Stalinism was a period of Soviet history that most people from the former USSR still recall with fear. The Soviet Union has indeed been a great power where order and respect for the government were valued above all. Yet, not everybody knows what exactly the USSR had sacrificed to become so mighty. Many facts have been concealed not only from foreign countries but from native citizens as well. Freedom of speech, as well as freedom of writing, did not exist, and only those works which had undergone thorough checks for concealed content were allowed to be published. Stephen Kotkin’s essay “Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization” describes the building of Magnetic Mountain as a part of Stalin’s plan to turn the USSR into a country of steel; the essay lays out the facts logically and coherently but Kotkin colors the truth ignoring the negative issues the building of Magnetic Mountain involved.
To begin with, Stephen Kotkin is considered to be the first American who in the last forty-five years was allowed to visit Magnetic Mountain. In his work “Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization” he discusses the impact of industrialization on Magnetic Mountain and its urban community. Kotkin likens Stalinism to Enlightenment stating that it could bring significant changes into the country, “It is impossible to comprehend Stalinism without reference to the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment, an outpouring of impassioned public discussion that took as its point of departure the seventeenth-century innovation of modern “science” (Kotkin 6). Another issue the author addresses is how people participated in building a new civilization on the repudiation of capitalism and how the government’s ambitions contradicted people’s real desires. Finally, Kotkin shows in which conditions the workers labored in the steel plant and how numerous families suffered from a shortage of food and housing.
Kotkin presents a coherent description of the events which took place in the time of the building of Magnetic Mountain. His “Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization” is logical; it makes sense for the events discussed in it took place in reality and were depicted verisimilarly. Kotkin gives a good idea of what Stalin aimed at and how it affected the citizens of the former Soviet Union.
However, some of the arguments presented by Kotkin can be considered biased, which means that the author is neglecting the truth of the matter. The author seems to be concealing what the ruling of Stalin was all about. He states that “the destructiveness of Stalinism lay not in the formation of a mammoth state through the destruction of society but creation, along with such a state, of a new society.” (Kotkin 2) It is always easy to judge by the results; perhaps Stalin did manage to create the “new society” but no one speaks now of how much sacrifices this creation involved. People who experienced Stalin’s ruling would gladly agree to live in the old society rather than go through all the sufferings Stalinism brought them. Stalin’s ambitions and desire to create a Utopia hindered the development of the country for approximately fifty years.
In sum, Kotkin’s “Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization” describes the building of Magnetic Mountain in detail. It is a valuable piece of writing created by a talented person, but it conceals several facts people would wish to know about the real aims and desires of the then ruler of the Soviet Union.
Works Cited
Kotkin, Stephen. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization.