It sends one back to the original texts with a whole host of new questions.... And it also helps us to understand the place of the 'official' writer in that peculiar mixture of ideology, collective pressure, and inspiration which is the Soviet literary process." --Times Literary Supplement"The Soviet Novel has had an enormous impact on the way Stalinist culture is studied in a range of disciplines (literature scholarship, history, cultural studies, even anthropology and political science)." --Slavic Review"Those readers who have come to realize that history is a branch of mythology will find Clark's book a stimulating and rewarding account of Soviet mythopoesis." --American Historical ReviewA dynamic account of the socialist realist novel's evolution as seen in the context of Soviet culture. A new Afterword brings the history of Socialist Realism to its end at the close of the 20th century.

    This closely documented study chronicles the Cheka's emergence as a vast, ubiquitous, and all-purpose apparatus for the suppression of internal opposition.Answerable solely to the Central Committee of the Communist Party as its special organ of merciless summary justice, aspiring to security surveillance over the entire society, the Cheka set the scene for the 20th-century totalitarian police state and the succession of formidable Soviet politicalpolice agencies, from Stalin's OGPU and NKVD to today's KGB.

    The description for this book, Melnikov: Solo Architect in a Mass Society, will be forthcoming.