Cynthia Ruder - Building Stalinism: The Moscow Canal and the Creation of Soviet Space

Cynthia A. Ruder is Associate Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Kentucky. She received her PhD from Cornell University and has previously published Making History for Stalin, which focused on the 1933 construction of the Belomor Canal. She has also contributed to peer-reviewed journals and edited collections and was the only non-Russian citizen who participated in the conference to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Moscow Canal's opening in 1937.
The history of a canal-building project might be thought in some quarters as an unpromising subject for a good read, but it is some years since I have found myself so drawn into a book as I was reading Building Stalinism: The Moscow Canal and the Creation of Soviet Space. In five meticulously researched and elegantly crafted chapters, Cynthia Ruder excavates the multiple layers of meaning embedded in the landscape of the MoscowVolga canal. The canal was the centerpiece engineering project of the second five-year plan that transformed Moscow into a port of five seas and supplied the city with water and electricity, but did so at the cost of tens of thousands of lives of Gulag victims. This book is not a conventional history of a Gulag camp (although the discussion of Dmitlag is a valuable addition to the literature) because throughout, it is the canal and the water in it that is center stage. The originality of the book is in its combination of different conceptions of space representational, discursive and socio-political to reveal the role that the canal played in securing Moscow as the very epicenter of the USSR's mythic landscape. It does this by taking the reader on a journey along the canal, with pauses to explain how the natural environment was reworked in a particular place or to give a detailed history of an architectural monument, loch or statue, or to note the place where bones were uncovered by a twenty-first-century digger. And we learn also of the music, writing and art and other cultural productions that told the canals story from the point of view of the people who built it. Much of the book is about memory and it is obvious that Cynthia Ruder cares very deeply that the canals origins in one of the harshest camps of the Gulag will not be forgotten under the new layer of meanings associated with the elite homes and yacht clubs that now line its banks. This thought-provoking and moving historical-geography will help guarantee that this will not happen.

Judith Pallot, Professor Emeritus, University of Oxford and
President, British Association for Slavonic and
East European Studies (BASEES)

This is a deeply researched and beautifully written book that will be read by scholars and non-scholars alike. In accessible, flowing prose, Cynthia Ruder explains through the lens of the inception and building of the Moscow Canal what Stalinism looked like, felt like and how it worked in the 1930s Soviet Union. Upon reading this book with its wonderful details, character studies, plates and illustrations, the reader comes away with a deep understanding of the triumph of Soviet over Russian culture and the shift from Russian to Soviet spaces, and the social, psychic, political and economic impacts of the Moscow Canal that still reverberate in todays Russia. Beautifully written and researched, this book profoundly enhances our understanding of Stalinism and the workings of Soviet communism.

Deborah Kaple, Research Scholar and Lecturer,
Princeton University

A highly original work, Building Stalinism examines the way human lives were reforged in order for Stalinist culture to succeed. Focusing on artistic representations of the Moscow Canal, Cynthia Ruder brilliantly illustrates the way space could be shaped to fit an ultimately destructive ideology.

Olga M. Cooke, Associate Professor of Russian,
Texas A&M University and editor of Gulag Studies

An extremely well-researched and original book that sheds new light on the ideology and operation of Stalinism by bringing together myriad rare or unknown sources, including new voices both from the Gulag and from contemporary Russia. Ruder uses the Moscow Canal as a powerful vantage point from which to study Stalinism and the memory of Stalinism today, as well as questions of landscape, environment, and water policy.

Karen Petrone, Professor of History, University of Kentucky

Library of Modern Russia

Advisory board

Building on I.B.Tauris established record publishing Russian studies titles for both academic and general readers, the Library of Modern Russia will showcase the work of emerging and established writers who are setting new agendas in the field.

At a time when potentially dangerous misconceptions and misunderstandings about Russia abound, titles in the series will shed fresh light and nuance on Russian history. Volumes will take the idea of Russia in its broadest, cultural sense and cover the entirety of the multi-ethnic lands that made up imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. Ranging in chronological scope from the Romanovs to the present day, the books will foster a community of scholars and readers devoted to a sharper understanding of the Russian experience, past and present.

New and forthcoming

Building Stalinism: The Moscow Canal and the Creation of Soviet Space, Cynthia A. Ruder

Criminal Subculture in the Gulag: Prisoner Society in the Stalinist Labour Camps, Mark Vincent

Dissident Histories in the Soviet Union: From De-Stalinization to Perestroika, Barbara Martin

Fascism in Manchuria: The SovietChina Encounter in the 1930s, Susanne Hohler

Ideology and the Arts in the Soviet Union: The Establishment of Censorship and Control, Steven Richmond

Myth Making in the Soviet Union and Modern Russia: Remembering World War II in Brezhnev's Hero City, Vicky Davis

Nomads and Soviet Rule: Central Asia under Lenin and Stalin, Alun Thomas

Power and Conflict in Russias Borderlands: The Post-Soviet Geopolitics of Dispute Resolution, Helena Rytvuori-Apunen

Power and Politics in Modern Chechnya: Ramzan Kadyrov and the New Digital Authoritarianism, Karena Avedissian

Russia in the Time of Cholera: Disease under Romanovs and Soviets, John P. Davis

Russian Pilgrimage to the Holy Land: Piety and Travel from the Middle Ages to the Revolution, Nikolaos Chrissidis

Science City, Siberia: Akademgorodok and the Late Soviet Politics of Expertise, Ksenia Tartachenko

Soviet Americana: The Cultural History of Russian and Ukrainian Americanists, Sergei I. Zhuk