Preface

The idea of "daily life" implies an orderly routine in a stable environment, the ability to go about one's business confident that life is reasonably predictable, that the ground rules of one's society and upbringing will hold and not suddenly, horribly, evaporate. The Soviet period, which lasted 73 years, was a time of repeated seismic shifts in people's everyday lives. Add to that the sheer size of the Soviet empire, with its scores of ethnic groups, nationalities, cultures, and languages; its variety of religions; and the wide gaps in the lifestyles of different social classes. How, in a book on "daily life," do we include mass starvation, terror, war deaths, executions, and imprisonment of innocent people for decades on end, among all social classes and nationalities? At the same time, millions of people lived out their lives relatively undisturbed; millions more survived terrors and kept on going, perhaps even finding joy in their existence.

In this book I have focused on the day-to-day experiences of average people, mainly those who lived and worked in Russia's cities and on farms. But I have not ignored other regions. Similarly, although this book is not about USSR concentration camps or dispossessed families, no chapter overlooks the dark side of Soviet existence. For many Soviet citizens, terror was a distant backdrop against which they played out their ordinary lives, but for many others, it was the very fabric of life itself.

In describing the conditions of Soviet reality, whether ghastly or humdrum, I found works of literature especially useful. Because artists so trenchantly communicate the texture of life, I have frequently drawn upon the words of fine Soviet authors to illustrate a point. In most cases, those words were banned from publication in their time.