Julie Hessler. A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917-1953. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004. xvi + 366 pp. ISBN 0-691-11492-7, $39.50.

Julie Hessler’s work is the first comprehensive historyof the first thirty-five years of Soviet trade written afterthe opening of the Soviet Union’s archives following thatnation’s collapse. It will, without doubt, become a standardwork of reference. Hessler gives due credit to the Soviet historianG. A. Dikhtiar’s three-volume work on Russian and Soviettrade published in the 1960s (in Russian). Despite the book’sobvious ideological overtones, it deserves to be read alongsideHessler’s work. Hessler’s