| The West's knowledge of the Soviet Unionhas long exceeded its understanding. Partof the problem lies in the nature of the newdiscipline of Sovietology, where academicwriters, government analysts, and jour-nalists have shaped an essentially un-historical consensus that sees all Russianhistory as a rehearsal for the Gulag Archi-pelago. In recent years many observers,from a new generation of Sovietologists tothe Christian authoritarian Aleksandr Sol-zhenitsyn, have questioned this impressivelymonolithic collective Opinion, but the workI now offer the reader is the first generalhistory to challenge it. I have sought toconvey new dimensions of Soviet history. Existing surveys of the Soviet period donot range as widely as Western audiencesnow demand; with few exceptions scholarsPREFACE have not incorporated social history in their discussions of political and economic de- velopments. I therefore set out in this bookto include a study of the human conditionin the USSR. More than half the chaptershave extensive sections on social history,and several are devoted exclusively to thattheme. I have been concerned with suchareas as work, leisure time, the arts, educa-tion, religion, national minorities, mannersand morals, youth, women, science, com-puters and automation, and the problem ofcoping with life. When surveys of publicopinion in the Soviet Union and severalWestern countries indicated in 1984 thatmany children fear they are doomed toperish in nuclear war, I decided to expandthe section on arms limitation into a fullchapter.ix |
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