Building Utopia: Erecting Russia's First Modern City, 1930

by Richard Cartwright Austin

Overview

Perhaps the most challenging project under Stalin's first five-year plan was the race to build Europe's largest automobile factory and an adjacent city in just 18 months. The site was Nizhny Novgorod, later named Gorky. To design and construct both factory and city, Soviet officials approached the premier industrial builder in America, the Austin Company of Cleveland, Ohio. From near-breakdown during the initial months, through a Russian winter that called for bravery and ingenuity, to a frantic race toward completion in the final month, Building Utopia reveals the humanity of both communists and capitalists and the contrasts between Russian and American cultures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781612773209
Publisher:	Kent State University Press
Publication date:	08/31/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	241
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Richard Cartwright Austin helped to organize a national effort to secure federal legislation regulating strip mining for coal. He also organized the Coalition of American Electric Consumers, which successfully resisted the construction of the world's largest pumped-storage hydroelectric project on small farms, forests, and nature preserves in southwestern Virginia, where he lives. He holds a Doctor of the Science of Theology from San Francisco Theological Seminary and is retired from a forty-year ministry with the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Table of Contents

	Preface	ix
1	The Austin Method	1
2	"Those Russians Are Starting Fresh"	7
3	"In a Friendly Way"	21
4	"Spirit and Ability"	31
5	"The First Communist City in the World"	45
6	"The First Home We Have Had"	59
7	"Off the Road"	73
8	"Workers Clamoring to Get Paid"	89
9	"Every Principle Seems Upset"	103
10	"To Stay Here over Christmas"	109
11	"Work on Ice a Meter Thick or More"	121
12	"An Opportunity Given by God"	141
13	"Here They Will Fail or Triumph"	155
14	"Fortresses Taken by Bolsheviks"	175
15	"The USSR at the Wheel"	189
16	Gazelle	203
	Notes	215
	Bibliography	221
	Index	223