fundamentally continued to rest on violence and political mass exclusion. The year when the Stabilization Plan was launched also saw the inauguration of the Valley of the Fallen, a gigantic monument dedicated to the ‘martyrs’ of Franco’s ‘cru- sade’, celebrated by the regime in order to maintain civil war divisions in perpe- tuum. Still, when the dictator drew his last breath on 20 November 1975, the social structure on which he had based his dictatorship had all but vanished. Increasingly fossilized in a fast-changing world, the regime had become a relic from a former era. However, despite the anachronistic nature of Franco’s dictatorship in 1970s Europe, its rapid dismantling was not a foregone conclusion; the transition to democracy was the outcome of complex negotiations, foreseen and unforeseen problems tackled in a climate of economic crisis and uncertainty. From this perspective, it was a remarkable achievement. But its success must not obscure the problematic nature of some of the compromises made at the time, notably, the amnesty law of 1977 and the related ‘Pact of Forgetting’. That this pact is now being questioned is not, as Casanova and Gil Andre´s stress, an indication of a desire on the behalf of the defeated in the civil war to open old wounds and sow social discord, but rather ‘evidence of the maturity of a democratic society that is deciding to confront the ghosts of its past without fear’ (p. 354). In this task, the kind of evidence-based history presented here by Casanova and Gil Andre´s is an indispensable tool. Carl-Henrik Bjerstrom Birkbeck College, University of London, UK Diane P. Koenker, Club Red: Vacation Travel and the Soviet Dream, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2013; x + 307pp.; ISBN 9780801451539 Diane Koenker traces the development of Soviet vacation travel between the 1920s and the 1980s. She argues that the Soviet idea to provide vacation opportunities for all workers was innovative and radical, yet the state never fully realized its revo- lutionary promises. Analysing how the USSR and its citizens ‘negotiated the search for the good life’ (p. 281), Koenker illuminates the nature and limits of the revo- lutionary project and the lived experience of Soviet socialism. Club Red provides fascinating insights into the mindsets of key decision makers and tourist activists who argued over the proper definition of a ‘socialist’ vacation. Their views were underpinned by competing notions of what it meant to be Soviet, with the major fault line between advocates of sedentary spa vacations versus mobile tourism. For spa enthusiasts, the Soviet vacation was to produce a healthy member of the workforce and, increasingly, to mark and reward white-collar work- ers as the most deserving category of citizens. Although these distinctions caused some unease among Communist Party and trade union leaders before 1941, postwar vacation policies were more brazenly geared towards the intelligentsia, reflecting stiffening social stratification. The idea that Soviet vacations were 902 Journal of Contemporary History 51(4)