Snow covers the coat of arms of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and monuments for Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (L) and the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin (R), in Moscow, Russia.
Exit Stalin: The Soviet Union as a Civilisation Author : Mark B. Smith ISBN-13 : 978-0241400852 Publisher : Allen Lane Guideline Price : £45
This accessible and comprehensive book by Cambridge academic Mark B Smith is the latest in a long list of histories of the Soviet Union.
What sets it apart is that the author depicts the USSR after Stalin as a civilisation, rather than an evil empire or a Cold War menace.
He is not the first to use this approach. American historian Steve Kotkin, in his ground-breaking 1995 book, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilisation, depicted the Stalin years as a distinct sociall
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