Raised Under Stalin - by Seth F Bernstein (Hardcover)

About the Book

In Raised under Stalin, Seth Bernstein shows how Stalin's regime provided young people with opportunities as members of the Young Communist League or Komsomol even as it surrounded them with violence, shaping socialist youth culture and socialism more broadly through the threat and experience of war. Informed by declassified materials from...

Book Synopsis

In Raised under Stalin, Seth Bernstein shows how Stalin's regime provided young people with opportunities as members of the Young Communist League or Komsomol even as it surrounded them with violence, shaping socialist youth culture and socialism more broadly through the threat and experience of war. Informed by declassified materials from post-Soviet archives, as well as films, memoirs, and diaries by and about youth, Raised under Stalin explains the divided status of youth for the Bolsheviks: they were the "new people" who would someday build communism, the potential soldiers who would defend the USSR, and the hooligans who might undermine it from within.

Bernstein explains how, although Soviet revolutionary youth culture began as the preserve of proletarian activists, the Komsomol transformed under Stalin to become a mass organization of moral education; youth became the targets of state repression even as Stalin's regime offered them the opportunity to participate in political culture. Raised under Stalin follows Stalinist youth into their ultimate test, World War II. Even as the war against Germany decimated the ranks of Young Communists, Bernstein finds evidence that it cemented Stalinist youth culture as a core part of socialism.

Review Quotes

Raised under Stalin will appeal to scholars interested in youth culture, mobilization regimes, and the interwar period in Europe.

-- "Journal of Modern History"

Raised Under Stalin is a well-written account of how millions of Soviet youth were both organized and trained, mobilized and repressed. Bernstein's book is excellent reading for anyone interested in regime-youth relationships, youth organizations, ideologies of youth, the Stalin-era USSR, and World War II from the Soviet perspective.

-- "The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review"

[T]his is a very effective work... Bernstein weaves together archival records of leadership meetings with vignettes from ordinary members with analytical and narrative clarity. I strongly recommend this work to scholars interested in early Soviet social and cultural history, as well as scholars working on youth culture more broadly.

-- "Journal of Contemporary History"

Bernstein's study... offers a compelling picture of how young men and (to a lesser extent) women became participants in and symbols of Stalin's revolution. [H]is study will appeal to scholars and students of Stalinism as well as those interested in youth organizations in the authoritarian states of the 1930s--or of the twenty-first century.

-- "American Historical Review"

Despite my criticism, this book is a good, although Russian-centered, contribution to the recent debates about the role of the Soviet Komsomol in the history of Soviet youth culture.

-- "Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth"

Raised under Stalin expands our understanding of this period by bringing together issues of gender, youth, defense and the personal and political relationships that were formed in the Komsomol's ranks.

-- "The Russian Review"

Seth Bernstein has made an important contribution to the growing body of scholarship on the Communist Youth League (Komsomol) and Soviet youth more generally. It is a thorough, balanced, and sophisticated study, written in clear and accessible language. Not only specialists in Soviet history, but also scholars of youth and even advanced undergraduates will read it to great benefit.

-- "Canadian-American Slavic Studies"

Seth Bernstein provides a needed analysis of the history of the Komsomol.

-- "Slavic Review"

This is a thought-provoking book and the author's new archival research both clarifies and develops the academic literature.

-- "Europe-Asia Studies"

About the Author

Seth Bernstein is Assistant Professor of History at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. He is the translator and editor of Agents of Terror by Alexander Vatlin.