The Soviet Century: Archeology of a Lost World, by Karl Schlögel

Expand

'The Soviet Century' by Karl Schlögel

Karl Schlögel proposes “good reasons to accept the idea of a Soviet century alongside the American one.” For the German professor of Eastern European history, the gravity exerted from 1917-1991 by the Soviet Union was almost as great as the U.S., even if the Soviet empire was first to crumble. The subtitle of The Soviet Century: Archeology of a Lost World describes his methodology. Schlögel doesn’t recount the October Revolution, the rise of Stalin or the Cold War. Instead, he examines the material culture of the Soviets. Great buildings get a nod as do the granular details of everyday life. He considers the heavy greyish-brown paper that wrapped every purchase in any store, from bakery bread to wedding rings, and finds it preferable to the plastic shrink wrap—that triumph of Western enterprise—that threatens to bury the world in non-degradable rubbish.

Schlögel writes in the chatty manner of a smart friend delivering a monologue over a leisurely lunch and a carafe of red wine. He explores “the tyranny of intimacy” endured when multiple families were crammed into communal apartments, sharing one toilet and one kitchen. Perhaps his chapter on the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, Stalin’s answer to Britannica, has special relevance to the anxieties of our age. Each volume became obsolete as the standard of “truth” shifted by decree; editors and contributors were continually purged for failing to guess the new party line and replaced nervous successors forever worrying about what to exclude. Ideology took the place of mere “facts” and the wrong entry could end in a death sentence.