Mark Edele's Stalinism at War is clearly the culmination of many years of research and thought. In producing this concise and accessible work, Edele has done a significant service to the many students and others who I hope will read it.
This new book is perhaps best categorized as looking at the Soviet Union in wartime from a primarily “war and society” perspective, something highlighted by the nature of the author's brief discussion of the historiography early on in the book. His discussion of the literature on operational and strategic military matters is far less developed than that on the “war and society” side of things, and he not unreasonably suggests that “deep explorations of Stalin's diplomacy or detailed recounting of military operations” (5) is something best sought elsewhere. In terms of themes considered in this book, Edele nonetheless casts his net widely and has been fairly comprehensive in touching upon, no matter how briefly, most topics that a reviewer might reasonably expect to see in a book with this title. From social, military, and economic preparations for war, to Iosif Stalin's wartime leadership and the significance of Allied Lend-Lease aid for the Soviet war effort, despite his brevity Edele is able to provide a degree of nuance backed up with further reading in the endnotes. As one might expect given his work on the immediate post-Great Patriotic War period, Edele spends significant time on the aftermath of the Great Patriotic War.
A trend in the historiography of war in recent decades has been to focus more on the experience of “rank-and-file” historical actors as opposed to simply elites. Although there are very reasonable attempts to inject bottom-up experiences throughout this book—what Edele describes as “individual stories” (4)—these do not, however, change the fact that this book is primarily about the impact of policy “from above” on those “below,” rather than the experiences of the latter per se. By necessarily keeping a lid on such material, Edele has kept his book relatively short and pithy; no mean achievement.
Although aimed primarily at a “non-specialist” (5) audience, this does not mean that the book does not contribute to wider scholarly debate. For instance, I certainly agree with Edele's recasting of the Soviet Second World War as something starting in 1937. That Edele chooses to also extend the Soviet “war” to 1949 in part on account of “pacification and consolidation” (4) relating to the establishment of Soviet rule on newly occupied territories is, however, perhaps taking chronological revisionism a little too far from the perspective of a reviewer orientated towards the military-diplomatic. Soviet forces had destroyed much of the strength of nationalist guerrillas in the west by the end of 1946, even if resistance would continue on a smaller scale for many more years. While Soviet demobilization was indeed a protracted process compared to that of the western allies, much of it had nonetheless also taken place by the end of 1946.
Edele's extension of the “war” to 1949 gives this book a timeframe that will be welcomed by many “revisionist” historians in post-Soviet independent nations such as in the Baltic Republics and Ukraine. Nonetheless, I was pleased to note that otherwise Edele does not overtly engage in the “history wars” (187) of post-Soviet Eurasia as the above might be seen to suggest; with the author pointing out some of the flaws in the non-Russian historiographies of the war as well as in that of Russia itself.
In covering a period of Soviet history from before the Great Patriotic War to the end of the 1940s Edele wisely takes a more or less chronological approach that will help make this book a popular choice for students who are often not appreciative of a thematic approach to subject matter with which they are not familiar. One thing I particularly liked with this book as a text for student use is the breakdown of chapters into very manageable sections using very clear, bold sub-headings (which is just as well given that the index is a little light). A respectable number of photographs and graphs and tables—along with a useful map appendix—further add to the accessibility and educational utility of this well-written and engaging book.
I very much recommend this book as a text for both undergraduate and graduate use.
