Moscow, 1937

Karl Schlögel

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780745650777, 9780745650760
• eBook ISBN: 9780745683621
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Moscow, 1937: the soviet metropolis at the zenith of Stalin's dictatorship. A society utterly wrecked by a hurricane of violence. 

In this compelling book, the renowned historian Karl Schlögel reconstructs with meticulous care the process through which, month by month, the terrorism of a state-of-emergency regime spiraled into the 'Great Terror' during which 1 ½ million human beings lost their lives within a single year. He revisits the sites of show trials and executions and, by also consulting numerous sources from the time, he provides a masterful panorama of these key events in Russian history.

He shows how, in the shadow of the reign of terror, the regime around Stalin also aimed to construct a new society. Based on countless documents, Schlögel's historical masterpiece vividly presents an age in which the boundaries separating the dream and the terror dissolve, and enables us to experience the fear that was felt by people subjected to totalitarian rule. This rich and absorbing account of the Soviet purges will be essential reading for all students of Russia and for any readers interested in one of the most dramatic and disturbing events of modern history.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• TitlePage
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Reproduction Acknowledgements
• Translator’s Note
• Introduction
• 1 Navigation: Margarita’s Flight
• 2 Moscow as a Construction Site: Stalin’s General Plan in Action
• 3 A Topography of the Disappeared: The Moscow Directory of 1936
• 4 The Creation of Enemies: The Criminal Prosecution of the Trotskyite–Zinovievite Terrorist Centre, 19–24 August 1936
• 5 ‘Tired of the Effort of Observing and Understanding’: Lion Feuchtwanger’s Moscow 1937
• 6 In the Glare of Battle: Spain and Other Fronts
• 7 Blindness and Terror: The Suppressed Census of 1937
• 8 A Stage for the Horrors of Industrialization: The Second Moscow Show Trial in January 1937
• 9 ‘A Feast in the Time of Plague’: The Pushkin Jubilee of 10 February 1937
• 10 Public Death: Ordzhonikidze’s Suicide and Death Rites
• 11 The Engine Room of the Year 1937: The February–March Plenum of the Central Committee
• 12 Moscow in Paris: The USSR Pavilion at the International Exhibition of 1937
• 13 Red Square: Parade Ground and Place of Execution
• 14 Chopin Concert and Killing Ritual: Radio and the Creation of the Great Community
• 15 Soviet Art Deco: Time Preserved in Stone
• 16 ‘Brown Bodies, Gaily Coloured Shorts’: Sports Parade
• 17 Wealth and Destruction: The Seventeenth International Geology Congress in Moscow
• 18 A City by the Sea: The Opening of the Moscow–Volga Canal
• 19 Year of Adventures, 1937: A Soviet Icarus
• 20 Moscow as Shop-Window: The Abundance of the World, Hungry for Goods and Dizzy with Hunger
• 21 Open Spaces, Dream Landscapes: Cruising on the Volga, Holidaying on the Red Riviera, Conspiracies in the Dachas
• 22 The National Bolshevik Nikolai Ustrialov: His Return Home and Death
• 23 Celebrating the October Revolution on 7 November 1937
• 24 A Miniature of High Society before the Massacre
• 25 Soviet Hollywood: Miracles and Monsters
• 26 Death in Exile
• 27 Arcadia in Moscow: Stalin’s Luna Park
• 28 ‘Avtozavodtsy’: The Workforce of the Stalin Car Factories
• 29 Dzhaz: The Sound of the Thirties
• 30 Changing Faces, Changing Times
• 31 America, America: The Other New World
• 32 ‘I Know of No Other Country …’: 1937 and the Production of Soviet Space
• 33 The Butovo Shooting Range: Topography of the Great Terror
• 34 Lonely White Sail …: Dreamtime, Children’s Worlds
• 35 Yezhov at the Bolshoi Theatre: Celebrating Twenty Years of the Cheka
• 36 Bukharin Takes his Leave
• 37 ‘For Official Use Only’: Moscow as a City on the Enemy Map
• 38 The Foundation Pit
• 39 Instead of an Epilogue
• Notes
• Select Bibliography
• Index