Kotkin, Steven. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization

Kotkin, Steven. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

A study of Stalin’s period of Soviet history on its own term. Kotkin uses a factory, a production zone, as a focal point to look at the making of Soviet identities, peculiarities of planning and real work process in Soviet economy, changes in values, practices, modes of reasoning, etc. Suggests that there was no Great Retreat in early Soviet history: instead, Stalinism was a logical continuation of the revolution and Stalinist reform, including the Great Terror, were driven by the logic of _continuing_ revolution, i.e., by continued search of new ways to building a new socialist society. In this way, there were no counter reforms or a counter-revolution in Stalinism.

Kotkin makes a focus on social transformation in the USSR: how political agenda, perception of external threats and economic necessities together with a desire to build socialism brought about a set of social changes in the USSR. Regards this as a process of negotiation: social engineering vs. response “from below.” Kotkin makes a focus on the making of a Soviet welfare state which eliminated unemployment and satisfied all minimal needs, even if in a distorted and ineffective way. This paved the way for the success of social transformation in the 1930s. He suggests that any explanations of Soviet modernity need to look at “micro level” (p. 20) This led to formation of new identities, new strategies of social behaviour, which, in turn, shaped the ways social politics in the USSR were actually implemented, were changed in comparison to their original intentions.

Chapter 1 looks at the organization of the construction of Magnitogorsk: why it was necessary, how it was implemented (planning, failure of domestic engineers, appeal to American brains, gigantism, extreme acceleration of building, imposition of political and cultural visions on economic possibilities. In a way, a story of how economic opportunism led to building a new society.

Chapter 2 looks at particular ways of bringing human capital to the construction site: what kind of people populated it and what drove them to Magnitogorsk. From Communist enthusiasm to forced labour. How recruited people were, through the use of new institutions and cultural norms, transformed into a socialist population. Problems of fleeing labour force, introduction of disciplinary measures (passport system).

Chapter 3 looks at how urban life was organized. Plans to build an ideal city; shortage of time and resources led to social differentiation through housing: best cadres were housed in new apartments, the rest – in barracks or even huts dug in earth (Shanghai). Urban planning vs. urban realities.

Chapter 4 explores how the Soviet population of Magnitogorsk responded to these social framework imposed on them. Housing was used to manipulate population (to encourage to work better) and how people responded to this by sneaking around and doing their best to get it outside of the encouragement framework. How people’s attitude to their housing changed the pattern state used and built it (introduction of “separate”-room barracks instead of those with only one big room). Use of press to battle the vices of Soviet population, to discipline it into subjects.

Chapter 5 addresses the problem of how the Soviet working class was derevolutionarized and tamed by the VKP(b). Kotkin, in particular, focuses on how people were taught to “speak Bolshevik,” i.e. to employ discursive schemes to understand themselves and the world around them and to sacrifice their own interests for the sake of Communist future. Cf. Spivak “Can the subaltern speak?” Another way to discipline population was to use public eye. Socialist competition as another form of didactic text. All this constituted “state-sponsored game of social identity,” within which Soviet people had to identify who they were. Teaching people to have a proper social identification was the most secure way to ensure popular support for the Communist party.

Chapter 6 examines specific ways in which socialist system of distribution worked. It provided the means to supply the population with basic necessities of life (bread), but it also served as a basis for a socialist spectacle in which justice of poor people had an upper hand on “evil” forces, i.e. bureaucrats who were a privileged class, but who, when unable to deal with common people’s difficulties, were punished through a spectacle of socialist justice (public court hearings). Also looks at how within this system new forms of getting resources emerged (blat, connections, shadow economy in general). Establishment of “no rule of law,” since only the socialist state invisibly and implicitly determines when certain actions related to shadow economy could be punished, and when people got away with them.

Final chapter 7 looks at the Great Terror as a logical consequence of a search by the VKP(b) of its place in Soviet society. Identifying itself as a “vanguard” of building socialism, VKP(b) necessarily took a responsibility of being the “purest” force in Soviet society – hence rigorous purges inside the party which, at some point due to a combination of factors, transformed into the Great Terror. Double system of administration as part of this tendency (VKP(b) duplicates all power functions of other bodies of power). This dual apparatus gives birth to bureaucratic warfare which also created preconditions for the Great Terror. Concept of “theocracy” and therefore no “internal enemy” could be within the ‘divine ranks’ of the theocratic class. Great Purge as a way to control the Party bureaucracy.

Summary: the socialism was lived by people, and the way the lived it shaped its specific character.