Public and Private Life of the Soviet People : Changing Values in Post-Stalin Russia

The process of privatization in Soviet society began in the late 1950s and reached its peak in the early 1980s.

It remains perhaps the most important social, economic and political process to occur in modern Soviet society.

Utilizing novels, films, and his own surveys done in the Soviet Union, the author, an emigre sociologist, describes how the Russian people have been withdrawing their time, energy, and emotion from public activities controlled by the state, investing them instead in various spheres of private life.

Shlapentokh argues that the trend toward family-orientation and self-orientation has rendered official Soviet values nominal, save patriotism and support of "social property" in the abstract.

The author examines Gorbachev's reforms from this perspective and provides a vivid portrait of the growing distinction between public and private life in Soviet economic, political, and cultural spheres.