Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization Review

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Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization ReviewStalin's Peasants is the pre-cursor to Fitzgerald's "Everyday Stalinism". While the focus of the later is soviet urban life the focus here falls squarely on the agrarian Soviet Union in the 1930's.
This is an eye-opening look at the effect of collectivization at the village level. The famine of the early '30's- not the main focus- is shown to have been more the case of poor planning, beauracratic ineptitude and peasant reactions against collectivization rather than a diabolical program of systematic starvation.
Post Soviet studies into the Stalinist era confirm the fact that non-party and non-technocratic wrokers who were not Kulaks were much safer from the pograms raging around them. The effect of this was that Kholhozes were constantly replacing managers and technicians caught up in the latest round up of wreckers, this in turn led to confusion and declining morale among the peasants.
The peasants are contrasted with the urban vanguards who flooded the rural kholhoz's who were filled with communist fervor. These vanguards were resented and looked down upon as interlopers and outsiders by the local farm workers. Fitzgerald does great work showing how peasants retained their religious beliefs in the face of communist pressure and their passive resistance to constant pressures from the central government to accomodate the latest decrees.
Just as in Everyday Stalinism, Fitzgerald's work here is excellent. This isn't for the novice reader but a great resource for those who are already knowledgeable on the Soviet Union in the 1930's.Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization Overview

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Defying Hitler: A Memoir Review

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Defying Hitler: A Memoir ReviewThe title of my review is a paraphrase of Haffner's description of Hitler's sinister accomplishment. He certainly doesn't pull any punches, and is unsparing on the moral failings of his fellow Germans in the early 1930s. This book was written in 1939, shortly after the author's escape to England. Although Haffner became a distinguished journalist and historian, he never published this book during his lifetime; it was discovered by his son and published after the author's death at the age of 91. Perhaps, like many war veterans, the experiences tangled up with the manuscript were so painful and so personal that the author couldn't bear to revisit them (a chapter was published on the 50th anniversary of an event that it describes).
What Haffner--and his son, who is the assured and elegant translator--have given us is one of the most compelling and insightful descriptions of the period that has been written. It can only be compared to the diary of Otto Klemperer as a revelatory description of how a nation of people, not so different from other nations at the time or indeed of any nation today, could descend into barbarism and criminality on the vast scale of the Third Reich.
From the opening sentence the 1920s and 30s in Germany is evoked: "This is the story of a duel." Specialists will be aware of the importance of actual duelling in middle and upper class German society as late at WWI, and its endurance as a symbol thereafter, and with this characterisation of his personal struggle against the Nazi State, Haffner seductively invites his reader into the authentic atmosphere of the period.
Scholars who have thought deeply about the Nazi period recognise it as the final culminating phase of a second Thirty Year's War that began in 1914; indeed, Haffner's explanation for the Nazi catastrophe is based upon his view that the generation who grew up during WWI, NOT the soldiers but the children who experienced the excitement but not the misery and death, were the key constituency for the Nazis.
Haffner's use of generational analysis is a powerful conceptual tool that is much more understood and accepted these days--Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation", however correct or incorrect it may be, has been a huge best seller--and Haffner in 1939 stumbled upon this type of analysis as he sought to describe how Hitler had come to power.
"Defying Hitler" is also the intense, personal description of the crisis that Haffner and his family and friends underwent during the rise of Hitler, conveyed with the power of a novelist. Haffner succeeds in humanising the Germans he knew and lived among without ever downplaying the horror of the decisions that they made, as he shows that it was all too clear what the consequences of those decisions were likely to be.
This is a unique book and it is highly recommended for both readers who have read almost nothing about the period, as well as readers who are thoroughly familiar with the subject, and yet are still trying to come to terms with how such a terrible catastrophe could occur in a civilised nation.Defying Hitler: A Memoir Overview

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An Accidental Sportswriter: A Memoir Review

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An Accidental Sportswriter: A Memoir ReviewRobert Lipsyte admits quickly in his memoir AN ACCIDENTIAL SPORTSWRITER that he never was much of a sports fan. What he wanted to be was a writer, and after he was given a foot in the door at the NY TIMES, he was able to write about what mattered to him most--the social issues of the day--through the vehicle of sports.
The best chapters of the book have to do with Lipsyte's journalistic role models, Gay Talese and Howard Cosell. Known for being a "piper," that is, flirting with the line on the truthfulness of his accounts, Talese represented the opportunity to go beyond the traditional boundaries of journalism. Talese would deliberately focus on the minority, the over-looked, and in doing so would always ask the question "why?" Lipsyte would run with this insight. Covering sports didn't mean that he was stuck with covering sports. Lipsyte credits Talese not only with helping him see this, but also with giving him the confidence to do pursue this type of reporting. At a low point as a TIMES copy boy, Lipsyte wondered openly about his writing future to Talese who on the spot offered to sponsor Lipsyte's writing career. Talese's offer infused the young scribe with the boast he needed, but what Lipsyte realizes after approaching his old mentor for the first time in 40 years is that Talese had "piped" him in making the offer to finance his career.
Lipsyte's other role model was entirely the opposite of Talese's gentlemanly attire and attitude. Howard Cosell was a bull running wild in the open field of TV and radio media. Knowing that he couldn't be both popular with everyone and still be accurate, Cosell sought out the truth as he saw it. Lipsyte soon adopted the same approach, and seemingly enjoyed offending in the name of the truth. But, as the memoir indicates, in retrospect, Lipsyte--like Cosell--could often be wrong about what was the gospel. And very unlikeable.
The athlete that dominates the narrative is Ali. Lipsyte sees him in all of his phyisical beauty. Bigger, quicker, faster than Sonny Liston, Lipsyte realizes immediately with a chance assignment to cover the then Clay/Liston fight that Clay was something special in every way. In the aftermath, athlete and scrible become linked and their careers take off together. Lipsyte sees Ali as a social reformer, but wishes for more than the image that Ali projected for public consumption. Turning his back on Malcolm X, openly disregarding the moral teaching of Islam, Ali frustrates Lipsyte, but Lipsyte is always drawn back to him just as American society would be.
Some chapters on social issues seem forced, as does Lipsyte's humility. He seems to recognize how pompous he can be both in life and in print. But, the narrative never drags, and Lipsyte's prose is always first-rate.An Accidental Sportswriter: A Memoir Overview
A longtime sports columnist for the New York Times interweaves stories from his life and the events he covered to explore the relationships between the games we play and the lives we lead

Growing up, Robert Lipsyte was the smart-aleck fat kid, the bully magnet who went to the library instead of the ballpark. As the perpetual outsider, even into adulthood, Lipsyte's alienation from Jock Culture made him a rarity in the press box: the sportswriter who wasn't a sports fan. This feeling of otherness has colored Lipsyte's sports writing for fifty years, much of it spent as a columnist for the New York Times. He didn't follow particular athletes or teams; he wasn't awed by the access afforded by his press pass or his familiarity with the players in the locker room. Between bouts at the Times, he launched a successful career writing young adult fiction, often about sports.

The experience and insight he earned over a half century infuse An Accidental Sportswriter. Going beyond the usual memoir, Lipsyte has written "a memory loop, a circular search for lost or forgotten pieces in the puzzle of a life." In telling his own story, he grapples with American sports and society-from Mickey Mantle to Bill Simmons-arguing that Jock Culture has seeped into our business, politics, and family life, and its definitions have become the standard to measure value. Full of wisdom and an understanding of American sports that contextualizes rather than celebrates athletes, An Accidental Sportswriter is the crowning achievement of a rich career and a book that will speak to us for years to come.


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