Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization
Russia's rural lassitude persists in the form of state and collective farms, a legacy of Stalin dating from 1930. The peasants of that year sensed the apocalyptic meaning of the dictator's slogan to "liquidate the kulaks as a class" and responded by slaughtering about 50 percent of their livestock in an orgy of despair. Fitzpatrick dissects the subsequent decade, when the Communists--cued by Stalin's famous and speciously titled article "Dizzy with Success"--first recoiled from, then grimly pressed on with the dispossession of private farming, virtually re-enserfing the peasants. She delves into new archives, examining closely the secret police's reports of rumors, which reflect the pattern of popular resistance to the state's draconian policy. The state's occasional conciliation--relaxations of religious persecution, for example--inspired a pervasive skepticism expressed in the many pithy quotations Fitzpatrick reprints. A pioneering piece of historical sociology that delineates the deplorable reality of ideological utopias, this serious, professional work is indeed specialized for public libraries--but not for those that enjoy steady use of the Soviet affairs collection.Gilbert Taylor--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.