The New Civilisation?
Understanding Stalin’s Soviet Union 1929–1941
By Paul Flewers
Francis Boutle PublishersISBN 978 1 903427 40 8
Paperback 390 pages
Price per copy including postage: UK £12.99 Worldwide £14.99
The book
The first years of the Soviet Five-Year Plans witnessed an upsurge of interest in the Soviet Union. In hundreds of books and thousands of articles, commentators of all political outlooks expressed their opinions on the novel features of Stalin’s Soviet Union – industrial construction and agricultural collectivisation, show trials and state terror, Popular Fronts and collective security.
What was the Soviet Union? Was it a totalitarian threat to Western civilisation, or was it a utopia taking shape before our eyes? Was Stalinism the logical outcome of the October Revolution, or did it represent its betrayal? Was there anything that Western countries could learn from the Five-Year Plans? These were just some of the questions asked.
Written in a lively manner, this book covers a vast range of material published in Britain, from the far left to the far right, from the well known to the downright obscure, on all aspects of the Soviet Union during 1929–1941, and draws out the impact of the Soviet experience upon British intellectuals and political trends.
The author
Paul Flewers has been involved in left-wing politics since the 1970s. He studied at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, where he obtained his PhD. He is a member of the editorial boards of Revolutionary History and New Interventions.
