Description
Book SynopsisAn important interdisciplinary history of Russia’s agriculture and food systems that documents far-reaching changes on farms, along with their effects on ordinary people and for successive political regimes.
Trade Review“Who eats what? Susanne A. Wengle’s important and gripping book recasts a century of Russian history as a series of revolutionary transformations of the country’s food system. Answers to problems of food production and consumption are central pillars of political power and legitimacy for communist and post-communist regimes alike.”—Henry Thomson, Arizona State University
“This eminently readable book, based on fascinating research, serves as an urgent reminder that techno-scientific projects in agriculture have deep histories and variegated geographies, and thus are hardly an invention of Silicon Valley start-up culture.”—Julie Guthman, University of California, Santa Cruz
“A comprehensive and very refreshing technopolitical history of Russia’s agrifood system. Wengle’s nuanced account of Russia’s remarkable rise from a Soviet-era food importer to a rising global powerhouse has resulted in a timely book—a tour de force that is nonetheless narrated in an extremely concise and lively way.”—Oane Visser, International Institute for Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam
“Challenges you to think beyond the confines of your respective specialty and consider big themes in agricultural history and policy. . . . Wengle should be commended for her lucid prose and sharp analysis, as well as the inclusion of several maps created by the author herself.”—
H-Net Reviews“Offers a novel approach to the transformations of Soviet and post-Soviet agriculture, emphasizing the connections between the state, production, and technology, as well as consumers and nature, the latter two often neglected in political science.”—
Foreign AffairsTable of Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction: Setting the Table
- 1 Governance; or, How to Solve the Grain Problem?
- 2 Production
- 3 Consumption; or, The Perestroika of the Quotidian
- 4 Nature
- Conclusion: Vulnerabilities
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
