Bibliography of Russian and Soviet industrialization

This is a select bibliography of academic level English language books (including translations) and journal articles, published mainly post World War II, about the history of industrialization in Russia and the Soviet Union. Book entries may have references to reviews published in academic journals or major newspapers when these could be considered helpful. These reference reviews also function as a resource to find other works on this subject.

A brief selection of English translations of primary sources is included. Additional bibliographies can be found in many of the book-length works listed below; see Further reading for several book and chapter-length bibliographies. The External links section contains entries for publicly available select bibliographies from universities.

Inclusion criteria

Works included are referenced in the notes or bibliographies of scholarly secondary sources or journals. Included works should either be published by an academic or widely distributed publisher, be authored by a notable subject matter expert as shown by scholarly reviews or have significant scholarly journal reviews about the work. To keep the bibliography length manageable, only items that clearly meet the criteria should be included.

Citation style

This bibliography uses APA style citations. Entries do not use templates. References to reviews and notes for entries do use citation templates. Where books which are only partially related to Russian or Soviet history are listed, the titles for chapters or sections should be indicated if possible, meaningful, and not excessive.

If a work has been translated into English, the translator should be included and a footnote with appropriate bibliographic information for the original language version should be included.

When listing works with titles or names published with alternative English spellings, the form used in the latest published version should be used and the version and relevant bibliographic information noted if it previously was published or reviewed under a different title.

Industrialization

Main articles: Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union § Industrialization and urbanization; and Bibliography of the post-Stalinist Soviet Union § Urban life, labor, and industry

See also: History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953) § Industrialization, and Industrialization in the Soviet Union

• Allen, R. C. (2003). Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution. Princeton University Press.
• Amann, R., Cooper, J., & Davies, R. W. (Eds.). (1977). The Technological Level of Soviet Industry. Yale University Press.
• Andrle, V. (1985). How backward workers became Soviet: Industrialization of labour and the politics of efficiency under the Second Five-Year Plan, 1933–1937. Social History, 10(2), 147–169.
• Bohlinger, V. (2013). The development of sound technology in the Soviet film industry during the first Five-Year Plan. Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 7(2), 189–205.
• Clark, M. G. (1952). Development of large-scale organization: The Soviet steel industry. The Journal of Economic History, 12(4), 396–410.
• Conyngham, W. (2011). The Modernization of Soviet Industrial Management: Socioeconomic Development and the Search for Viability (Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Davies, R. W. (1980). The Socialist Offensive: The Collectivisation of Soviet Agriculture, 1929–1930. Harvard University Press.
• Davies, R. W. (1984). The socialist market: A debate in Soviet industry, 1932–33. Slavic Review, 43(2), 201–223.
• Davies, R. W. (1989). The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia. Vol. 3: The Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 1929–1930. Harvard University Press.
• DeHaan, H. (2016). Stalinist City Planning: Professionals, Performance, and Power. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
• Figes, O. (2008). The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia. New York: Picador.
• Filtzer, D. (2010). Soviet Workers and De-Stalinization: The Consolidation of the Modern System of Soviet Production Relations 1953-1964 (Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Gregory, P. R., & Lazarev, V. (Eds.). (2003). The Economics of Forced Labor: The Soviet Gulag. Hoover Institution Press.
• Gregory, P., & Markevich, A. (2002). Creating Soviet Industry: The House That Stalin Built. Slavic Review, 61(4), 787–814.
• Harrison, M. (Ed.). (2008). Guns and Rubles: The Defense Industry in the Stalinist State. Yale University Press.
• Ings, S. (2017). Stalin and the Scientists: A History of Triumph and Tragedy, 1905-1953. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.
• Josephson, P. (2017). Stalin’s water workers and their heritage: Industrialising nature in Russia, 1950–present. Global Environment, 10(1), 168–201.
• Kochetkova, E., & Popov, A. (2022). Socialist construction for Siberia: Comecon cooperation and the making of Ust’-Ilimsk forest industrial complex in the USSR, 1970s and 1980s. Journal of Contemporary History, 57(2), 479–498.
• Kotkin, S. (1995). Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. University of California Press.
• Kragh, M. (2013). The Soviet enterprise: What have we learned from the archives?. Enterprise & Society, 14(2), 360–394.
• Kuromiya, H. (1990). Stalin's Industrial Revolution: Politics and Workers, 1928–1932. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Liber, G. (2010). Soviet Nationality Policy, Urban Growth, and Identity Change in the Ukrainian SSR 1923-1934 (Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Oushakine, S. (2014). "Against the Cult of Things": On Soviet Productivism, Storage Economy, and Commodities with No Destination. The Russian Review, 73(2), 198–236.
• Parker, W. H. (1980). The Soviet motor industry. Soviet Studies, 32(4), 515–541.
• Ruder, C. A. (2019). Building Stalinism: The Moscow Canal and the Creation of Soviet Space. London: I.B. Tauris.
• Sanchez-Sibony, O. (2014). Depression Stalinism: The Great Break reconsidered. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 15(1), 23–49.
• Shearer, D. R. (1991). The language and politics of socialist rationalization: Productivity, industrial relations, and the social origins of Stalinism at the end of NEP. Cahiers du Monde russe et soviétique, 32(4), 581–608.
• Shearer, D. R. (2018). Industry, State, and Society in Stalin's Russia, 1926–1934. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• Siegelbaum, L. (1984). Soviet Norm Determination in Theory and Practice, 1917–1941. Soviet Studies, 36(1), 45–68.
• Siegelbaum, L., & Suny, R. G. (1993). Making the command economy: Western historians on Soviet industrialization. International Labor and Working-Class History, (43), 65–76.
• Stone, D. (2005). First Five-Year Plan and the Geography of Soviet Defence Industry. Europe-Asia Studies, 57(7), 1047–1063.
• Stone, D. R. (2000). Hammer and Rifle: The Militarization of the Soviet Union, 1926–1933. University Press of Kansas.
• Stone, D. R. (2005). The first Five-Year Plan and the geography of Soviet defence industry. Europe-Asia Studies, 57(7), 1047–1063.
• Wheatcroft, S. G., Davies, R. W., & Cooper, J. M. (1986). Soviet industrialization reconsidered: Some preliminary conclusions about economic development between 1926 and 1941. The Economic History Review, 39(2), 264–294.
• Zubovich, K. (2020). The Fall of the Zariad´e: Monumentalism and Displacement in Late Stalinist Moscow. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 21(1), 73–95

