The Shaping of Popular Consent: A Comparative Study of the Sovie ...

In histories more related to our topic there is very little by way of direct comparative studies,⁷² although some recent interesting literature has cried out for comparative treatment. Wendy Goldman’s excellent study of the role played by women in Soviet industry features a section on the feminisation of Soviet light industry and service sectors.⁷³ If it is true, as she argues, that the newly liberated Soviet woman was expected to work in such areas one could draw a clear parallel between the feminisation of light and service industries in the USSR and in the west (not to mention the Far East, too). If Goldman had contextualised her study thus, she would have revealed much not only about the Soviet Union but about universal, structural gender types too. By contrast, Terry Martin’s recent book on Soviet nationalism does incorporate a comparative element into its thesis. It derives from his judgement that, fundamentally, the Soviet Union was not a homogenous “nation” or “state” but a collection of participatory (though not necessarily voluntary) republics. Martin examines the development of important centralised policies such as the Friendship of the Peoples, collectivisation and the FYPs in a variety of Soviet republics. He argues that the Soviet establishment did not seek to enforce a one-size-fits-all policy, but, rather, allowed for subtle differences to emerge, or be maintained, between the republics in the hope that they might look and sound different from each other but would otherwise be united by fundamental commonalities forever tying them to the Soviet Union.⁷⁴

Importantly though, in another sense there does already exist a large body of comparative history focused on the United States and the Soviet Union. Debates on Soviet “state capitalism” and, more broadly, “the end of ideology” and the USSR as a neo-empire have an inherent comparative element. However, primarily it is often the case that the historian’s modes of expression, irrespective of the arguments or conclusions they are debating or drawing, merely buttress the worldview of the author.