What often gets overlooked in the examination of the great terror (and other 20th Century terrors) is the experience of ordinary people and their thoughts, fears and survival strategies. During the Cold War an immense amount of scholarship went into fathoming the internal workings of the soviet state and the reasoning of StalinStalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician, dictator and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. Read More and his inner circle. Historian Sheila Fitzpatrick has done an immense amount of work and scholarship into discerning the experience of the everyday. This week I look at her brilliant book Everyday Stalinism to explore the Great Terror of 1937-38:
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2 responses to “Everyday life and terror – 1937”
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[…] CollectivisationCollectivisation Full Description:
The policy of forced consolidation of individual peasant households into massive, state-controlled collective farms. It represented a declaration of war by the urban state against the rural peasantry, intended to extract grain to fund industrialization. Collectivisation was a radical restructuring of the countryside that abolished private land ownership. The state seized land, livestock, and tools, forcing independent farmers into kolkhozy. Resistance was met with brutal force, including the “liquidation” of wealthier peasants (Kulaks) as a class.
Critical Perspective:This policy fundamentally altered the relationship between the people and the land. It treated the peasantry not as citizens to be supported, but as an internal colony to be exploited. By establishing a state monopoly on food production, the regime gained the ultimate lever of social control: the power to grant or withhold the means of survival, leading to man-made famines used to crush regional nationalism and resistance.
Read more and the Soviet Peasantry: A Short Guide Pravda and StalinStalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician, dictator and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. Read More’s Terror Everyday life and terror – 1937 Stalin and HG Wells Stalinist […] -
[…] CollectivisationCollectivisation Full Description:
The policy of forced consolidation of individual peasant households into massive, state-controlled collective farms. It represented a declaration of war by the urban state against the rural peasantry, intended to extract grain to fund industrialization. Collectivisation was a radical restructuring of the countryside that abolished private land ownership. The state seized land, livestock, and tools, forcing independent farmers into kolkhozy. Resistance was met with brutal force, including the “liquidation” of wealthier peasants (Kulaks) as a class.
Critical Perspective:This policy fundamentally altered the relationship between the people and the land. It treated the peasantry not as citizens to be supported, but as an internal colony to be exploited. By establishing a state monopoly on food production, the regime gained the ultimate lever of social control: the power to grant or withhold the means of survival, leading to man-made famines used to crush regional nationalism and resistance.
Read more and the Soviet Peasantry: A Short Guide Pravda and StalinStalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician, dictator and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. Read More’s Terror Everyday life and terror – 1937 Stalin and the Gulags Stalin and HG Wells Stalinist […]
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