Author: Konstantinov, Yulian

Source: Sibirica, Volume 6, Number 2, Autumn 2007 , pp. 1-25(25)

Abstract:

This article questions the conceptualization of the 1930s Soviet rural mass collectivization as an opposition of 'private versus collective'. Instead a 'private-in-the-collective' (sovkhoist) approach is suggested, stemming from the essentially compromised nature of mass collectivization and offering a better key for understanding of current post-Soviet processes. Archival evidence is used to demonstrate how altruistic versus acquisitive polarities formed a major ideological debate in the 1920s and were gradually resolved as a 'private-in-the-collective' compromise in the collectivization decade. It is suggested that northern reindeer husbandry in the Russian Subarctic presents the private-in-the-collective compromise through the long-standing practice of grazing personal (private) deer mixed with the public herd. The empirical data presented in this article has been collected during fieldwork with reindeer-herding teams in the Kola Peninsula, Northwest Russia since 1995.

Keywords: SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET AGRICULTURE; MASS COLLECTIVIZATION; PERSONAL PLOT; PERSONAL DEER; SOVKHOISM; STATE FARM; SOVKHOZ

DOI: 10.3167/sib.2007.060201

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