Sign-In
Cart
Cultivating the Masses
Hardcover
General Political ScienceRussian HistorySocial Movements
ISBN13: 9780801446290
Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr
Published: Oct 18 2011
Pages: 344
Weight: 1.41
Height: 1.11 Width: 6.43 Depth: 9.41
Language: English
Under Stalin's leadership, the Soviet government carried out a massive number of deportations, incarcerations, and executions. Paradoxically, at the very moment that Soviet authorities were killing thousands of individuals, they were also engaged in an enormous pronatalist campaign to boost the population. Even as the number of repressions grew exponentially, Communist Party leaders enacted sweeping social welfare and public health measures to safeguard people's well-being. Extensive state surveillance of the population went hand in hand with literacy campaigns, political education, and efforts to instill in people an appreciation of high culture.
In Cultivating the Masses, David L. Hoffmann examines the Party leadership's pursuit of these seemingly contradictory policies in order to grasp fully the character of the Stalinist regime, a regime intent on transforming the socioeconomic order and the very nature of its citizens. To analyze Soviet social policies, Hoffmann places them in an international comparative context. He explains Soviet technologies of social intervention as one particular constellation of modern state practices. These practices developed in conjunction with the ambitions of nineteenth-century European reformers to refashion society, and they subsequently prompted welfare programs, public health initiatives, and reproductive regulations in countries around the world.
The mobilizational demands of World War I impelled political leaders to expand even further their efforts at population management, via economic controls, surveillance, propaganda, and state violence. Born at this moment of total war, the Soviet system institutionalized these wartime methods as permanent features of governance. Party leaders, whose dictatorship included no checks on state power, in turn attached interventionist practices to their ideological goal of building socialism.
Also in
Russian History
Dangerous Games: Faces, Incidents, and Casualties of the Cold War
Wise, James E.
Baron, Scott
Hardcover
Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster
Higginbotham, Adam
Paperback
The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War with Forbidden Literature
English, Charlie
Hardcover
Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall
Merriman, Helena
Paperback
The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I.
Paperback
Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice
Browder, Bill
Paperback
Beginner's Russian with Interactive Online Workbook, 2nd Edition
Miller, Frank J.
Kagan, Olga E.
Kudyma, Anna S.
Paperback
The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 2]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I.
Paperback
The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 3]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I.
Paperback
The Dark Side of the Earth: Russia's Short-Lived Victory Over Totalitarianism
Zygar, Mikhail
Hardcover
Welcome to the Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity
Mathewes-Green, Frederica
Paperback
Our Dear Friends in Moscow: The Inside Story of a Broken Generation
Soldatov, Andrei
Borogan, Irina
Hardcover
The Forbidden Garden: The Botanists of Besieged Leningrad and Their Impossible Choice
Parkin, Simon
Paperback
To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause (Pulitzer Prize Winner): The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement
Nathans, Benjamin
Paperback
The Illegals: Russia's Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West
Walker, Shaun
Paperback
The Illegals: Russia's Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West
Walker, Shaun
Hardcover
Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva
Sullivan, Rosemary
Paperback
The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern East Asia
Jager, Sheila Miyoshi
Paperback
Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath
Browder, Bill
Paperback
The Future Is History (National Book Award Winner): How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia
Gessen, Masha
Paperback
Three Days in Moscow: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of the Soviet Empire
Baier, Bret
Whitney, Catherine
Paperback
To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause (Pulitzer Prize Winner): The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement
Nathans, Benjamin
Hardcover
Three Days in Moscow: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of the Soviet Empire (Large Print Edition)
Baier, Bret
Whitney, Catherine
Paperback
The Return of Russia: From Yeltsin to Putin, the Story of a Vengeful Kremlin
Rodgers, James
Hardcover
The Moscow Playbook: How Russia Used, Abused, and Transformed Sports in the Hunt for Power
Berglund, Bruce
Hardcover
The Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the World
Davies, John
Kent, Alexander J.
Hardcover
Putin's Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia's Collapse Into Mercenary Chaos
Rondeaux, Candace
Hardcover
When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry
Beckerman, Gal
Paperback
The Gambler Wife: A True Story of Love, Risk, and the Woman Who Saved Dostoyevsky
Kaufman, Andrew D.
Paperback
One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964
Naftali, Timothy
Fursenko, Aleksandr
Paperback
The Lighthouse of Stalingrad: The Hidden Truth at the Heart of the Greatest Battle of World War II
MacGregor, Iain
Paperback
Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters
Brown, Kate
Paperback
Red Horizons: The True Story of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescus' Crimes, Lifestyle, and Corruption
Pacepa, Ion Mihai
Paperback
Lost Splendor: The Amazing Memoirs of the Man Who Killed Rasputin
Youssouppoff, Prince Felix
Paperback
Dancing in Petersburg: The Memoirs of Kschessinska - Prima Ballerina of the Russian Imperial Theatre, and Mistress of the future Tsar Nicholas II
Kschessinska, Mathilde
Paperback
Tatiana Romanov, Daughter of the Last Tsar: Diaries and Letters, 1913-1918
Nicholson, Nicholas B. a.
Azar, Helen
Hardcover
First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's President Vladimir Putin
Timakova, Natalya
Putin, Vladimir
Gevorkyan, Nataliya
Paperback
The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (Large Print Edition)
Gessen, Masha
Paperback
Russian Literary Journals, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy in St. Petersburg, 1877
Mayhew, Linda M.
Paperback
Island of the Blue Foxes: Disaster and Triumph on the World's Greatest Scientific Expedition
Bown, Stephen R.
Hardcover
What's Cooking in the Kremlin: From Rasputin to Putin, How Russia Built an Empire with a Knife and Fork
Szablowski, Witold
Paperback
Replaying the Second World War: Soviet Parallels and Inspirations for Russian Atrocities in the Russo-Ukrainian War, 2014-25
Drachewych, Oleksa
Paperback
Once Upon a Time in Russia: The Rise of the Oligarchs--A True Story of Ambition, Wealth, Betrayal, and Murder
Mezrich, Ben
Paperback
The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra
Rappaport, Helen
Paperback
Comradely Greetings: The Prison Letters of Nadya and Slavoj
Zizek, Slavoj
Tololonnikova, Nadezhda
Paperback
Mennonites in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union: Through Much Tribulation
Friesen, Leonard G.
Paperback
Armored Forces of Russia and the Soviet Union: Tanks and Armored Vehicles (an Illustrated Guide, 1919-2025)
Schunkow, Victor
Hardcover
Soviet Propaganda on American Screens: An Amkino Pictures Filmography, 1926-1940
Pitts, Michael R.
Paperback
Ester and Ruzya: How My Grandmothers Survived Hitler's War and Stalin's Peace
Gessen, Masha
Paperback
My Chernobyl: The Human Story of a Scientist and the Nuclear Power Plant Catastrophe
Borovoi, Alexander a.
Paperback
SIMO HÄYHÄ, The White Death: The incredible true story of the deadliest sniper ever
Larsen, Andrea
Paperback