`The history of a canal-building project might be thought in some quarters as an unpromising subject for a good read, but it is some years since I have found myself so drawn into a book as I was reading Building Stalinism: The Moscow Canal and Creation of Soviet Space. In five meticulously-researched and elegantly crafted chapters, Cynthia Ruder excavates the multiple layers of meaning embedded in the landscape of the Moscow-Volga canal. The canal was the centrepiece engineering project of the second five-year plan that transformed Moscow into a "port of five seas" and supplied the city with water and electricity, but did so at the cost of tens of thousands of lives of gulag victims. This book is not a conventional history of a gulag camp (although the discussion of Dmitlag is a valuable addition to the literature) because throughout, it is the canal and the water in it that is centre stage. The originality of the book is in its combination of different conceptions of space - representational, discursive and socio-political - to reveal the role that the canal played in securing Moscow as the very epicentre of the USSR's mythic landscape. It does this by taking the reader on a journey along the canal, with pauses to explain how the natural environment was re-worked in a particular place or to give a detailed history of an architectural monument, loch or statue, or to note the place where bones were uncovered by a 21st century digger. And we learn also of the music, writing and art and other cultural productions that told the canal's story from the point of view of the people who built it. Much of the book is about memory and it is obvious that Cynthia Ruder cares very deeply that the canal's origins in one of the harshest camps of the Gulag will not be forgotten under the new layer of meanings associated with the elite homes and yacht clubs that now line its banks. This thought-provoking and moving historical-geography will help guarantee that this will not happen.' - Judith Pallot, Professor Emeritus, University of Oxford and President, British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES), `This is a deeply researched and beautifully written book that will be read by scholars and non-scholar alike. In accessible, flowing prose, Cynthia Ruder explains through the lens of the inception and building of the Moscow Canal what Stalinism looked like, felt like and how it worked in the 1930s Soviet Union. Upon reading this book with its wonderful details, character studies, plates and illustrations, the reader comes away with a deep understanding of "the triumph of Soviet over Russian culture and the shift from Russian to Soviet spaces," and the social, psychic, political and economic impact of the Moscow Canal that still reverberate in today's Russia. Beautifully written and researched, this book profoundly enhances our understanding of Stalinism and the workings of Soviet communism.' - Deborah Kaple, Research Scholar and Lecturer, Princeton University, `A highly original work, Building Stalinism examines the way human lives were reforged in order for Stalinist culture to succeed. Focusing on artistic representations of the Moscow Canal, Cynthia Ruder brilliantly illustrates the way space could be shaped to fit an ultimately destructive ideology.' - Olga M. Cooke, Associate Professor of Russian, Texas A&M University and editor of Gulag Studies, `An extremely well-researched and original book that sheds new light on the ideology and operation of Stalinism by bringing together myriad rare or unknown sources, including new voices both from the gulag and from contemporary Russia. Ruder uses the Moscow Canal as a powerful vantage point from which to study Stalinism and the memory of Stalinism today, as well as questions of landscape, environment, and water policy.' - Karen Petrone, Professor of History, University of Kentucky