ansonsten aber durchaus als eigenständige Skizzen gelesen werden können, ist es unproblematisch, das Buch ein paar Wochen liegenzulassen und dann weiter zu lesen.
Schlögel ist es gelungen, ein gelehrtes Buch zu schreiben, in einer sehr gut lesbaren, nicht wissenschaftlichen, sondern prosaischen, manchmal sogar poetischen Sprache, ein Großessay sozusagen.
Beeindruckend sind diese Skizzen, in denen ein Schlüsseljahr der Sowjetgeschichte - und wie Schlögel immer wieder betont und es auch zeigen kann: der europäischen Geschichte - in allen Facetten dargestellt wird. Das Jahr 1937 wird verortet im Zusammenhang der Zeitgeschichte. Es verliert dadurch nichts an seiner Monstrosität, aber das Handeln der sowjetischen Führung wird verständlicher.
Ein überaus faszinierendes Buch, das ich jedem empfehlen kann, der sich mit der Geschichte des Totalitarismus auseinandersetzen möchte und der Interesse hat, den gewaltigen Umbruch zu verstehen, in dem sich die Sowjetunion Mitte der dreißiger Jahre befand. Interessant erscheint mir dabei, dass diese Umbruchssituation in vielerlei Hinsichten auch für andere ähnliche totalitäre Momente, z.B. die chinesische Geschichte der 50er bis 70er Jahre erhellende Parallelen bereithält (Schlögel selbst zieht diese Parallele nicht).
Schlögel ist es gelungen, ein gelehrtes Buch zu schreiben, in einer sehr gut lesbaren, nicht wissenschaftlichen, sondern prosaischen, manchmal sogar poetischen Sprache, ein Großessay sozusagen.
Beeindruckend sind diese Skizzen, in denen ein Schlüsseljahr der Sowjetgeschichte - und wie Schlögel immer wieder betont und es auch zeigen kann: der europäischen Geschichte - in allen Facetten dargestellt wird. Das Jahr 1937 wird verortet im Zusammenhang der Zeitgeschichte. Es verliert dadurch nichts an seiner Monstrosität, aber das Handeln der sowjetischen Führung wird verständlicher.
Ein überaus faszinierendes Buch, das ich jedem empfehlen kann, der sich mit der Geschichte des Totalitarismus auseinandersetzen möchte und der Interesse hat, den gewaltigen Umbruch zu verstehen, in dem sich die Sowjetunion Mitte der dreißiger Jahre befand. Interessant erscheint mir dabei, dass diese Umbruchssituation in vielerlei Hinsichten auch für andere ähnliche totalitäre Momente, z.B. die chinesische Geschichte der 50er bis 70er Jahre erhellende Parallelen bereithält (Schlögel selbst zieht diese Parallele nicht).
January 1, 2017
Por lo general cuanto en la escuela enseñan sobre Rusia se ve solo dos temas los años de la Rusia imperial o los crímenes y guerras de la Unión Sovietica. Este libro explora un momento paradójico pues por un lado Moscu esta cambiando su arquitectura y esta en pleno boom cultura. Al mismo tiempo se asesinan y desaparece a miles de ciudadanos sospechosos de conspirar contra el estado. Muy recomendable texto, no obstante es un tanto denso y con muchos detalles y datos; toma tiempo su lectura.
May 13, 2018
Karl Schlögel is to be commended for what is a very readable and well written book generally. The book outlines the critical year of 1937 in which many Soviet people died in a political purge orchestrated and directed by the centre of power in Moscow.
Using atmosphere, dodgy statistics, innuendo and endless repetition the likes of Stalin and the public prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky got rid of thousands of people that were suspected of disloyalty to the state.
Why? Because they knew a war would break out and the Soviet State was not built on the loving kindness of its neighbours. It sought out weak points in loyalty to the leadership. This is not unlike the internal security of the UK or the USA which similarly investigated, harassed, tortured, incarcerated and killed those it saw as disloyal to its leadership. Unlike the UK and USA, the Soviet Union was subject to many external hostile governments threatening to destroy it for the entire history of its existence.
