Moscow: Governing the socialist Metropolis

This political history of Moscow, from a distinguished Harvard Sovietologist, pays equal attention to the city's fate in each of the main phases of 20th-century Russsian/Soviet history: before the revolution, during the revolution, under Stalin, under Stalin's successors, and in the present day. Each section will be of use to a particular group of specialists (e.g., urban sociologists or historians of revolution), but other readers are likely to get lost in the profuse details, which are not tied together by any unifying thesis. Although the idea of retelling Russian history from a "Moscow perspective" appeals to the capital's central place in Russian politics and culture, Colton does not succeed in demonstrating that the city per se or its government was ever more than a bystander to events played out there on the federal level. For academic collections.