ABSTRACT

Sheila Fitzpatrick's Everyday Stalinism is the product of a mature scholar who had the self-confidence and experience to attempt a wide-ranging survey of Soviet society at a time of rapid change. It demonstrated that the state's mismanagement of the economy, combined with its modernization drive, gave rise to conditions that shaped the Soviet citizen into a risk-taking survivor, looked after by a paternalistic state that resembled a soup kitchen. Sheila Fitzpatrick's influence can be felt, through her own work and that of her students, in disciplines beyond Soviet studies. Her interest in the classics of theory, such as the nineteenth-century political philosopher Karl Marx's influential work Kapital, has helped some of her students to develop their studies into areas beyond social history, carrying her influence and concerns into different disciplines. For example, the historian Yuri Slezkine's study of Soviet policies toward northern peoples in Russia introduced Fitzpatrick's concern with state interactions to anthropologists.