Tells the history of a Soviet society largely without protest, without violent repression, without dramatic events, and without sudden economic shifts ... Smith builds up, through short sentences and character sketches, a picture of an entire culture, a way of life ... The density of information in the book means speculation and theorisation are avoided ... Late Soviet life was made as predictable as possible, partly in reaction to Stalinism ... It is certainly not Smith’s intention, but one can imagine some, especially young, readers finding this all rather seductive ... But Exit Stalin also forces the question: would you accept the price? The intellectuals in the psychiatric hospitals? The killings on the border?
Mark B. Smith introduces to a wider readership the notion that there was once a distinctive Soviet 'civilization' with its own customs, values, cuisine, consumer products, jokes, pop stars, mass culture, welfare system and even rights ... Exit Stalin is uneven. Events are recounted in short, staccato sentences – 'Tensions were high. Moods were brittle' – that do not gel with the more meandering prose elsewhere. Overstretched metaphors sometimes mar the clarity of the argument ... The narrative can feel disjointed in places, its flow interrupted as Mark B. Smith loops back to rehearse an individual’s biography. Yet readers will surely enjoy discovering this vanished Soviet world, and perhaps even be prompted to go off in search of the film classics that the author describes with affection and insight.
Mark B Smith, a Cambridge historian, has written a fascinating chronicle of the Soviet Union ... No single volume can adequately explain the Soviet state’s collapse, but Exit Stalin is a valiant attempt. Smith provides a teeming, collage-like picture of how ordinary Soviet citizens withstood repression and food scarcities yet clung hopefully to the 1917 revolution’s promise of a better life ... Smoothly readable ... Though marred at times by a surfeit of information, Exit Stalin offers a superb history of the rise and fall of a utopian state and its dangerously deluded ideology.
Accessible and comprehensive ... 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 ... His authentic account of Soviet life is enlivened by biographical sketches and Smith’s deep understanding of Russian culture and society ... He concludes that 'no single book, including mine, could adequately serve as an overarching explanation for the Soviet collapse'.
Mark B Smith’s magnificent new history, Exit Stalin, lays bare the reality of daily life during the USSR’s death spiral ... Not merely a political history of a country that struggled for decades before eventually gaining its place as one of the world’s two superpowers ... Smith focuses on cultural and social history, ensuring we grasp the dismal conditions in which people existed ... Smith’s description of the chaotic and rapid decline of those last years is careful and vivid ... This immensely important book charts a history of idealism that failed because of its inherent lack of liberty, its repressiveness and its corruption.
A vivid exploration of Soviet civilization—or, better, the many civilizations of the former Soviet Union ... Smith’s excellent book powerfully explains how government, society, and civilization can diverge, sometimes coexisting, sometimes warring, but always evolving ... An essential and accessible addition to the library of Soviet and post-Soviet studies.
