Tear Off the Masks!

What makes Tear off the Masks! so appealing and why the pieces work so well together is that they cover a broad range of experiences associated with what it meant to be a Soviet citizen. Certainly, it will be a boon to the field to have the book available for courses. Tear off the Masks! is so appealingly written, full of wit and occasional humor, that it could serve as a model...

What makes Tear off the Masks! so appealing and why the pieces work so well together is that they cover a broad range of experiences associated with what it meant to be a Soviet citizen. Certainly, it will be a boon to the field to have the book available for courses. Tear off the Masks! is so appealingly written, full of wit and occasional humor, that it could serve as a model of the historian's craft. What we get is a phenomenal, nearly unparalleled depth of research combined with a transparency about research methods that invites the reader into this particular(ly skilled) historian's laboratory.

Sheila Fitzpatrick is Bernadotte E. Schmitt Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and coeditor of "The Journal of Modern History". Her books include "Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times; Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization; Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European Histo...

Sheila Fitzpatrick is Bernadotte E. Schmitt Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago and coeditor of "The Journal of Modern History". Her books include "Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times; Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization; Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European History, 1789-1989," coedited with Robert Gellately; and "In the Shadow of Revolution: Life Stories of Russian Women from 1917 to the Second World War" (Princeton), coedited with Yuri Slezkine.