https://booksandideas.net// Books & Ideas is the English-language mirror website of La Vie des Idées, a free online journal which has gained a large readership and established itself in France as a major place for intellectual debate since 2007. en SPIP - www.spip.net https://booksandideas.net/local/cache-vignettes/L144xH68/siteon0-04014.png?1675949311 https://booksandideas.net// 68 144 https://booksandideas.net/In-the-time-of-disaster https://booksandideas.net/In-the-time-of-disaster 2025-09-23T06:30:00Z text/html en Sylvain Dufraisse International Soviet Union catastrophe Cairn.info <p>Laurent Coumel has written a wonderful essay on the social history of the late Soviet Union. He shows how Soviet society was subject to the same dynamics as western European society: the rise of individualism, leisure, and the desire for comfort.</p> https://booksandideas.net/The-Origins-of-Mass-Surveillance https://booksandideas.net/The-Origins-of-Mass-Surveillance 2016-03-17T08:21:05Z text/html en Ivan Jablonka democracy police Soviet Union Institut français Text Interviews <p>By tracing the history of surveillance in Europe and the Soviet bloc, the historian Sophie Cœuré explains the differences between democracies and dictatorships in this area. She also urges us to put things in perspective: We do not (yet) live in a “surveillance society.”</p> https://booksandideas.net/The-Soviet-Union-A-Shaky-Welfare https://booksandideas.net/The-Soviet-Union-A-Shaky-Welfare 2012-04-10T09:38:40Z text/html en Grégory Dufaud History healthcare social security Soviet Union Florence Gould Foundation <p>Though the Soviet system's ambitions were initially universalistic, the system of social protection that it established quickly proved discriminatory and insufficiently generous. In a recent book, Dorena Caroli uses social protection as a prism for considering the Soviet state's broader dysfunctions.</p> https://booksandideas.net/Masses-Taking-Over-The-Square https://booksandideas.net/Masses-Taking-Over-The-Square 2012-02-02T08:41:22Z text/html en Kirill Postoutenko History communication culture totalitarianism propaganda Soviet Union <p>The ordered occupation of public spaces by the masses played a central role in the rituals of the Soviet state. Drawing on a long tradition of Russian holidays, mass festivals were supposed to display for all to see the happy marriage between leaders and citizenry. They also contributed to the economic collapse of the Soviet Union.</p> https://booksandideas.net/Political-education-in-the-Soviet https://booksandideas.net/Political-education-in-the-Soviet 2011-11-03T07:00:00Z text/html en Alexandre Sumpf History education Soviet Union peasantry <p>Alexandre Sumpf defends his view of political education in the Soviet Union. Anything but another study on the Bolshevik agenda in the countryside, his book investigates the process of professionalization of Soviet agents, and emphasizes the fluidity of individuals' approach to politics in the early stages of the Soviet regime's attempt to shape a New Man.</p> https://booksandideas.net/Burry-and-let-die https://booksandideas.net/Burry-and-let-die 2011-10-12T11:50:35Z text/html en Anna Lawton History cinema censorship Soviet Union Soviet Union <p>Film censorship in post-Stalin Russia was neither rational, nor a product of ideology. As, historian Martine Godet convincingly shows, it was rather the result of a fluid and unpredictable process, where status and stratagems played a key role.</p> https://booksandideas.net/Peasants-into-Bolsheviks https://booksandideas.net/Peasants-into-Bolsheviks 2011-09-14T15:06:19Z text/html en Jeffrey Brooks History propaganda Soviet Union <p><i>Bolcheviks en Campagne</i> extensively documents the balance between coercion and persuasion in the Bolsheviks' treatment of the peasants. However, the author underestimates the peasants' agency and should have distanced himself more from the image of a backward peasantry, which the government used to justify collectivization and repression.</p>