Stalinism on the Frontier of Empire: Women and State Formation in the Soviet Far East

Description

This book is a fascinating account of frontier Stalinism told through the previously unexplored history of a campaign to attract female settlers to the socialist frontiers of the Soviet Far East in the late 1930s. Elena Shulman reveals the instrumental part these migrants played in the extension of Soviet state power and cultural dominion in the region. Their remarkable stories, recovered from archival letters, party documents, memoirs, press coverage and films, shed new light on Soviet women's roles in state formation, the role of frontier Stalinism in structuring gender ideals and the nature of Soviet society and Stalinism in the 1930s. Through these narratives Elena Shulman offers a nuanced picture of the world of the frontier as well as the complexities of women's lives under Stalin and the limits of Moscow's rule over the periphery and even the Gulag.

'... the book makes a solid and important contribution to Soviet history. The author's command of the secondary literature on nearly every important aspect of Stalinist society in the 1930s is impressively comprehensive and she sets her work firmly within the scholarship on Soviet social and cultural history. The research is equally impressive ...' H-Women 'The book is highly readable and provides a much-needed study of a unique facet of the Stalinist period, while raising interesting questions regarding the nature of Stalinism and the frontier experience. Scholars interested in Soviet women's history, the impact of the terror on Soviet development, the Stalinist bureaucracy, or frontier development will find this work interesting and provocative.' The Russian Review 'Based on extensive research in archival and published sources, the book is a fine addition to the history of the 1930s, particularly to the history of women's participation in the Stalinist projects of that decade ... It is a remarkable story and Shulman tells it well.' Slavic Review