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Jonathan Coopersmith. The Electrification of Russia. 1880-1926. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1992. xii, 294 pp. $39.95.

Jonathan Coopersmith. The Electrification of Russia. 1880-1926. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell... Jonathan Coopersmith. The Electrification of Russia. 1880-1926. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1992. xii, 294 pp. $39.95. This ambitious study of electrification in Russia pursues two important goals. First, it joins a number of innovative studies that eschew the revolutionary year 1917 as a chronological beginning or end point in favor of an approach that gives strong emphasis to the prorevolutionary foundations of early Soviet innovations. This liberates the analysis from an overarching reliance on schematic characterizations of Imperial ineptness and Bolshevik authoritarianism and, in so doing, helps provide a more textured understanding of both systems. Second, the book presents technology as a social construction, a technique that provides the author the latitude to explain not only the effect of political, social, and economic factors on the massive undertaking that was electrification, but also the impact of electrification on the country itself. And given the central importance of electrification in the process of becoming modern, Coopersmith has identified an important and revealing point of stress in the massive transformation of Russia from 1880 to 1926. While not overturning any long-standing generalizations about the end of the Old Regime in Russia and the birth of Bolshevism, this http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Canadian-American Slavic Studies Brill

Jonathan Coopersmith. The Electrification of Russia. 1880-1926. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1992. xii, 294 pp. $39.95.

Husband, William B.
Canadian-American Slavic Studies , Volume 28 (3): 317 – Jan 1, 1994
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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 1994 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0090-8290
eISSN
2210-2396
DOI
10.1163/221023994X00648
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Jonathan Coopersmith. The Electrification of Russia. 1880-1926. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1992. xii, 294 pp. $39.95. This ambitious study of electrification in Russia pursues two important goals. First, it joins a number of innovative studies that eschew the revolutionary year 1917 as a chronological beginning or end point in favor of an approach that gives strong emphasis to the prorevolutionary foundations of early Soviet innovations. This liberates the analysis from an overarching reliance on schematic characterizations of Imperial ineptness and Bolshevik authoritarianism and, in so doing, helps provide a more textured understanding of both systems. Second, the book presents technology as a social construction, a technique that provides the author the latitude to explain not only the effect of political, social, and economic factors on the massive undertaking that was electrification, but also the impact of electrification on the country itself. And given the central importance of electrification in the process of becoming modern, Coopersmith has identified an important and revealing point of stress in the massive transformation of Russia from 1880 to 1926. While not overturning any long-standing generalizations about the end of the Old Regime in Russia and the birth of Bolshevism, this

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Canadian-American Slavic Studies – Brill

Published: Jan 1, 1994

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