The Soviet Century

November 1, 2022
German historian and journalist Schl�gel casts a discerning eye on the things that surrounded the Soviet Union and its people. Who knew that, apart from his experiments with dogs, Ivan Pavlov wrote a preface concerning nutrition for a bestselling Soviet cookbook? That's one of just many oddments Schl�gel assembles in this utterly absorbing tour through the material goods that defined the Soviet era, from pulpy wrapping paper to the medals veterans wore, from canned goods to perfume and tchotchkes and everything in between. All were on display immediately after the Soviet Union collapsed, as the author notes empathetically: "Things that had previously been carefully stored and preserved until the end of people's lives--distinctions, work records, diplomas and even medals--all find themselves up for sale in the flea market once material needs have become sufficiently pressing and the sense of reverence has evaporated." Sometimes people got rid of these things less for financial need than to discard a failed system, but even so, there's a nostalgia at work in a marketplace that has shifted from the streets to shopping malls and department stores that could be anywhere in the world. Schl�gel is particularly fascinated by old signs for such things as the butcher shop, which may have had the barest range of offerings, something that "is hard to describe...when you come from a world where there are always dozens of different sorts of meat and sausage." If there was an abundance of anything in the Soviet Union, it was of aspirational rhetoric: A fascinating case is the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, which argued that alphabetical order was a feeble artifact of the ruling class of old, to be swept aside for a new way of arranging knowledge. (Alphabetical order was eventually restored.) More ominous, as Schl�gel unveils, was its editors' insistence that there's no such thing as "objective facts," a foreshadowing of today's post-truth world. A superb blend of social history and material culture, essential for students of 20th-century geopolitics.

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Starred review from November 14, 2022
In this magnum opus, Schlögel (Ukraine: A Nation on the Borderland), professor emeritus of Eastern European history at the European University Viadrina, surveys the “Soviet lifeworld,” from megaprojects like the 1920s Dnieper Hydroelectric Station (where “elegance and barbarism were intertwined”) to WWII medals that are up for sale at a contemporary flea market. Drawing on several decades of research and travel in the U.S.S.R., Schlögel explains the nuances of Five-Year-Plans that reorganized the Soviet economy; describes workers’ sanatoriums and state-run wedding palaces; remarks on famous denizens like fashion designer Nadezdha Lamanova, who “turned fashion à la russe into a brand”; documents the recycling of churches and church bells into construction materials; and disparages the era’s “brutal violence” while visiting the ruins of forced labor camps along the river Kolyma. Though Schlögel’s thoughts on “the physical and moral decline of the megamachine” and other ruminations can veer toward the esoteric, this vast and vivid montage stresses the era’s cultural validity and eschews the tendency of recent histories to view the epoch strictly through a Cold War lens, with the West as winner-take-all. “The dissolution of empires is always something of a happy catastrophe,” the author writes. This invaluable study casts a lost world in a new light.

Starred review from January 20, 2023

In this book, historian Schl�gel (emeritus, Eastern European history, European Univ. Viadrina Frankfurt-Oder; Ukraine: A Nation on the Borderland) represents a pinnacle in Soviet studies, a subject once teeming with scholars and non-academic specialists. The subtitle's reference to archaeology is directed at the largely material remains of a forgotten world, the experience of daily life in the Soviet Union. There are 60 chapters, with topics ranging from the cultural significance of urban flea markets to the profound impact of the locomotive on Soviet life. The book includes mentions of sports culture and classical ballet, but its greatest strength lies in the short biographies of exceptional people, such as fashion designer Nadezhda Lamanova, radio broadcaster Yuri Levitan, and soldier Eduard Berzin. Many subjects imply a certain affection towards the Soviet life, yet Schl�gel unflinchingly exposes the crimes of Stalinism at Kolyma and the Solovki special camp (SLON), later called the Solovki special prison. VERDICT A splendid book. Avoiding the usual fare of power and the Communist Party, the author reveals the pervasive political character of Soviet life.--Zachary Irwin

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