Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization [Paperback]

Sheila Fitzpatrick (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195104595 | ISBN-13: 978-0195104592 | Publication Date: January 11, 1996

Drawing 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 analyzes 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) tractor, praising Stalin and promising to produce more grain as a patriotic duty. In the real Russian village of the 1930s, as we learn from Soviet political police reports, sullen and hungry peasants described collectivization as a "second serfdom," cursed all Communists, and blamed Stalin personally for their plight.
Sheila Fitzpatrick's work is truly a landmark in studies of the Stalinist period--a richly-documented social history told from the traumatic experiences of the long-suffering underclass of peasants. Anyone interested in Soviet and Russian history, peasant studies, or social history will appreciate this major contribution to our understanding of life in Stalin's Russia.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

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.

From Kirkus Reviews

Scholarly and poignant account of conditions in Russia's collective farms in the 30's. In an attempt to obtain ever higher grain quotas and stamp out private enterprise, Stalin forced millions of peasants into the collective farm (kolkhoz) system--with catastrophic effects in both human and economic terms. Drawing on recently opened Soviet archives, including reports of the secret police, and her own vast reading of the newspapers of rural Russia, Fitzpatrick pieces together the picture of how collectivization worked in the lives of local communities and individuals. We learn the various ways in which people reacted to the closing of the churches and the liquidation of the more prosperous peasant class (the kulaks), how peasants were cajoled into the kolkhoz and the effects of expulsion from it, how the officials behaved, how the roles of women varied, how local handicrafts came to be replaced by factory products, and much more. We meet heroes of Soviet labor (udarniks and stakhaovites) like Sasha Angelina, who promised Stalin she would plough 1,200 hectares with her tractor, and combine operator Maria Demchenko, whose photograph with Stalin in 1936 entitled ``The Flowering Soviet Ukraine'' became one of the notable icons of the period. The author describes the almost religious cult of Stalin and the idealized ``Potemkin Village,'' but she shows that in reality the peasants hated Stalin and considered collectivization a second serfdom: those who could not depart for the cities hoped for deliverance by a counter-revolution or even foreign invasion. Fitzpatrick makes her account vivid with quotations of first-person experiences, but she resists the temptation to oversimplify the issues. A glossary explains Soviet terms and acronyms. Highly detailed--a must for students of Soviet, or social, history. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 11, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195104595
• ISBN-13: 978-0195104592
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #436,419 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sheila Fitzpatrick is Bernadotte E. Schmitt Professor of Modern Russian History at the University of Chicago. A past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies and a co-editor of The Journal of Modern History, she is the author of many other books and articles about Russia. She lives in Chicago and Washington, DC.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent social history of rural Soviet life in the '30's, July 29, 2003

By 

Virgil "Virgil" (Chapel Hill, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (Paperback)

Stalin's Peasants is the pre-cursor to Fitzgerald's "Everyday Stalinism". While the focus of the later is soviet urban life the focus here falls squarely on the agrarian Soviet Union in the 1930's.

This is an eye-opening look at the effect of collectivization at the village level. The famine of the early '30's- not the main focus- is shown to have been more the case of poor planning, beauracratic ineptitude and peasant reactions against collectivization rather than a diabolical program of systematic starvation.

Post Soviet studies into the Stalinist era confirm the fact that non-party and non-technocratic wrokers who were not Kulaks were much safer from the pograms raging around them. The effect of this was that Kholhozes were constantly replacing managers and technicians caught up in the latest round up of wreckers, this in turn led to confusion and declining morale among the peasants.

The peasants are contrasted with the urban vanguards who flooded the rural kholhoz's who were filled with communist fervor. These vanguards were resented and looked down upon as interlopers and outsiders by the local farm workers. Fitzgerald does great work showing how peasants retained their religious beliefs in the face of communist pressure and their passive resistance to constant pressures from the central government to accomodate the latest decrees.