The difference between most people in the West (including Schlögel) and the Russian people today is a simple one. It is a question of perspective and degree. Using atmosphere, dodgy statistics, innuendo and endless repetition Schlögel builds an argument that 1.5 million people were killed in the Soviet Union, and specifically 700 thousand in this purge. Elsewhere he references other erroneous statistics, never proved, of tens of millions dying in famines. Not only are the numbers inflated and extrapolated from small samplings of data and prejudiced witness anecdotes they also presume aims beyond those of the Soviet leadership itself. It narrowly targeted people in power, to remove their independence and enforce loyalty to the authority of Stalin.
That said Schlögel does something quite useful. He does show the remarkable advances that the Soviet Union had made by this point. Its industrial capacity well outlined in the book had reached a level that will astound any reader. Schlögel does not shy away also from the outstanding cultural achievements. Schlögel further gives a wide variety of contemporary interpretations of the purge such as from the insightful and accomplished writer Feuchtwanger.
Schlögel is not any ordinary Anti-Soviet pro-USA flunkey. He gives a pretty good story, a lot of facts and details about the period, and his book is well worth the read, just ignore more imaginative bits. There was no need to inflate the deaths, he could have aimed lower to what we know and can establish. Outlining the areas we don't know would also have been very helpful, and would have given us a better understanding than making claims out of nothing.
Using atmosphere, dodgy statistics, innuendo and endless repetition the likes of Stalin and the public prosecutor Andrey Vyshinsky got rid of thousands of people that were suspected of disloyalty to the state.
Why? Because they knew a war would break out and the Soviet State was not built on the loving kindness of its neighbours. It sought out weak points in loyalty to the leadership. This is not unlike the internal security of the UK or the USA which similarly investigated, harassed, tortured, incarcerated and killed those it saw as disloyal to its leadership. Unlike the UK and USA, the Soviet Union was subject to many external hostile governments threatening to destroy it for the entire history of its existence.
The difference between most people in the West (including Schlögel) and the Russian people today is a simple one. It is a question of perspective and degree. Using atmosphere, dodgy statistics, innuendo and endless repetition Schlögel builds an argument that 1.5 million people were killed in the Soviet Union, and specifically 700 thousand in this purge. Elsewhere he references other erroneous statistics, never proved, of tens of millions dying in famines. Not only are the numbers inflated and extrapolated from small samplings of data and prejudiced witness anecdotes they also presume aims beyond those of the Soviet leadership itself. It narrowly targeted people in power, to remove their independence and enforce loyalty to the authority of Stalin.
That said Schlögel does something quite useful. He does show the remarkable advances that the Soviet Union had made by this point. Its industrial capacity well outlined in the book had reached a level that will astound any reader. Schlögel does not shy away also from the outstanding cultural achievements. Schlögel further gives a wide variety of contemporary interpretations of the purge such as from the insightful and accomplished writer Feuchtwanger.
Schlögel is not any ordinary Anti-Soviet pro-USA flunkey. He gives a pretty good story, a lot of facts and details about the period, and his book is well worth the read, just ignore more imaginative bits. There was no need to inflate the deaths, he could have aimed lower to what we know and can establish. Outlining the areas we don't know would also have been very helpful, and would have given us a better understanding than making claims out of nothing.
March 21, 2020
The original title, Terror und Traum (Terror and Dream), really summarises the book perfectly. Schlögel paints a wide tapestry over Moscow and the Soviet Union at a time when it had emerged from the civil war and the future looked bright, but hundreds of thousands were consumed by Stalin’s terror.
We taken on a flight through the new Moscow, a modern city growing ferociously, where the Palace of the Soviets is just being built, where the lunapark in Gorkij Park is entertaining children and adults alike, where one parade after the other marches across the Red Square, but where the workers of the Stalin Automobile Plant lived in utter squalor and hudreds of people per day were shot in the back of the head at the Butovo Shooting Range.
It’s hard to overstate the contrasts between the glitzy storefronts of Moscow with schoolchildren queuing six hours for a loaf of bread.
