This book is a first-person account of work life in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Disenchanted with opportunities in Depression America in 1931, Scott takes off for the Workers' Paradise. He finds a job as a welder building the massive steelworks in the new Soviet city of Magnitogorsk in the Ural Mountains. Altogether, he spent six years living and working in Magnitogorsk until he lost his job due to Stalin's purges.

"Students reading Scott have come away with a real appreciation of the hardships under which these workers built Magnitogorsk and of the nearly incredible enthusiasm with which many of them worked." --Ronald Grigor Suny "A genuine grassroots account of Soviet life--a type of book of which there have been far too few." --William Henry Chamberlin, New York Times, 1943 ..". a rich portrait of daily life under Stalin." --New York Times Book Review General readers, students, and specialists alike will find much of relevance for understanding today's Soviet Union in this new edition of John Scott's vivid exploration of daily life in the formative days of Stalinism.