Podcasts about rural russia

Episode 119:This week we're continuing Russia in Revolution An Empire in Crisis 1890 - 1928 by S. A. Smith[Part 1]Introduction[Part 2-5]1. Roots of Revolution, 1880s–1905[Part 6-8]2. From Reform to War, 1906-1917[Part 9-12]3. From February to October 1917[Part 13 - 17]4. Civil War and Bolshevik Power[Part 18 - 22]5. War Communism[Part 23 - 26]6. The New Economic Policy: Politics and the Economy[Part 27 - 30]7. The New Economic Policy: Society and Culture[Part 31 - This Week]Conclusion (first half) - 0:23[Part 32]ConclusionFootnotes:1) 7:37The phrase was Lenin's. See V. I. Lenin, ‘Our Tasks and the Soviet of Workers' Deputies', 2–4 Nov. 1905, in Lenin Collected Works (Moscow: Progress, 1965), 10. 17–28.2) 22:49Lynne Viola, ‘Collectivization in the Soviet Union: Specificities and Modalities', in Constantin Iordachi and Arnd Bauerkämper (eds), The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe: Comparison and Entanglements (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2014), 49–78 (64–5).3) 24:17Ronald Suny suggests that empire is ‘a composite state in which the centre dominates the periphery to the latter's disadvantage'. Ronald G. Suny, ‘Ambiguous Categories: States, Empires and Nations', Post-Soviet Affairs, 11:2 (1995), 185–96 (187).4) 25:55Peter Holquist, ‘Violent Russia'.5) 26:45Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity, 1989), 13; David L. Hoffmann, Cultivating the Masses: Modern State Practices and Soviet Socialism, 1914–1939 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011).6) 28:57Landis, Bandits.7) 29:16Liudmila G. Novikova, ‘Russia's Red Revolutionary and White Terror: A Provincial Perspective', Europe-Asia Studies, 65:9 (2013), 1755–70.8) 29:40Felix Schnell, Räume des Schreckens: Gewalt und Gruppenmilitanz in der Ukraine, 1905–1933 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2012); Stefan Plaggenborg, ‘Gewalt und Militanz in Sowjetrußland 1917–1930', Jahrbucher fur Geschichte Osteuropas, 44 (1996), 409–30.9) 30:23Stephen P. Frank, Crime, Cultural Conflict, and Justice in Rural Russia, 1856–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 245–8.

