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Print Price: $161.95

Format:
Hardback
352 pp.
156 mm x 234 mm

ISBN-13:
9780199575060

Publication date:
October 2010

Imprint: OUP UK

Stalin's Last Generation

Soviet Post-War Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism

Dr. Juliane Fürst

'Stalin's last generation' was the last generation to come of age under Stalin, yet it was also the first generation to be socialized in the post-war period. Its young members grew up in a world that still carried many of the hallmarks of the Soviet Union's revolutionary period, yet their surroundings already showed the first signs of decay, stagnation, and disintegration.

Stalin's last generation still knew how to speak 'Bolshevik', still believed in the power of Soviet heroes and still wished to construct socialism, yet they also liked to dance and dress in Western styles, they knew how to evade boring lectures and lessons in Marxism-Leninism, and they were keen to forge identities that were more individual than those offered by the state.

In this book, Juliane Fürst creates a detailed picture of late Stalinist youth and youth culture, looking at young people from a variety of perspectives: as children of the war, as recipients and creators of propaganda, as perpetrators of crime, as representatives of fledgling subcultures, as believers, as critics, and as drop-outs. In the process, she illuminates not only the complex relationship between the Soviet state and its youth, but also provides a new interpretative framework for understanding late Stalinism - the impact of which on Soviet society's subsequent development has hitherto been underestimated, including its role in the ultimate demise of the USSR.

Readership : All those interested in the history of the Soviet Union under Stalin and his successors, especially in the period following the Second World War.

1. Marks and Burns: Youth and the Consequences of War
2. Explaining the Inexplicable: Youth and the Post-War Ideological Campaigns
3. Mechanisms of Integration: Rituals, Icons, and Idols
4. War-time Heroes for Post-War Youth: The Rise and Fall of Molodaia Gvardiia
5. Morals under Siege: Myth and Reality of Youth Crime
6. Re-defining Sovietness: Fashion, Style, and Non-conformity
7. Comrades, Friends, and Lovers: Post-War Personal Relations in Theory and Practice
8. Patterns of Participation: Finding a Self in the System
9. Epilogue
Bibliography
Index

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Juliane Fürst graduated from Oxford and the LSE. Subsequently, she was a lecturer at Magdalen College, Oxford, and a Junior Research Fellow at St. John's Collge, Oxford. She is currently lecturer in 20th Century History at the University of Bristol.

Soviet Veterans of the Second World War - Mark Edele
Writing History - William Kelleher Storey and Towser Jones

Special Features

Views Soviet youth from a variety of perspectives, looking beyond Moscow and Leningrad to provincial Russia and Ukraine.
Argues for a new understanding of late Stalinism's role in the development of mature socialism and the stagnation and collapse of later decades.
Covers a broad range of topics, from youth crime to propaganda, subcultures to careerism.
Puts the story of late Stalinist Soviet youth into the context of contemporaneous western youth movements.