At the same time as Soviet aviators are wowing the world with their record flights and western intellectuals like André Gide and Lion Feuchtwanger are charmed by Stalin and the culture of the USSR the show processes are sentencing “saboteurs” to their deaths and the troikas are sending “enemies” to be shot in such numbers that the phone books stop being published – they can’t keep up with the changes.
Moscow, 1937 is a terrifying and wonderful book giving an insight into a world new hope and shattered dreams. What should have been a major chapter in the history of the world became just a prelude to the greater disaster of the world war.
We taken on a flight through the new Moscow, a modern city growing ferociously, where the Palace of the Soviets is just being built, where the lunapark in Gorkij Park is entertaining children and adults alike, where one parade after the other marches across the Red Square, but where the workers of the Stalin Automobile Plant lived in utter squalor and hudreds of people per day were shot in the back of the head at the Butovo Shooting Range.
It’s hard to overstate the contrasts between the glitzy storefronts of Moscow with schoolchildren queuing six hours for a loaf of bread.
At the same time as Soviet aviators are wowing the world with their record flights and western intellectuals like André Gide and Lion Feuchtwanger are charmed by Stalin and the culture of the USSR the show processes are sentencing “saboteurs” to their deaths and the troikas are sending “enemies” to be shot in such numbers that the phone books stop being published – they can’t keep up with the changes.
Moscow, 1937 is a terrifying and wonderful book giving an insight into a world new hope and shattered dreams. What should have been a major chapter in the history of the world became just a prelude to the greater disaster of the world war.
April 16, 2024
Three men find themselves in Lubyanka, waiting for their execution. They start to talk.
The first one turns and says:"I was arrested because I was accused of supporting Karl Radek"
The second one says: "Oh yeah? I was accused of opposing Karl Radek"
The third one finally turns says:"Gentlemen, I am Karl Radek".
*******
In general, a very good book that suffers from being too bloated. Its hard to identify what some chapters, like the ones more focused on social history, adds to the book. It's interesting however to be presented with the architects of modern Russia only to find a list of who's been executed in the same year.
I do miss a better analysis of the ideological and political forces that drove the Terror - was it a Russian exception? The natural conclusion of socialism? The particular whims of one man? This kind of analysis would have improved the book beyond a mere description of the Terror, no matter how interesting it was. I would've liked also similar chapters such as the one written for Bukharin to other notable figures both victim and perpetrators of the Yerror - but perhaps this is already going too far in demanding something the book has not proposed itself to be.
The first one turns and says:"I was arrested because I was accused of supporting Karl Radek"
The second one says: "Oh yeah? I was accused of opposing Karl Radek"
The third one finally turns says:"Gentlemen, I am Karl Radek".
*******
In general, a very good book that suffers from being too bloated. Its hard to identify what some chapters, like the ones more focused on social history, adds to the book. It's interesting however to be presented with the architects of modern Russia only to find a list of who's been executed in the same year.
I do miss a better analysis of the ideological and political forces that drove the Terror - was it a Russian exception? The natural conclusion of socialism? The particular whims of one man? This kind of analysis would have improved the book beyond a mere description of the Terror, no matter how interesting it was. I would've liked also similar chapters such as the one written for Bukharin to other notable figures both victim and perpetrators of the Yerror - but perhaps this is already going too far in demanding something the book has not proposed itself to be.
May 24, 2020
Perhaps one’s response to this book depends on one’s predisposition. Or, as one of my professors once said, “where you stand depends upon where you sit.” If one’s idea of a thorough and engaging historical analysis of, say, a farm crisis is reading crop reports and production details, then this book may satisfy. But for someone looking for fewer mind-numbing statistics and more concision, this is not for you. Proving the banality and thoroughness of the 1937 terror by minutely dissecting a Moscow telephone directory, although lauded in some reviews, makes for exceedingly slow and painful reading.
Not every academic treatment of history makes for entertainment (see the equally ponderous Daniel Goldhagen’s “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,” for a similarly dry and statistically-clotted approach to a contemporary authoritarian society). I found myself wishing that a historian like Barbara Tuchman or Doris Kearns Goodwin had taken on this subject. The characters would have been presented more vividly, the events portrayed would have stood out more boldly and the reader would have been force-fed fewer impossible-to-retain minutiae about railroads, canals, and apartment buildings.
