Normal Totalitarian Society

Shlapentokh undertakes a dispassionate analysis of the ordinary functioning of the Soviet system from Stalin's death through the Soviet collapse and Russia's first post-communist decade. Without overlooking its repressive character he treats the USSR as a normal system that employed both socialist and nationalist ideologies for the purposes of technological and military modernization preservation of empire and expansion of its geopolitical power. Foregoing the projection of Western norms and assumptions he seeks to achieve a clearer understanding of a civilization that has perplexed its critics and its champions alike.