Russia's Long Twentieth Century ─ Voices, Memories, Contested Perspectives

Russia's Long Twentieth Century is a dynamic new textbook written for twenty first century readers. Rejecting the outdated Cold War framework that most texts on the period use, this textbook focuses on Russia as a dynamic society that embarked on its own path to development, rather than a moralizing tale of utopian/dystopian Bolshevik visions, a catalogue of failed state policies and massive repression initiated from above, and a story dominated by elite politics and personalities.

Without minimizing the impact of either state terror or massive repression that occurred in the Russian empire during the twentieth century, the authors also analyze the ways in which citizens learnt not only to live within this coercive system, but even to derive meanings from its structures and ideologies. Likewise challenging the interpretation that treats Russian and Soviet history as an aberrant story of peculiar national development, the authors situate this history in world time and explain how the Russian empire intersected with other nations and empires. Using interpretations from Russian, émigré, and Western historiographies, the authors highlight the sharp polemics and disagreements that energize the field and show how scholars from different traditions diverge sharply in their understanding of key events, historical processes, and personalities.

Including primary sources, the authors allow ordinary Soviet citizens to speak about their own experiences, including the voices of women, youth, and the elderly

Choi Chatterjee is Professor of History at California State University, Los Angeles. She is the author ofCelebrating Women: Gender, Festival Culture and Bolshevik Ideology, 1910-1939 (2002), co-author ofThe Twentieth Century. A Retrospective (2002) and co-editor of Everyday Life in Russia Past and Present (2015), andThe Russian Experience: Americans Encountering the Enigma, 1890 to the Present(2012).

Lisa A. Kirschenbaum is Professor of History at West Chester University. She is the author ofSmall Comrades: Revolutionizing Childhood in Soviet Russia, 1917-1932 (2001);The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1945-1991 (2006); and International Communism and the Spanish Civil War(2015).

Deborah A. Field is Professor of History and Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Adrian College. She is the author ofPrivate Life and Communist Morality in Khrushchev’s Russia (2007) and winner of the Adrian College Teaching Excellence Award.