Not every academic treatment of history makes for entertainment (see the equally ponderous Daniel Goldhagen’s “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,” for a similarly dry and statistically-clotted approach to a contemporary authoritarian society). I found myself wishing that a historian like Barbara Tuchman or Doris Kearns Goodwin had taken on this subject. The characters would have been presented more vividly, the events portrayed would have stood out more boldly and the reader would have been force-fed fewer impossible-to-retain minutiae about railroads, canals, and apartment buildings.
April 21, 2013
(English summary below.)
Karl Schlögels Terror und Traum präsentiert dreiunddreissig Aspekte Moskaus im ätzenden Wahnsinn des stalinistischen Terrors 1937. Einige Kapitel sind mit Alltäglichem beschäftigt, Schlangestehen, Warenangebot, Radio, Jazz, Vergnügungsparks. Andere beleuchten Struktur und Diskurs des kulturellen und politischen Systems: ein Architektenkongress, Moskaubilder in Bulgakovs Roman oder ausländischen Reportagen, der sowjetische Pavillon auf der Pariser Weltausstellung. Manches regt mich zum kopfschüttelnden Schmunzeln an, anderem – wie den Kapiteln über Schauprozesse und Hinrichtungen – kann ich nur mit Entgeisterung begegnen.
Was mich verblüfft, ist die kolossale intellektuelle Disziplin und Kompetenz eines Systems, dass sich gleichzeitig in selbstgewählter Paranoia auffrisst. Kapitel 7, zum Beispiel, von der Volkszählung am 6. Januar 1937. Die gesamte Bevölkerung eines Riesenlandes, das 11 Zeitzonen berührt, unzählige Ethnizitäten beherbergt, und erst vor Kurzem aus Analphabetismus in die Moderne gerissen worden ist, wird an einem Tag erfasst. Dazu sind vorweg Informationskampagnen in die Wege geleitet worden, 17000 Instrukteure haben eine Million Volkszähler ausgebildet, ein überarbeitetes Lexikon mit 14000 verzeichneten Berufen wird veröffentlicht (“Zauberer” und “Zuhälter” gibt es in der Sowjetunion von 1937 nicht mehr). Das Zählen findet auf Skiern statt, in mehreren Sprachen, in Moskauer Wohnungen, in der Eisenbahn. Dank für meine Begriffe unglaublicher organisatorischer Kompetenz klappt alles. Das Resultat? 162 003 225 Bürger. Das passt der Parteiführung nicht; die Einwohnerzahl entspricht nicht den optimistischen Prognosen Stalins zum Bevölkerungswachstum der UdSSR, wo von 170 Millionen die Rede war. (Ein großer Teil der fehlenden Millionen sitzt entweder irgendwo im Gulag oder ist “dank” Planwirtschaft 1933 elend verhungert, vornehmlich in der Ukraine und Kasachstan.) Logik des Regimes: Das Resultate der Volkszählung wird nie veröffentlicht, die verantwortlichen Statistiker werden als Staatsfeinde hingerichtet. So blendet sich das Reich, entledigt sich groteskerweise genau der Kompetenz und des Datenmaterials, die für die Durchführung einer Planwirtschaft so dringend nötig wären.
Jedes Kapitel erzählt also im Grunde die gleiche Geschichte eines Systems im absurden Taumel von Selbstvernichtung und Paranoia anhand von lauter kleinen Details. Dreiunddreissig Facetten in denen sich die gleiche Szenerie spiegelt. Vielleicht lässt sich die Monstrosität des Ganzen durch die oft banalen Details des Kleinen am ehesten nahebringen. Die Form trägt natürlich auch zur Lesbarkeit des im Grunde schwerem Stoffes bei. Die Kapitel sind von einander unabhängig, das Buch lässt sich also ablegen, oder rückwärts lesen. Ich habe mich jedoch artig von Buchdeckel zu Buchdeckel durchgepflügt. Den Buchdeckel ziert übrigens der nie fertiggestellte Palast der Sowjet. Auch eine tolle Geschichte.
