What often gets overlooked in the examination of the great terror (and other 20th Century terrors) is the experience of ordinary people and their thoughts, fears and survival strategies. During the Cold War an immense amount of scholarship went into fathoming the internal workings of the soviet state and the reasoning of Stalin and his inner circle. Historian Sheila Fitzpatrick has done an immense amount of work and scholarship into discerning the experience of the everyday. This week I look at her brilliant book Everyday Stalinism to explore the Great Terror of 1937-38:
Reading time:
1–2 minutes
Explaining History Podcast
For more than a decade, the Explaining History Podcast has helped listeners around the world make sense of modern history. What began in 2012 as a simple experiment—short, accessible episodes explaining major historical events—has grown into a long-running library of carefully researched, thoughtful explorations of the 20th and 21st centuries.
If this was useful, there’s more where it came from.
Every week I publish one piece connecting a current event to its historical roots — free, every Tuesday. Paid subscribers get two additional deeper dives and full archive access.
Subscribe to Explaining History →2 responses to “Everyday life and terror – 1937”
-
[…] Collectivisation and the Soviet Peasantry: A Short Guide Pravda and Stalin’s Terror Everyday life and terror – 1937 Stalin and HG Wells Stalinist […]
-
[…] Collectivisation and the Soviet Peasantry: A Short Guide Pravda and Stalin’s Terror Everyday life and terror – 1937 Stalin and the Gulags Stalin and HG Wells Stalinist […]
Leave a Reply