I'm learning the Russian language, which naturally includes a lot of reading about the history of Russia. The Soviet Union seems difficult to summarize, especially here in the US where the focus (and certainly what I was taught in school) seems to lean heavily on The Gulag Archipelago and similar images from dissidents and anti-communists.
My girlfriend also happens to be Russian (by total coincidence), born in the USSR, and through her I've been exposed to a lot of the little details about Soviet life -- like the morning exercises on TV and other bits of pop culture and life.
Are there any books that avoid being polemics either for or against the USSR as a political entity and instead give a lower-level view of Soviet life? These can be nonfiction or fiction, in English or Russian.
Thank you!
Probably the most important thing that is necessary to understand about the USSR before reading any books is that USSR was not uniform both in space and time. There are no books that describe USSR as a whole and are unbiased at the same time. Here is the list of books more or less meeting your criteria "avoid being polemics" and "give a lower-level view of Soviet life" arranged by historical periods:
** Pre-revolution **
Борис Пастернак. Доктор Живаго
Лев Кассиль. Кондуит и Швамбрания
Борис Житков. Виктор Вавич
Revolution and Civil war
It is hard to find unbiased works of this period.
Михаил Шолохов. Тихий Дон
** 20-s and early 30-s (before 1933) **
Илья Ильф, Евгений Петров. Двенадцать стульев
Илья Ильф, Евгений Петров. Золотой теленок
Андрей Платонов. Котлован
Андрей Платонов. Чевенгур
** 30-s and pre-WWII **
It is hard to find unbiased works of this period.
Аркадий Гайдар. Тимур и его команда
World War II
Виктор Некрасов. В окопах Сталинграда
Александр Шумилин. Ванька-ротный
Константин Симонов. Живые и мертвые
** Post-war period **
Аркадий Вайнер, Георгий Вайнер. Эра милосердия
** 1956-1964 Khrushev **
Чингиз Айтматов. Прощай, Гульсары
Валентин Распутин. Прощание с Матерой
Лилиана Розанова. Рассказы
** 1966 - 1983 Brezhnev **
Виктор Конецкий. За доброй надеждой
Венедикт Ерофеев. Москва-Петушки
Александр Житинский. Глагол Инженер
That's all I could compile right now, also not all these books have English translations.
You might enjoy Svetlana Alexievich's Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets. It's basically an oral history of late 1980s and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, as seen and recalled by people Alexievich interviewed.