How do we recover the thoughts and values, hopes and beliefs of ‘ordinary people’? So often their voices have been silenced by the rich and powerful. In Stalin's Russia, this process of silencing was particularly insidious. Not only were people literally silenced – shot, or incarcerated in concentration camps for expressing unorthodox views – but also the entire Soviet media eliminated virtually all reference to heretical opinion. Dissonant voices were written out of history by the Stalinist scriptwriters – but not forever. In letters and top secret documents, hidden in the archives, these voices were preserved. The aim of this book is simple: to ‘release’ them, and allow them to speak for themselves as far as possible. However, inevitably the selection and organisation of the material will have left its mark. What follows is just one of many possible interpretations that could, and should, be undertaken.

This book focuses on popular opinion during a formative and momentous period of Soviet history. The years 1934–41 witnessed both the ‘Great Retreat’ and the ‘Great Terror’. The term ‘Great Retreat’, coined by the sociologist Timasheff, symbolises the repudiation of many of the values and aspirations of the Russian Revolution of October 1917. In the words of Stalin's arch-enemy, Trotsky, the Revolution had been ‘betrayed’, and had given way to a ‘Soviet Thermidor’. The Russian Revolution, carried out under the banner of socialism and the liberation of the working class, was followed by a bloody civil war, portrayed as a class struggle of the poor and exploited against the rich capitalists.