Like Fitzpatrick's book on the peasants, this looks at the urban workers in Stalin's Russia in the 1930s, and more especially at the strategies they adopted to help deal with the vagaries of life - the arbitrary nature of the State, the shortages, the poor working conditions and the Terror. The author uses evidence previously unavailable, to look at the impact of the Five year Plans from the bottom, the reality of life rather than the official propaganda version we are usually subjected to. An absolutely fascinating exploration of 1930s Soviet life.