Summary Of Behind The Urals By John Scott

Throughout my reading of “Behind the Urals” written by John Scott, I had a fairly hard time picking a certain emotion he had towards the USSR. Scott scarcely showed his distaste for the many tragedies going on in Russia while he was there, they were mostly masked by the improvement of production and living conditions in Magnitogorsk. It took until the end of the book for me to truly understand Scott’s feelings towards the USSR and their methods used to industrialize Russia. John Scott is a true believer of the USSR based on his experiences of how human life was taken so lightly, and his transition into believing this as well. Scott sees the drastic improvement of Russia in general and appreciates many aspects of life there, and though he sees and understands the loss present, it was necessary to create this industrialized and socialist society. Scott has an experience at the beginning of the book that really rattles him. “... I heard someone
Scott transforms the way he speaks of pain and loss throughout the book in order to justify the means by which Stalin made things happen for this country. I do not believe however that Scott thinks any less of these lives, but instead he can see what was necessary in order to move forward. He personally got to experience the success after years of hardship. Even when he was not allowed to work anymore because he was a foreigner, he never questioned or fought the decision of the people via Stalin (Scott 230). He allows the justification of all these losses, the many lives and his own job, to give him peace and allow him to appreciate the progress Russia really had made in those years. This is why I believe Scott is a true believer of the USSR. I thought that Scott’s experience was vastly fascinating and I was intrigued the entire book, what an incredibly sad but also rewarding way to