Industrial agriculture

• Davies, R. W. (1980). The Industrialization of Soviet Russia, The Soviet Collective Farm, 1929–1930. London: Palgrave.

Mining

See also: Mining industry of Russia

For works about Geology, see Bibliography of Russian and Soviet science (Physical sciences)#Geology.

• Conquest, R. (1978). Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps. Oxford University Press.
• Friedgut, T. H. (1989). Iuzovka and Revolution, Volume I: Life and Work in Russia's Donbass, 1869–1924. Princeton University Press.
• Friedgut, T. H. (1994). Iuzovka and Revolution, Volume II: Politics and Revolution in Russia's Donbass, 1869–1924. Princeton University Press.
• Kuromiya, H. (1998). Freedom and Terror in the Donbas: A Ukrainian-Russian Borderland, 1870s–1990s. Cambridge University Press.
• Osokina, E. (2021). Stalin's Quest for Gold: The Torgsin Hard-Currency Shops and Soviet Industrialization. Cornell University Press.
• Siegelbaum, L. H., & Walkowitz, D. J. (1995). Workers of the Donbass Speak: Survival and Identity in the New Ukraine, 1989–1992. State University of New York Press.
• Wynn, C. (1992). Workers, Strikes, and Pogroms: The Donbass-Dnepr Bend in Late Imperial Russia, 1870–1905. Princeton University Press.

• Bruno, A. (2016). A Eurasian mineralogy: Aleksandr Fersman’s conception of the natural world. Isis, 107(3), 518–539.
• Healey, D. (2015). Lives in the balance: Weak and disabled prisoners and the biopolitics of the Gulag. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 16(3), 527–556.
• Johnstone, F. (1989). Rand and Kolyma: Afro-Siberian Hamlet. South African Sociological Review, 1(2), 1–45.
• Josephson, P. (2011). Technology and the conquest of the Soviet Arctic. The Russian Review, 70(3), 419–439.
• Kirk, T. C. (2020). Memory of Vorkuta: A Gulag returnee’s attempts at autobiography and art. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 21(1), 97–126.
• Nakonechnyi, M. (2022). Gulag medical releases: A response to Stephen G. Wheatcroft. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 23(4), 873–898.
• Nordlander, D. J. (1998). Origins of a Gulag capital: Magadan and Stalinist control in the early 1930s. Slavic Review, 57(4), 791–812.
• Rosefielde, S. (1981). An assessment of the sources and uses of Gulag forced labour, 1929–56. Soviet Studies, 33(1), 51–87.
• Siegelbaum, L. H. (1986). The making of Stakhanovites, 1935–36. Russian History, 13(2/3), 259–292.
• Welsh, J. (2024). Tukhta: Labour and resistance in the audit regime of the Soviet Gulag. Labor History, 65(1), 121–141.
• Wheatcroft, S. G. (1981). On assessing the size of forced concentration camp labour in the Soviet Union, 1929–56. Soviet Studies, 33(2), 265–295.

