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Book Reviews / Canadian American Slavic Studies 47 (2013) 61121

Christopher J. Ward. Brezhnevs Folly: The Building of BAM and Late Soviet Socialism.
Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009. xiv, 232 pp. $50.00.
This monograph offers a fascinating account of what Soviet leaders called the construction project of the century. This third attempt at building the Baikal-Amur Railway
(BAM), which lasted from 1974 to 1984, involved half a million people, two-thirds of
whom belonged to the Komsomols. It was to foster socialist ideals among young people
and exploit more effectively the natural resources of eastern Siberia, thus bringing
about a society of tomorrow for the Soviet Union. Brezhnevs Folly uses state,
Communist Party, and Komsomol archives in Moscow and Irkutsk, press materials, and
oral interviews to explore dynamic social and political processes taking place in the
Brezhnev era, the so-called era of stagnation. It considers how the BAM construction
zone magnified this eras social and political problems.
Brezhnevs Folly highlights the BAM construction projects contradictory environmental politics. Soviet media and Moscow policy makers glorified the transformation
of the eastern Siberian wilderness by BAM construction workers, the bamovtsy. They
drew on Promethean themes of overcoming nature that had resounded in earlier mass
construction projects. However, an embryonic ecological movement (p. 40) emerged
among scholars and those immediately involved in BAM construction efforts. Local
journalists, Komsomol activists, BAM construction leaders, and members of the AllRussian Society for the Protection of Nature (VOOP) criticized the ecological damage
caused by railroad construction and related industries. Their criticisms, hedged in the
rhetoric of Soviet socialist ideals, failed to discourage polluters. BAM leaders and bamovtsy belittled environmental protection campaigns by the VOOP, the Komsomols, and
BAM construction leaders. However, local criticisms of polluters highlighted the
peripherys role in fostering ecological consciousness in the Brezhnev era.
There were glaring discrepancies between publicity about the bamovtsy and their
actual behavior in the BAM construction zone. Central press materials lauded bamovtsy for bringing about a society of tomorrow and a twenty-first century civilization. However, bamovtsy failed to uphold the values of a Communist morality. Despite
attempts at self-policing by local Komsomols, hooliganism, theft, black market speculation, violence, drunkenness, rape, and fleeing the construction zone strained law
enforcement and Komsomol resources. BAM leaders engaged in graft. Corrupt law
enforcement and a lack of adequate leisure facilities made such behavior problems
worse. By the time of BAMs supposed completion in 1984, the BAM zone had become
a magnet for people of questionable character.
Contradictions over gender, nationality, and cooperation with socialist and Third
World states surfaced in the BAM zone. Soviet media portrayed female bamovtsy as
heroines, while women occupied less skilled jobs and men dominated management
and skilled labor. A lack of appropriate childcare facilities discouraged female bamovtsy
from staying. Sexism at the workplace was rampant, as seen in incidents of rape, sexual
harassment, and rude jokes about female bamovtsy. BAM officials turned down letters
by enthusiastic young women who had wanted to join the project. The 1984 dismissal of
the BAM zone musical director revealed prejudices against women in positions of
authority. Despite claims that the BAM forged solidarity among the Soviet Unions
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013

DOI 10.1163/221023912X642808

Book Reviews / Canadian American Slavic Studies 47 (2013) 61121 77

nationalities, the Slavic nationalities assumed a disproportionate share of the BAM


workforce and received an overwhelming number of rewards and promotions. NonSlavs, particularly those from Central Asia and the Caucasus, occupied menial tasks.
BAM officials failed to recruit non-Slavs from the Baltic republics and elsewhere.
Nationalities were segregated by camps and by worksites, and violence occasionally
broke out between Slavs and non-Slavs. While the BAM press eagerly advertised foreigners contributions, BAM leaders distrusted volunteers from socialist camp countries, Latin America, and Asia and Africa and kept them apart from Soviet bamovtsy.
Trips to places like East Germany and Cuba, instead of promoting the BAM abroad,
encouraged bamovtsy to engage in black market trade, drinking bouts, and sexual liaisons with the locals. BAM leaders portrayed their project as one not threatening the
Peoples Republic of China, but their gestures did not reconcile these arch rivals of the
socialist camp.
Brezhnevs Folly addresses a project that failed, not actually completed until late
2003. It portrays the Brezhnev era as a dynamic one, yet replete with incongruities
between peoples behavior and official rhetoric. Poor housing and working conditions,
crime, corruption, and sexism dissipated whatever enthusiasm bamovtsy had for the
project. Brezhnevs Folly thus complements studies on young people and late Soviet
socialism by Alexei Yurchak, Sergei Zhuk, and others. However, it remains to be seen if
these young workers were, in their acts of deviance, orienting themselves more toward
capitalist rather than socialist goals (p. 42). These bamovtsy presumably knew very little of the capitalist world. Further, in dealing with relations between Soviet nationalities on the BAM, Wards treatment of the Soviet nationalities question needed to be
somewhat sharper. The promotion of Great Russians as the elder brothers of other
Soviet nationalities did not happen during World War II, as Ward claims on page 102,
but actually before it, as David Brandenberger and Terry Martin have noted. Ward
assumes on page 103 that the Thaw under Khrushchev, beginning with the 1961 TwentySecond Party Congress, encouraged greater national self-expression by non-Russians.
However, Gerhard Simons 1991 survey of Soviet nationality policies draws opposite
conclusions about the Twenty-Second Party Congress and concludes that Khrushchev
and his allies had already turned away from reformist aims by late 1958. These criticisms
notwithstanding, Brezhnevs Folly reveals much about the decline of Soviet socialisms
ideals in the Brezhnev era. Tensions over gender, ecology, nationality, and geopolitics
made the path to the future a path to no future. In that sense, future scholars of the
Brezhnev era and the late Cold War will have much to learn from this book.
William Jay Risch
Georgia College and State University
william.risch@gcsu.edu

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