(Ebook) Stalin's Outcasts: Aliens, Citizens, and the Soviet State, 1926-1936 by Golfo Alexopoulos ISBN 9780801440298, 0801440297

"I
served not in defense of the bourgeois order, but only for a crumb of
bread since I was burdened with five small children.""From 1923 to 1925 I
worked as a musician but later my earnings weren't steady and I quickly
stopped. Without an income to live on, I was drawn to the nonlaboring
path.""As a man almost completely illiterate and therefore not prepared
for any kind of work, I was forced to return to my craft as a barber.""I
am as ignorant as a pipe."Golfo Alexopoulos focuses on the lishentsy
("outcasts") of the interwar USSR to reveal the defining features of
alien and citizen identities under Stalin's rule. Although portrayed as
"bourgeois elements," lishentsy actually included a wide variety of
people, including prostitutes, gamblers, tax evaders, embezzlers, and
ethnic minorities, in particular, Jews. The poor, the weak, and the
elderly were frequent targets of disenfranchisement, singled out by
officials looking to conserve scarce resources or satisfy their
superiors with long lists of discovered enemies.Alexopoulos draws
heavily on an untapped resource: an archive in western Siberia that
contains over 100,000 individual petitions for reinstatement. Her
analysis of these and many other documents concerning "class aliens"
shows how Bolshevik leaders defined the body politic and how individuals
experienced the Soviet state. Personal narratives with which
individuals successfully appealed to officials for reinstatement allow
an unusual view into the lives of "outcasts." From Kremlin leaders to
marked aliens, many participated in identifying insiders and outsiders
and challenging the terms of membership in Stalin's new society.