—
Karl Schlögels Moscow, 1937 (German title Terror and Dream) presents
thirty-three aspects of caustic madness during the Stalinist terror of 1937. Some chapters are concerned with aspects of day-to-day life: queuing, available products, radio, jazz, amusement parks. Others focus on the structure and discourse of the cultural and political system: a congress of architects, images of Moscow in Bulgakov's novel and foreign reports, the Soviet pavilion at the Paris world exhibition. Some chapters are amusingly grotesque, others – such as the chapters on show trials and executions – ghastly.
What amazes me is the colossal intellectual discipline and competence of a system that simultaneously devours itself in self-imposed paranoia. Chapter 7, for example, on the census of 6 January 1937. On a single day, the census was to record the entire population of a giant country spanning 11 time zones and was home to countless ethnicities. A nation that had been pulled out of illiteracy in the Modernity only recently. The preparations had included huge information campaigns, 17,000 instructors had trained a million census takers, a revised lexicon enumerated 14,000 official professions ("sorcerer" and "pimp" no longer exists in the Soviet Union of 1937.). People were counted on skis, in several languages, in Moscow apartments, and on the train. I am baffled by the organisational talent that made this work. The result? 162,003,225 citizens. That did not please the Party leadership, as the population did not match Stalin’s optimistic forecasts of a population of 170 million. (A large part of the missing millions was in some Gulag or had starved miserably 1933, mostly in the Ukraine and Kazakhstan.) The regime’s conclusion is logical: the results of the census were never published, the responsible statistician were executed as enemies of the state. Grotesquely, the regime rids itself of precisely the expertise and the data material that would be so desperately needed for the implementation of a planned economy.
Each of the thirty-three chapter basically tells the same meta-story of a system in absurd frenzy of self-destruction and paranoia; thirty-three facets reflecting the same scene. Perhaps the monstrosity of the whole can only be grasped through the mundane details of the parts. Given the very heavy subject matter, the book is quite accessible. The chapters are largely independent, so the book can be put down for a period, or read backwards. However, I dutifully plowed through it from cover to cover. By the way, the cover is festooned with the uncompleted Palace of the Soviets. Another a great story.
I’ve read this book in my native German, but an English translation exists.
Karl Schlögels Terror und Traum präsentiert dreiunddreissig Aspekte Moskaus im ätzenden Wahnsinn des stalinistischen Terrors 1937. Einige Kapitel sind mit Alltäglichem beschäftigt, Schlangestehen, Warenangebot, Radio, Jazz, Vergnügungsparks. Andere beleuchten Struktur und Diskurs des kulturellen und politischen Systems: ein Architektenkongress, Moskaubilder in Bulgakovs Roman oder ausländischen Reportagen, der sowjetische Pavillon auf der Pariser Weltausstellung. Manches regt mich zum kopfschüttelnden Schmunzeln an, anderem – wie den Kapiteln über Schauprozesse und Hinrichtungen – kann ich nur mit Entgeisterung begegnen.
Was mich verblüfft, ist die kolossale intellektuelle Disziplin und Kompetenz eines Systems, dass sich gleichzeitig in selbstgewählter Paranoia auffrisst. Kapitel 7, zum Beispiel, von der Volkszählung am 6. Januar 1937. Die gesamte Bevölkerung eines Riesenlandes, das 11 Zeitzonen berührt, unzählige Ethnizitäten beherbergt, und erst vor Kurzem aus Analphabetismus in die Moderne gerissen worden ist, wird an einem Tag erfasst. Dazu sind vorweg Informationskampagnen in die Wege geleitet worden, 17000 Instrukteure haben eine Million Volkszähler ausgebildet, ein überarbeitetes Lexikon mit 14000 verzeichneten Berufen wird veröffentlicht (“Zauberer” und “Zuhälter” gibt es in der Sowjetunion von 1937 nicht mehr). Das Zählen findet auf Skiern statt, in mehreren Sprachen, in Moskauer Wohnungen, in der Eisenbahn. Dank für meine Begriffe unglaublicher organisatorischer Kompetenz klappt alles. Das Resultat? 162 003 225 Bürger. Das passt der Parteiführung nicht; die Einwohnerzahl entspricht nicht den optimistischen Prognosen Stalins zum Bevölkerungswachstum der UdSSR, wo von 170 Millionen die Rede war. (Ein großer Teil der fehlenden Millionen sitzt entweder irgendwo im Gulag oder ist “dank” Planwirtschaft 1933 elend verhungert, vornehmlich in der Ukraine und Kasachstan.) Logik des Regimes: Das Resultate der Volkszählung wird nie veröffentlicht, die verantwortlichen Statistiker werden als Staatsfeinde hingerichtet. So blendet sich das Reich, entledigt sich groteskerweise genau der Kompetenz und des Datenmaterials, die für die Durchführung einer Planwirtschaft so dringend nötig wären.
