{"product_id":"behind-the-urals-an-american-worker-in-russias-city-of-steel-9781773238593","title":"Behind the Urals: An American Worker in Russia's City of Steel","description":"\u003cp\u003eJohn Scott left the University of Wisconsin for the Soviet Union in 1931. Appalled by the depression and attracted by what he had heard concerning the effort to create a \"new society\" in the Soviet Union, he obtained training as a welder and went abroad to join the great crusade. Assigned to construction of the new \"Soviet Pittsburgh,\" Magnitogorsk, on the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains, the twenty-year-old was first an electric welder and then a foreman and chemist in a coke and chemicals by-products plant. He lived in a barracks, suffered cold and privation, studied evenings, married a Russian girl-in short, lived for five years as a Russian among Russians.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNo other description of life in a new steel city provides such a graphic description of the life of workers under the First Five Year Plan. Scott had a clear eye for detail and produced a chronicle that includes the ugliness and squalor as well as the endurance and dedication. Behind the Urals stands as a unique and revealing description of an iron age in an iron country.-Print ed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Students reading Scott have come away with a real appreciation of the hardships under which these workers built Magnitogorsk and of the nearly incredible enthusiasm with which many of them worked.\"-Ronald Grigor Suny\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"A genuine grassroots account of Soviet life- a type of book of which there have been far too few.\"-William Henry Chamberlin, New York Times, 1943\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"...a rich portrait of daily life under Stalin.\"-New York Times Book Review\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Must Have Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50534085624082,"sku":"9781773238593","price":8.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_1c460c31-c0b5-4153-bb9e-25d6ec000d60.jpg?v=1737234470","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/behind-the-urals-an-american-worker-in-russias-city-of-steel-9781773238593","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}