Discussions about how people lived in the USSR have raged since its collapse. However, debates between those nostalgic for Soviet reality and staunch supporters of reform rarely take a reasoned turn. In his book, Dmitry Travin attempts to correct this by compiling a large body of factual material attesting to a bygone era: from letters, diaries, memoirs, and anecdotes to economic statistics and scholarly works. His research focuses on the life of the ordinary Soviet person…