Revolution on My Mind

Revolution on My Mind is a stunning revelation of the inner world of Stalin-s Russia, showing us the minds and hearts of Soviet citizens who recorded their lives in diaries during an extraordinary period of revolutionary fervor and state terror.

Jochen Hellbeck is Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University.

"Hellbeck's attempt to situate the Bolshevik project of self-transformation within this wider cultural and historical perspective (a dimension too often lacking in Western studies of the Soviet era) is one of the outstanding virtues of his impressive book." - Aileen Kelly, New York Review of Books "Jochen Hellbeck has opened up a new way into the private inner world of the Stalin years, a world to which former schools of Soviet history didn't pay much attention... There can't now be a cultural history of the 20th century that ignores the experience of forging the self under the conditions of Communist - and especially Stalinist - rule." - Karl Schlogel, London Review of Books "[A] fascinating book... Hellbeck's analysis of his diarists is first-rate, and his enthusiasm for his subject is infectious." - Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Nation"