[5]Fitzpatrick covers a broad range of topics to provide the reader with an understanding of how Stalinism impacted the lives of a wide variety of individuals in the Soviet Union.

From the start, building socialism in the Soviet Union theoretically meant creating a new classless egalitarian society that was able to produce an abundance of consumer goods as well as support robust industrial production.

[9] Fitzpatrick documents the fantasy of the urban Potemkin village that the Soviet government attempted to portray, with the reality of rationing, rampant speculation, shops closed due to the lack of goods, and lengthy queues at those that were open, all of which formed the struggle average citizens faced trying to obtain the essentials of daily life.

[5][8][10] Writing in Social History, Sarah Davies states: She shows how the chronic housing shortages of the 1930s gave rise to a number of practices, including fictive marriages, renting out corners of rooms, and continuing to live with spouses after a divorce.

Like blat, patronage was ubiquitous, as people lower down the hierarchy relied on the support and protection of those higher up in order to obtain goods in short supply and to secure privileges.

[7][5][11] In a 1999 review in Russian History, Oksana Fedotova wrote that "[t]his new book by Sheila Fitzpatrick is an outstanding contribution to the existing body of research into the Soviet past.

Extensive use of archival material, combined with a wide range of published sources, and highlighted by references to the contemporary press cuttings, reveal an absorbing picture of everyday life under Stalinism.

Against a rich variety of locations that stretched from workers' barracks and communal kitchens to the apartments of senior officials and closed access stores, there unfolds before our eyes an impressive array of characters.

Bosses and outcasts, patrons and clients, activists and absconding husbands, elite wives and homeless children, are depicted in a multitude of activities and relationships that characterized the turbulent life of 1930s Russia.