This book prompts mixed reactions. For one thing, the writing leaves a lot to be desired and makes one wonder about the effectiveness of the copyeditor. A few examples will be provided below. There are more substantive problems pertaining to the underlying conception of the book. While the author has made a laudable effort to explain and justify his methodology (oral history using eighty interviews), the objectives of his undertaking are somewhat contradictory and unclear. To what extent is the study supposed to increase understanding of Soviet society as a whole, as distinct from being an exploration of the attitudes and beliefs of an interesting elite group, the faculty of the Higher Academy for Air Defense that used to be located in the Soviet Ukrainian city of Kharkov/Kharkiv?

The author avers that his project seeks to answer two questions: “What it was like to live Soviet [a recurring dubious locution] in Ukraine during the late Soviet (1960s–1991) and post-Soviet periods” (6). Originally conceived of “as representatives of the Soviet ‘middle strata,’” he subsequently realized that these military officers were an elite group, “paragons of Soviet values and personifications of the state” (xv). He also wrote: “As New Soviet Military Men, these officers were the living personifications of the Soviet Union, elite leaders who assisted with the indoctrination of millions of young Soviet conscripts—not just in how to defend their country, but also in how to export revolution abroad” (96). Not exactly a group whose life and outlook had much in common with the vast majority of less privileged and less indoctrinated Soviet citizens. Apparently, the author could not quite make up his mind about the representativeness of this group, or give up his aspiration to make generalizations about Soviet society as a whole by studying it. Presumably, it was the uncertain premise concerning the matter of representativeness that led the author to consider this study “a ‘people history’ … a history from the bottom-up” (3–4). This is a dubious claim. A related dilemma the author could not quite resolve was whether or not to consider the Soviet system and society as “normal” or “abnormal.” He recommends what might be called a postmodern approach to historiography, including the study of repression:

The quote further illustrates the gap between characteristics of his respondents and the generalizations based on them. Members of this politically-committed group had no reason to feel repressed or know anybody who had reason to feel repressed. Likewise, these high ranking officers, or rather their wives, could avoid standing in line for meat, which would have been abnormal for them. While oral history is a worthwhile undertaking, the reliability of the information it yields and its superiority over archival and other sources is not self-evident. Even if Soviet official documents are untrustworthy, subjective individual recollections and interpretations of past social-political conditions need not be more reliable or objective for different reasons. Problems of style include the awkward title “Living Soviet,” and the grammatically incorrect use of “strong,” as in: “the number of believers was … strong” (172, 182). “I watched in captivation …” (185) is a poor substitute for “I was captivated.” “Background” is a noun, not a verb (189).

Despite deficiencies of style and limitations of generalizability, this is a useful source of information about Soviet military elite attitudes and beliefs. It is organized in chapters dealing with the vocation of military service, the spouses of the military men, attitudes about ethnicity and nationality, and religion. Unexpectedly, two thirds of the respondents professed to be religious at the time of the interview, and half of them said that they had been since childhood (159). Less surprising but notable is that the respondents' “first and most important social self-identification was not with the nation, but rather with the supranational Soviet state …” (136). Also of interest, that these officers correctly (and critically) considered Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms and the associated erosion of the official ideology a major source of the collapse of the system (89). It is a strength of the volume that each chapter includes an informative survey of the existing literature, complementing the information obtained from the interviews. The book comes with a useful and extensive bibliography and the text of the interviews used.