Railroads

See also: Rail transport in the Soviet Union and Railway system of the Soviet Union

• Haywood, R. M. (1969). The Beginnings of Railway Development in Russia in the Reign of Nicholas I, 1835–1842. Duke University Press.
• Haywood, R. M. (1998). Russia Enters the Railway Age, 1842–1855. East European Monographs.
• Heywood, A. J. (1999). Modernising Lenin's Russia: Economic Reconstruction, Foreign Trade and the Railways. Cambridge University Press.
• Marks, S. G. (1991). Road to Power: The Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Colonization of Asian Russia, 1850–1917. Cornell University Press.
• Payne, M. J. (2001). Stalin's Railroad: Turksib and the Building of Socialism. University of Pittsburgh Press.
• Tupper, H. (1965). To the Great Ocean: Siberia and the Trans-Siberian Railway. Little, Brown.
• Ward, C. J. (2009). Brezhnev's Folly: The Building of BAM and Late Soviet Socialism. University of Pittsburgh Press.
• Westwood, J. N. (1964). A History of Russian Railways. George Allen & Unwin.
• Westwood, J. N. (1982). Soviet Locomotive Technology During Industrialization, 1928–1952. Macmillan.
• Westwood, J. N. (2002). Soviet Railways to Russian Railways. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Wolmar, C. (2013). To the Edge of the World: The Story of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Atlantic Books.

• Bill, V. T. (1956). The early days of Russian railroads. The Russian Review, 15(1), 14–28.
• Heywood, A. J. (2000). Iu. V. Lomonosov and the science of locomotive testing in Russia: First steps, 1895–1901. Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 72(1), 1–15.
• Heywood, A. J. (2012). War, civil war and the ‘restoration’ of Russia’s industrial infrastructure, 1914–25: The fate of the railway locomotive stock. Revolutionary Russia, 25(1), 31–59.
• Kleespies, I. (2018). Riding the Soviet iron horse: A reading of Viktor Turin’s Turksib through the lens of John Ford. Slavic Review, 77(2), 358–389.
• Mirski, M. S. (1954). The Soviet railway system: Policy and operation. The Russian Review, 13(1), 18–32.
• Payne, M. (1988). The TurkSib: First born of the Five-Year Plan. Russian History, 15(2/4), 353–414.
• Ward, C. J. (2001). Selling the “project of the century”: Perceptions of the Baikal-Amur Mainline Railway (BAM) in the Soviet press, 1974–1984. Canadian Slavonic Papers, 43(1), 75–95.
• Westwood, J. N. (1959). Soviet railway development. Soviet Studies, 11(1), 22–48.
• Wolff, D. (1996). Between war and revolution: Railway brigades in Siberia, 1905–1907. Russian History, 23(1/4), 95–111.

Energy

See also: Energy in the Soviet Union and Energy in Russia

Main article: Bibliography of Russian and Soviet science (Technology) § Energy

Academic journals

Main article: List of Slavic studies journals

Very few journals are dedicated specifically to the history of science and technology in Russia and the Soviet Union; the specialist journal is listed first, followed by general history of science and technology journals and Russian, Soviet, and Slavic studies journals that regularly publish work in this field.

Specialist journal

• Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki (VIET; Studies in the History of Science and Technology). Institute for the History of Science and Technology, Russian Academy of Sciences (1980–present). ISSN 0205-9606. [In Russian, with English abstracts.]

History of science, technology, and medicine

• Isis. University of Chicago Press for the History of Science Society.
• Technology and Culture. Johns Hopkins University Press for the Society for the History of Technology.
• History and Technology. Taylor & Francis.
• Annals of Science. Taylor & Francis.
• British Journal for the History of Science. Cambridge University Press for the British Society for the History of Science.
• Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences. University of California Press.
• IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. IEEE Computer Society.

Russian, Soviet, and Slavic studies

• Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History. Slavica Publishers.
• Slavic Review. Cambridge University Press for the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.
• The Russian Review. Wiley.
• Russian History. Brill.
• Europe-Asia Studies. Taylor & Francis.
• Russian Studies in History. Taylor & Francis.

See also

• Bibliography of Russian history
• Bibliography of the Soviet Union

References

Further reading

• Bailes, K. E. (1978). Selected bibliography. In Technology and society under Lenin and Stalin: Origins of the Soviet technical intelligentsia, 1917–1941 (pp. 443–458). Princeton University Press.
• Graham, L. R. (1987). Bibliography. In Science, philosophy, and human behavior in the Soviet Union (pp. 507–550). Columbia University Press.
• Graham, L. R. (1993). Bibliographic essay. In Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A short history (pp. 293–307). Cambridge University Press.
• Vucinich, A. (1963). Bibliography. In Science in Russian culture: A history to 1860. Stanford University Press.
• Vucinich, A. (1970). Bibliography. In Science in Russian culture, 1861–1917. Stanford University Press.

External links

• Gerovitch, S. (n.d.). Virtual guide to the history of Russian science and technology: Bibliography. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved July 13, 2026.
• Graham, L. R. (1989). Russian and Soviet science and technology. History of Science Society.
• University of Illinois Library. (n.d.). Russian library and information science. Slavic, East European & Eurasian Studies. Retrieved July 13, 2026
• Ruiz-Diaz, K. (n.d.). Soviet science. Guided History, Boston University. Retrieved July 13, 2026