Steeltown, USSR: Soviet Society in the Gorbachev Era

by Stephen Kotkin

No one, not even Mikhail Gorbachev, anticipated what was in store when the Soviet Union embarked in the 1980s on a radical course of long-overdue structural reform. The consequences of that momentous decision, which set in motion a transformation eventually affecting the entire postwar world order, are here chronicled from inside a previously forbidden Soviet city, Magnitogorsk. Built under Stalin and championed by him as a showcase of socialism, the city remained closed to Western scrutiny until four years ago, when Stephen Kotkin became the first American to live there in nearly half a century.

An uncommonly perceptive observer, a gifted writer, and a first-rate social scientist, Kotkin offers the reader an unsurpassed portrait of daily life in the Gorbachev era. From the formation of "informal" political groups to the start-up of fledgling businesses in the new cooperative sector, from the no-holds-barred investigative reporting of a former Communist party mouthpiece to a freewheeling multicandidate election campaign, the author conveys the texture of contemporary Soviet society in the throes of an upheaval not seen since the 1930s.

Magnitogorsk, a planned "garden city" in the Ural Mountains, serves as Kotkin's laboratory for observing the revolutionary changes occurring in the Soviet Union today. Dominated by a self-perpetuating Communist party machine, choked by industrial pollution, and haunted by a suppressed past, this once-proud city now faces an uncertain future, as do the more than one thousand other industrial cities throughout the Soviet Union.

Kotkin made his remarkable first visit in 1987 and returned in 1989. On both occasions, steelworkers and schoolteachers, bus drivers and housewives, intellectuals and former victims of oppression―all willingly stepped forward to voice long-suppressed grievances and aspirations. Their words animate this moving narrative, the first to examine the impact and contradictions of perestroika in a single community. Like no other Soviet city, Magnitogorsk provides a window onto the desperate struggle to overcome the heavy burden of Stalin's legacy.

Genres: History, Russia, Nonfiction, Soviet Union, Historical

364 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Stephen Mark Kotkin is an American historian, academic, and author. He is the Kleinheinz Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. For 33 years, Kotkin taught at Princeton University, where he attained the title of John P. Birkelund '52 Professor in History and International Affairs, and he took emeritus status from Princeton University in 2022. He was the director of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and the co-director of the certificate program in History and the Practice of Diplomacy. He has won a number of awards and fellowships, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. He is the husband of curator and art historian Soyoung Lee.
Kotkin's most prominent book project is his three-volume biography of Joseph Stalin, of which the first two volumes have been published as Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (2014) and Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 (2017), while the third volume remains to be published.

Reviews

[Frank Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an odd book about an odd world. Stephen Kotkin spent a few months in the Soviet Urals steeltown of Magnitogorsk in 1987 and 1989 to research his dissertation on the city in the Stalin era (which became the impressive "Magnetic Mountain"). Yet during his time in Magnitogorsk, Soviet society was changing and crumbling around him, and those changes inspired this other book. Of course, Kotkin couldn't get archival material or government documents about the modern town, so much of this book is taken up with an intense reading of the "Magnitogorsk Worker," the town's local paper, complimented with a handful of both anonymous and on-the-record interviews as well as Kotkin's observations from strolling around town (usually with a party handler). Basically, it's an exegesis of a Soviet newspaper with personal anecdotes. Hardly rousing reading material. Yet while much of this story does plod, it may be one of the one most penetrating visions of the end of the Soviet Union.

One story Kotkin follows is the fitful rise of the "cooperatives" (the Soviet euphemism for new companies) after 1986. For instance, he describes the start of "Obelisk," the town's first cooperative, which built tombstones. Before Obelisk, the local cemetery had one mandatory and hideous iron tombstone for all, but Obelisk promised personal stone tombstones to order. It rented out space in the steel factory, gradually reduced their price from 270 to 230 rubles, and soon cleared thousands of orders. Yet the steel company soon decided it needed the space back and effectively closed the co-op. Such were the perils of trying to create a market economy where all land and material were owned by the state. Other attempts to start radio and TV repair shops, private musician groups (the newspaper had once described the musicians who played at events for money as "criminals"), and sewing circles all faced similar problems. Often they were just subsidiaries of local government enterprises that used them to get some more productivity and then took all the profits.

Kotkin also traces the fitful attempts to reform the Communist Party during the Gorbachev era. As he implies, it was doomed to failure. Gorbachev told the party to stop trying to run the state and economy and to focus on "ideological" work, but his policy of glasnost (openness), meant the party spent much of its time reviewing and attacking the previous party's work from Stalin onwards (Lenin remained sacrosanct). Meanwhile, "neformal" or informal groups began springing up within and around the party for the first time, such as the Magnitogorsk "Counter Movement," which, since any independent group outside the state was still illegal, had to be registered as a subset of Communist Party Youth (Komsomol) Palace of Culture. By the end of the book, the 19 million strong Communist party was beginning to bleed members, who realize the expensive dues were not buying the career advancement they sought.

