Good studies of the Soviet Union after 1945?

[blake 3:17]

Hi all,

Almost put this in learning but I thought I might do a better here. I was looking for recommendations for books that cover Soviet society, economics and politics after 1945. I was looking for pretty straight forward empirical stuff, not polemics.

Thanks!

[Grenzer]

Why 1945? That seems like a pretty arbitrary cutoff. Most studies I've seen tend to go up till 1953, 1956, or 1964. Never seen any go beyond that unfortunately.. It's like most historians suddenly lose all interest in the Soviets as soon as Stalin dies.

I'm actually curious about this myself. It's difficult to find good works about the post-Stalin Soviet Union, economic or otherwise.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Here are some interesting ones, in chronological order:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=NoIajCLpLigC
http://books.google.ca/books?id=ISMK584f28sC

[There are too many specialized books on the Brezhnev era, though, from the Kosygin-Liberman reform of 1965 to arms control decision-making to foreign policy in Africa.]

http://books.google.ca/books?id=ipYD0dxjlf8C

[ComradeOm]

Why 1945? That seems like a pretty arbitrary cutoff. Most studies I've seen tend to go up till 1953, 1956, or 1964. Never seen any go beyond that unfortunately.. It's like most historians suddenly lose all interest in the Soviets as soon as Stalin diesIt's a valid enough date. Obviously 1953 is a more significant one but there are differences between the 1930s and the post-war order, what is generally termed 'late Stalinism'. It tends to be pretty much ignored by historians though given that it's not as sexy as previous periods

The same is true to a degree of later periods but it's also worth pointing out that the writing of history moves slowly. Even in the West most postgrads don't stray beyond the 1960s. And in the case of Russia the last two decades of historians have been gorging themselves on the data released after the fall of the USSR

As for specific works, Donald Filtzer has written a few on late Stalinism and the post-war years. Francis Stufford's Red Plenty isn't a work of history (or even non-fiction) but is still worth reading. Just because it's great

[blake 3:17]

Thanks! The Filtzer book on the Khruschev period sounds like what I'm looking for.

I googled Red Plenty and am a bit curious. A few of the joke's on the book's site are weirdly amusing. We'll see.

The reason I suggested 1945 was because of the second World War.