All Shook Up: The Shifting Soviet Response to Catastrophes, 1917–1991

The Soviet Union is infamous for its environmental disasters, but it is less well known for its seismic history. When we think of earthquakes, places like San Francisco, Kanto, Sumatra, Lisbon, New Madrid, Mexico City, and Lima jump more readily to mind. Yet, the Soviet Union (and tsarist Russia before it) was among the most seismically active (and seismically transformative) countries in the world—especially in the mountainous, multi-ethnic borderland regions to the south and east. All too little was published about Soviet earthquake history in English before Raab’s All Shook Up. Extensively researched and engagingly written, Raab’s book digs into Russian-language archival and published sources, as well as a range of documentary and feature “disaster” films. His focus is primarily on urban earthquakes—Crimea 1927, Ashgabat 1948, Tashkent 1966 (by far the strongest, most enthralling part of the book), and Armenia 1988—but he also includes a brief foray into the...