Although this book can often read like a clipping service, it also continuously surprises, amuses, and horrifies the reader. It's well worth the time of anybody who is curious how societies change, or fail to.

[Scott Rauland · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides a fascinating look at the Soviet city of Magnitogorsk in the heyday of perestroika and glasnost. Built in the Urals in the 1930s in the Soviet drive to industrialize, then closed to the west for almost 50 years, the author visited twice in 1987 and again in 1989 while researching another book he wrote about the construction of the city (“Magnetic Mountain”).

He was on hand for the first competitive elections ever held in the USSR, and witnessed how the inhabitants of the city grappled with some unpleasant truths exposed by the local newspaper, which suddenly had a free rein to do real investigative journalism. Seeing the once-heroic figure of Stalin exposed as a mass murderer, learning that the city had been built at least partially with prison labor, and coming to grips with how far behind the west the USSR had fallen proved difficult for many of the people the author encountered.

“Steeltown, USSR” also spends considerable time examining how Gorbachev’s efforts to reform a one-party state and a centrally planned economy played out in a provincial city a thousand miles from Moscow. Anybody interested in learning more about the forces at play in the final days of the Soviet Union will appreciate this effort.

[Vincent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Considering the virtually endless literature out there about the final years of the Soviet Union and on the reforms enacted under Gorbachev's General Secretaryship, Kotkin's "Steeltown, USSR" is among the more unique I've read. This is primarily due to the geographic location in which his study was conducted: the famous Soviet steel industrial center known as Magnitogorsk.

Kotkin is effective in discussing the issues the plagued this industrial society - from laggard economic incentives, corruption and needless quota pressure, to the ailments that arise from the unsafe work environments and the activities, or lack thereof, available to children. The health problems in particular was a potent example of unique insight from this book that I have not acquired elsewhere. Another component of "Steeltown, USSR" that was of great benefit was the frequent discussion of the local newspaper as a vehicle for observing how rapidly society was altering under Gorbachev's reforms. Not only does it provide primary source literature, but also offers real glimpses into the attitudes, priorities and thoughts of the press and the people, by some logical extension.

As a whole, Kotkin's narration was attention-grabbing and very rarely sounded like a textbook exposition on the subject. This is supplemented by the author's vast knowledge and understanding of Magnitogorsk, which is also exhibited in his more substantial work "Magnetic Mountain."

There was one primary drawback with this work, however. Like most studies of this nature, the content in presented in a way that can only be described as scattered. You have several chapters devoted to a particular segment, reform, event, etc., which are comprised largely of highly disaggregated stories, interviews, trips, literary investigation, and exposition. Therefore, each chapter has a mammoth quantity of sections that vary in connectivity to one another. Some sections connect far more effectively than others, which impacts both the pacing and general flow. You can find a similar format in David Satter's "Age of Delirium" and David Remnick's "Lenin's Tomb," but the repetition of literary format does not make it the most cohesive form of story-telling. On the other hand, the format makes it easy to pause reading. This is pretty much the only limitation that this book has that I noticed.

Overall, I was a fan of "Steeltown, USSR," and appreciated the opportunity to better comprehend the Gorbachev era at a more micro (individual town/community) level. Recommended for anyone who wishes to learn more about the USSR's final years within an economically significant industrial community. 4 stars.

[Claire]

There's only so much talk of steel plants one can take.

(Forse più avanti...)

[Alex Xu · Rating 5 out of 5]

好看。老大哥。

[Joseph Hawthorne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting accounts of de-industrializing USSR city right before and in midst of perestroika. Local elections, justice system, newspapers, KGB. A bit dense, but interesting societal musings

[Mitch B · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Steeltown USSR" by Stephen Kotkin is a captivating exploration of life in the lost world of a factory city of the Soviet Union during "glasnost" and "perestroika". Each chapter serves as a viewpoint from one of many different inhabitants of the steeltown showcasing both the grand ambitions and intricate realities of Soviet society. The book provides a comprehensive examination of the economic, political and social dimensions, with a nuanced narrative that challenges simplistic notions of progress.

While "Steeltown USSR" primarily focuses on Soviet history, its resonances with contemporary Western society are undeniable. The first resonance would be the tension between individual aspirations and collective welfare. In the book we witness the struggle of the citizens of Magnitogorsk in the 1980s trying to grapple with the personal success of a few individuals vs societal well-being. Another resonance would be the examination of the role of bureaucracy with its immense power wielded by the state and the challenges it faced in managing a complex economic system.