Kotkin's history of Magnitogorsk is a monstrous microhistorical probe into Stalinist everyday life. In the mid-1920s, a desolate steppe surrounded the Magnetic Mountain. A few years later, a gigantic industrial center pulsating with life stood here. How could this happen? What kind of people came to this place and built it? And why? And how did they manage to survive and settle in a landscape whipped by freezing winds? Stephen Kotkin pays attention to every detail of the lives of Magnitogorsk residents. Terrible winters, wind, unsanitary living conditions, hard work at the blast furnaces, leisure activities, housing shortages, black market dealings, the bourgeoisification of the urban party elite, denunciations, the terror of the late 1930s, etc. - nothing escapes Kotkin's attention. His Magnitogorsk saga, inspired by Michel Foucault, undoubtedly marks the beginning of a new phase in the research of Soviet social history.