Jedes Kapitel erzählt also im Grunde die gleiche Geschichte eines Systems im absurden Taumel von Selbstvernichtung und Paranoia anhand von lauter kleinen Details. Dreiunddreissig Facetten in denen sich die gleiche Szenerie spiegelt. Vielleicht lässt sich die Monstrosität des Ganzen durch die oft banalen Details des Kleinen am ehesten nahebringen. Die Form trägt natürlich auch zur Lesbarkeit des im Grunde schwerem Stoffes bei. Die Kapitel sind von einander unabhängig, das Buch lässt sich also ablegen, oder rückwärts lesen. Ich habe mich jedoch artig von Buchdeckel zu Buchdeckel durchgepflügt. Den Buchdeckel ziert übrigens der nie fertiggestellte Palast der Sowjet. Auch eine tolle Geschichte.
—
Karl Schlögels Moscow, 1937 (German title Terror and Dream) presents
thirty-three aspects of caustic madness during the Stalinist terror of 1937. Some chapters are concerned with aspects of day-to-day life: queuing, available products, radio, jazz, amusement parks. Others focus on the structure and discourse of the cultural and political system: a congress of architects, images of Moscow in Bulgakov's novel and foreign reports, the Soviet pavilion at the Paris world exhibition. Some chapters are amusingly grotesque, others – such as the chapters on show trials and executions – ghastly.
What amazes me is the colossal intellectual discipline and competence of a system that simultaneously devours itself in self-imposed paranoia. Chapter 7, for example, on the census of 6 January 1937. On a single day, the census was to record the entire population of a giant country spanning 11 time zones and was home to countless ethnicities. A nation that had been pulled out of illiteracy in the Modernity only recently. The preparations had included huge information campaigns, 17,000 instructors had trained a million census takers, a revised lexicon enumerated 14,000 official professions ("sorcerer" and "pimp" no longer exists in the Soviet Union of 1937.). People were counted on skis, in several languages, in Moscow apartments, and on the train. I am baffled by the organisational talent that made this work. The result? 162,003,225 citizens. That did not please the Party leadership, as the population did not match Stalin’s optimistic forecasts of a population of 170 million. (A large part of the missing millions was in some Gulag or had starved miserably 1933, mostly in the Ukraine and Kazakhstan.) The regime’s conclusion is logical: the results of the census were never published, the responsible statistician were executed as enemies of the state. Grotesquely, the regime rids itself of precisely the expertise and the data material that would be so desperately needed for the implementation of a planned economy.
Each of the thirty-three chapter basically tells the same meta-story of a system in absurd frenzy of self-destruction and paranoia; thirty-three facets reflecting the same scene. Perhaps the monstrosity of the whole can only be grasped through the mundane details of the parts. Given the very heavy subject matter, the book is quite accessible. The chapters are largely independent, so the book can be put down for a period, or read backwards. However, I dutifully plowed through it from cover to cover. By the way, the cover is festooned with the uncompleted Palace of the Soviets. Another a great story.
I’ve read this book in my native German, but an English translation exists.
May 21, 2020
There was a lot to like in this book but in the end to me it was just too plodding and detailed. I found myself frequently skimming and towards the end rapidly skimming.
