{"product_id":"making-history-for-stalin","title":"Making History for Stalin","description":"The Belomor Canal, exalted in the 1930s by the Stalinist press, came to symbolize what was morally deplorable in Stalinism. The author reconstructs the Canal project as a pivotal social, political, historical and, most important, literary event. Built with forced labour, the Belomor project has been a forbidden topic for half a century. With access to opened archives and to interviews with Canal construction survivors themselves, Ruder examines the project and its attendant literary works - drama, poetry, novels and the collectively written \"\"History of the Construction of the Stalin White Sea-Baltic Canal\"\" - to create an understanding of Stalinist culture. She argues that the project was the first to institutionalize the philosophy of \"\"perekovka\"\", the idea that a new people who personify the Soviet Union in action and deed could be created through forced labour and ideological re-education. As both a construction project and a literary event, Belomor was characterized by contradictions: enthusiasm versus revulsion, good will versus cynicism, self-destruction versus self-preservation, and scorn for the West versus a desperate hunger to impress it. Ruder shows that these juxtapositions capture the tension that infused many other events at the time, turning Belomor into a microcosm of life and literature in Soviet Russia.","brand":"University Press of Florida","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55807367217496,"sku":"9780813015675","price":59.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9780813015675_272d566d-ee00-430e-8783-f27236f074ac.jpg?v=1778016627","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/making-history-for-stalin","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}