Robert O. Paxton

Julie Hessler

EUROPE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY is a comprehensive text with a teachable chronological approach that is a bestseller because of its depth and breadth of coverage as well as the strength of its scholarship and the reputation of its authors. With the help of new co-author, Julie Hessler, the Fifth Edition is enhanced to include greater coverage of the post-war period. In addition, socio-cultural issues have been brought to the forefront for both Eastern and Western Europe, including youth movements and feminism. The first half of the text has been streamlined to allow for these revisions. Finally, this edition includes several new photographs and updated maps. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.

Europe in the Twentieth Century

In this sweeping study, Julie Hessler traces the invention and evolution of socialist trade, the progressive constriction of private trade, and the development of consumer habits from the 1917 revolution to Stalin's death in 1953. The book places trade and consumption in the context of debilitating economic crises. Although Soviet leaders, and above all, Stalin, identified socialism with the modernization of retailing and the elimination of most private transactions, these goals conflicted with the economic dynamics that produced shortages and with the government's bureaucratic, repressive, and socially discriminatory political culture. A Social History of Soviet Trade explores the relationship of trade--official and unofficial--to the cyclical pattern of crisis and normalization that resulted from these tensions. It also provides a singularly detailed look at private shops during the years of the New Economic Policy, and at the remnants of private trade, mostly concentrated at the outdoor bazaars, in subsequent years. Drawing on newly opened archives in Moscow and several provinces, this richly documented work offers a new perspective on the social, economic, and political history of the formative decades of the USSR.

Julie Hessler

Books

Your next favorite book is out there