Transforming Peasants: Society, State and the Peasantry, 1861-1930

The essays in this collection explore the social "construction" of the Russian peasantry in the period between Emancipation and Collectivization, and the impact of these constructions on Tsarist and Bolshevik agrarian policy. The international group of authors represent different currents in the historical, sociological and geographical investigations of the East European peasantry and draw upon both the insights of cultural studies and recently available archival materials to throw new light on the relationship between peasantry and other classes. In the first section the way in which different social classes understood the peasantry is discussed in relation to religion and the Orthodox Church, peasant handicraft production and other forms of labor, agrarian development and migration. The second section is devoted to the formulation and execution of agrarian policies.