Sample cover letter for Internship position at Deloitte

As one of the most influential and infamous figures in the twentieth century, Joseph Stalin is known for his means of governing policies including high level of terror, rapid industrialization, collectivization of agriculture, centralization of power and socialism in single country, which are collectively known as Stalinism. Resulting from Stalin’s rise to power and decision to end the New Economic Plan, Russia underwent extreme social changes in the 1930s and started the First Five-Year Plan which introduced rapid industrialization, emphasizing on heavy industry, and organization of peasants into collective units for better control. Serious strain was placed on the economy and society as agricultural production decrease and food supply became scarce. Despite of an increase of attention devoted to consumer goods under the Second Five-Year Plan, citizens of Russia were still struggling with problematic living conditions and the terror of the Great Purge was major in the lives of ordinary people throughout late 1930s. Numerous historians have indulged in the study of Stalinism and how ordinary people reacted to the changes in this extraordinary period. Some advocated for a totalitarian model of society that society was being “atomised and under the absolute control of he Soviet state”[1]who used “propaganda and coercion to brain-wash people into conformity”[2], while others see themselves as revisionists who “portray society as an active and autonomous force, not merely an adjunct of the state”[3] and there exists a social basis of support for Stalin actively endorse the regime. With the analysis of new sources and development of new theories, three historians have provided further insights on this topic in their books. Stephan Koktin attempts to tell the story of revolution in Magnitogorsk and how the inhabitants took part in the creation of Stalinism through his book Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism and a Civilization. Months afterthe publication of Kotkin’s book, Sarah Davies also tackles this subject and aims to release the suppressed, heretical opinions and “allow them to speak for themselves as far as possible”[4]through her book Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia: Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, 1934-1941. As a leading historian of this subject who is a pioneer of the revisionist model, Sheila Fitzpatrick further dissects this issue in her book Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s, which describes in details the struggles of ordinary Soviet citizens trying to live ordinary lives in the extraordinary circumstances under Stalinism.An analysis of the three books would give us a holistic view of how the viewpoints of historians have developed over the years and the different approaches they have used in interpreting the everyday life under dictatorship.

[1]Kotkin, Stephen, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 5.

[2]Kotkin, Stephen, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 5.

[3]Ibid.

[4]Davies, Sarah, Popular Opinion in Stalin's Russia: Terror, Propaganda, and Dissent, 1934-1941. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 3.