Description
Book SynopsisDrawing on newly-opened Soviet archives, especially the letters of complaint and petition with which peasants deluged the Soviet authorities in the 1930s, Stalin''s Peasants analyses peasants'' strategies of resistance and survival in the new world of the collectivized village. Stalin''s Peasants is a story of struggle between transformationally-minded Communists and traditionally-minded peasants over the terms of collectivization: a struggle of opposing practices, not a struggle in which either side clearly articulated its position. But it is also a story about the impact of collectivization on the internal social relations and culture of the village, exploring questions of authority and leadership, feuds, denunciations, rumors, and changes in religious observance. For the first time, it is possible to see the real people behind the facade of the Potemkin village created by Soviet propagandists. In the Potemkin village, happy peasants clustered around a kolkhoz (collective farm) tract
Trade Reviewwell-researched and richly detailed ... It adds a great deal of new information on rural conditions and attitudes in the 1930s. No other work comes close to it in recounting the tragedy of collectivization from the peasant's point of view. * Times Literary Supplement *