The overall concept and context is compelling - Moscow in 1937 is looking back in celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Revolution - and looking forward to a looming conflict with the Fascist forces to the east and west. Stalin’s government, nervous that it does not have full control of the sprawling nation, doubles down on a paranoid police state.
I see other like this book a lot - and I can conceptualize why - but in the end it was not for me.
The overall concept and context is compelling - Moscow in 1937 is looking back in celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Revolution - and looking forward to a looming conflict with the Fascist forces to the east and west. Stalin’s government, nervous that it does not have full control of the sprawling nation, doubles down on a paranoid police state.
I see other like this book a lot - and I can conceptualize why - but in the end it was not for me.
May 18, 2022
Por afinidad selectiva llego desde El fin del «Homo sovieticus». Y, si juzgamos un libro por su portada, no creo que nada represente mejor la imagen de terror y utopía que el proyecto del Palacio de los Soviets.
1000 páginas perturbadoras que transcurren entre el sueño (desarrollo urbanístico, efervescencia cultural) y la pesadilla (muerte de 1 millón y medio de personas, denuncias, juicios falsos). Demasiado exhaustivo en sus detalles, quizás 350 páginas menos hubieron logrado una obra redonda.
1000 páginas perturbadoras que transcurren entre el sueño (desarrollo urbanístico, efervescencia cultural) y la pesadilla (muerte de 1 millón y medio de personas, denuncias, juicios falsos). Demasiado exhaustivo en sus detalles, quizás 350 páginas menos hubieron logrado una obra redonda.
November 8, 2023
I read a review of the English translation of this book in the Atlantic magazine 11 years ago and it's been sitting on my TBR shelf ever since, waiting for me to be in the proper mood to read a book about a year of mass murder in Moscow. Turns out it's never a good time so eventually I had to bite the bullet and read the darn thing. And then what do you say about it? The topic is grim, but the book is more than a list of who died and why and how. There's an attempt to talk about the other things that were going on at the time, the housing situation, the culture, the building of the metro. But it's all interwoven with a death cult.
June 15, 2021
Extraordinary look at an extraordinary place and time. Stitches together varied sources to present a sense of life and death for a broad sample of the people caught up in the maelstrom. Each chapter manages to be both unexpected in shining its particular, precious light onto Soviet life, while also feeling necessary and comprehensive.
One is left with the awe of a society frenetically reinventing itself, while also overwhelmed by the violent, incoherent waste of human lives. Chapters on Bukharin, the Central Committee Plenum, Ustrialov, and Soviet film are particularly good.
One is left with the awe of a society frenetically reinventing itself, while also overwhelmed by the violent, incoherent waste of human lives. Chapters on Bukharin, the Central Committee Plenum, Ustrialov, and Soviet film are particularly good.
June 10, 2021
One of the best books summarising a pinnacle year - signifying public celebration amid a nightmarish repression apparatus in full force.
Shlögel artfully shows all sides of the forming Soviet political body, its psyche, its phobia and how these were expressed publicly and implicitly, in speeches, in private notes, in KGB beaten out confessions, in public trial deliberations.
It’s a great book to read together with Kotkin’s Stalin 2nd volume
Shlögel artfully shows all sides of the forming Soviet political body, its psyche, its phobia and how these were expressed publicly and implicitly, in speeches, in private notes, in KGB beaten out confessions, in public trial deliberations.
It’s a great book to read together with Kotkin’s Stalin 2nd volume
January 1, 2017
This is a dystopia. Life in Moscow in 1937 is a place where you could be hailed as a hero in the spring and executed as a traitor in the fall. One image that sticks in my mind is that of vodka being served by the pailful to the executioners to help them deaden themselves to the overwhelming numbers of people they had to execute every day.
July 18, 2017
A very rewarding book - if you're very interested in Stalinism. Solzhenitsyn also covers this material a bit more dramatically - but Schlogel is interested in giving you a 360 degree picture of the culture and the atmosphere of the time. It's a long read, so you do need a burning interest in the topic.
September 7, 2025
A detailed accurate history of the very significant year of 1937 in the USSR. Detailing the crimes of a communist State on the edge of total annihilation by her own communist government led by the pockmarked Stalin.
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