Just as in Everyday Stalinism, Fitzgerald's work here is excellent. This isn't for the novice reader but a great resource for those who are already knowledgeable on the Soviet Union in the 1930's.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Life as it really was - interesting lesson, May 25, 2001

By 

"govt_atty" (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village After Collectivization (Hardcover)

Fitzpatrick presents a view of Soviet collective farms that many of us may have guessed at, but never really knew or understood. As an amateur researcher of the former Soviet Union and now Russia, particularly the rural and agricultural sectors, I found the book to be very intriguing. It lays out the precursors to and development of the collective system. Provides insight and commentary on political decisions affecting and resulting from the same. And throughout, manages to allow a glimpse into what really happened from the vantage point of the people on the farms themselves - how they managed to survive despite living under a system so flawed as to almost be designed to see them fail.

If you don't mind a long history and political science lesson, I highly recommend this book.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Peasants into Soviets?, July 26, 2005

By 

Gregory Canellis "Student of military history... (Tuckerton, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (Paperback)

Sheila Fitzpatrick's study begins with the advent of collectivization in 1929 and covers the decade of the 1930's to the German invasion of June 1941. Fitzpatrick argues the peasants reacted to Stalin's brutal policy, what they regarded as "a second serfdom" (p. 4), with varying degrees of passive resistance. The author concludes that by the end of the decade, peasants, justifiable embittered and angered over the policy, did not approve or conform to collectivization as the states had intended it to be, but rather, "modified the kolkhoz (collective farm) so that it fit their own purposes as well as the state's" (p. 4). According to Fitzpatrick, by the end of the 1930's, "similar cultural patterns of resistance and adaptation" had spread throughout rural Russia despite well-entrenched ethnic and cultural ways of life. Fitzpatrick clearly shows why, in the summer of 1941, many peasants consequently regarded the invading Germans as liberators to the repressive Stalin regime. The author also explains how the initial decade of collectivization differentiated from the "kolkhoz amalgamations" of the post war period.                 Utilizing a narrative approach, Fitzpatrick provides us with nearly every aspect of life within the peasant village while simultaneously presenting a balance of political imagery from the Soviet regime. This combination of predominately social and cultural history along with an easily flowing narrative is what makes Fitzpatrick a leading scholar of this genre. The focus on the peasant village itself is what sets this study apart from other similar works. From Fitzpatrick's pages, we learn that the peasant village was not as united an entity around an earthly neighborly bond as one would suspect. In fact, the typical village was deceivingly factious. These animosities based on class are deeply rooted in the Emancipation (1861) and Stolypin (1905) reforms and, are perhaps exhibited best in the long-standing resentments between the Bedniaks and Kulaks. Stalin's systematic dekulakization demonstrated the threat the latter posed to the state's exploitive machinations and, as Fitzpatrick clearly shows, undermined the egalitarian objectives of collectivization. Nor, were the majority of peasants typically uneducated. This aspect is revealed in the numerous letters of peasant grievances culled from various archival depositories and delightfully reproduced within the pages of Fitzpatrick's work. Moreover, the theme of education is further illustrated by what is perhaps the most positive reform to emerge from collectivization: the rapid growth of rural schools. Fitzpatrick succeeds in differentiating between the social and cultural realities of the peasant village and the regimes propagandist illusions of the regime's ideal kolkhoz (Potemkin village). These differentiations in status played a significant role in the form of resistance the members of the peasant village chose to incorporate.                 Fitzpatrick gleans from a rich deposit of archival and published sources. The former make up the bulk of her work, however, the book was published at a time when still more Soviet archives were being made available too western eyes. But Fitzpatrick is no stranger to Russian language material and even with more resources becoming available, it is doubtful whether it would have added substantially or fundamentally altered the scope of this book. As Fitzpatrick concludes, the purpose of collectivization "to incorporate the Russian village (culturally and politically) into the emerging Soviet nation-failed (p. 314). In a play on Eugen Weber's classic study (Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France 1815-1914 [1976]) collectivization did not turn "peasants into Soviets" (p. 314), at least not before World War II. Sheila Fitzpatrick is essential reading for anyone seriously interested in modern Russian history.