Episode 115:This week we're continuing Russia in Revolution An Empire in Crisis 1890 - 1928 by S. A. Smith[Part 1]Introduction[Part 2-5]1. Roots of Revolution, 1880s–1905[Part 6-8]2. From Reform to War, 1906-1917[Part 9-12]3. From February to October 1917[Part 13 - 17]4. Civil War and Bolshevik Power[Part 18 - 22]5. War Communism[Part 23 - 26]6. The New Economic Policy: Politics and the Economy[Part 27 - This Week]7. The New Economic Policy: Society and Culture - 0:22Social Order Restored - 2:20Designing a Welfare State - 21:04[Part 28 - 30?]7. The New Economic Policy: Society and Culture[Part 31?]ConclusionFigure 7.1 - 26:31Young Pioneers demonstrate against the dangers of alcohol, 1929.[See image at https://www.abnormalmapping.com/leftist-reading-rss/2022/2/15/leftist-reading-russia-in-revolution-part-27]Footnotes:1) 0:34On aspects of society and culture in NEP Russia see the two collections of essays: Fitzpatrick, Rabinowitch, and Stites (eds), Russia in the Era of NEP; Abbot Gleason, Peter Kenez, and Richard Stites (eds), Bolshevik Culture: Experiment and Order in the Russian Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985).2) 5:02Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘Ascribing Class: The Construction of Soviet Identity in Soviet Russia', in S. Fitzpatrick (ed.), Stalinism: New Directions (London: Routledge, 1999), 20–46.3) 5:57Naselenie Rossii v XX veke, vol. 1, 149.4) 7:52Shanin, Awkward Class.5) 8:41Danilov, Rural Russia, 275.6) 9:17Merl, ‘Socio-economic Differentiation of the Peasantry', in Davies (ed.), From Tsarism, 47–65.7) 10:42Moshe Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power (London: Allen and Unwin, 1968).8) 11:17I. I. Klimin, Rossiiskoe krest'ianstvo v gody novoi ekonomicheskoi politiki (1921–1927), chast' pervaia (St Petersburg: Izd-do Politekhnicheskogo universiteta, 2007), 208.9) 13:31Golos naroda, 152.10) 14:14Alan M. Ball, Russia's Last Capitalists: The Nepmen, 1921–1929 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).11) 16:51Daniel T. Orlovsky, ‘The Antibureaucratic Campaign of the 1920s' in Taranovski (ed.), Reform, 290–315.12) 17:57Krasil'nikov, Na izlomakh sotsial'noi struktury, table 1.13) 19:47V. I. Tikhonov, V. S. Tiazhel'nikova, and I. F. Iushin, Lishenie izbiratel'nykh prav v Moskve v 1920–1930-e gody (Moscow: Mosgorarkhiv, 1998), 132.14) 21:44Hoffman and Kotsonis (eds), Russian Modernity.15) 21:57Susan Gross Solomon and John F. Hutchinson (eds), Health and Society in Revolutionary Russia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).16) 22:50A. Iu. Rozhkov, V krugu sverstnikov: Zhiznennyi mir molodogo cheloveka v sovetskoi Rossii 1920-kh godov (Krasnodar: OIPTs, 2002).17) 24:05Neil B. Weissman, ‘Origins of Soviet Health Administration: Narkomzdrav, 1918–1928', in Solomon and Hutchinson (eds), Health and Society, 97–120.18) 26:49Neil Weissman, ‘Prohibition and Alcohol Control in the USSR: The 1920s Campaign against Illegal Spirits', Soviet Studies, 38:3 (1986), 349–68.19) 28:38James Riordan Sport in Soviet Society: Development of Sport and Physical Education in Russia and the USSR (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).20) 29:12Robert Edelman, Serious Fun: A History of Spectator Sports in the USSR (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 46.21) 29:39Smena, 21 Aug. 1925, 5.22) 31:20Larry E. Holmes, The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).23) 32:23Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility, ch. 1.24) 32:45For contrasting evaluations of experimentalism: V. L. Soskin, Obshchee obrazovanie v sovetskoi Rossii: pervoe desiatiletie, chast' 2, 1923–1927gg. (Novosibirsk: Novosibirskii gos. universitet, 1999); Balashov, Shkola.25) 34:44William Partlett, ‘Breaching Cultural Worlds with the Village School: Educational Visions, Local Initiative, and Rural Experience at S. T. Shatskii's Kaluga School System 1919–32', Slavonic and East European Review, 82:4 (2004), 847–85 (859).26) 36:15Holmes, The Kremlin, 94.27) 36:51Shkaratan, Problemy, 289.28) 37:14Gimpel'son, Sovetskie upravlentsy; Chernykh, Stanovlenie Rossii sovetskoi.29) 38:44E. O. Kabo, Ocherki rabochego byta (Moscow: Iz-do VTsSPS, 1926), 175.30) 39:21Il'iukhov, Zhizn', 151.31) 39:52William J. Chase, Workers, Society and the Soviet State: Labor and Life in Moscow, 1918–1929 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 185.32) 40:29Gimpel'son, Sovetskie upravlentsy, 205.33) 41:36Andrei Platonov, Chevengur, trans. Anthony Olcott (Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1978), 135.34) 42:14Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 198.35) 43:30Vladimir Mayakovsky, ‘Vziatochniki', .

Episode 111:This week we're continuing Russia in Revolution An Empire in Crisis 1890 - 1928 by S. A. Smith[Part 1]Introduction[Part 2-5]1. Roots of Revolution, 1880s–1905[Part 6-8]2. From Reform to War, 1906-1917[Part 9-12]3. From February to October 1917[Part 13 - 17]4. Civil War and Bolshevik Power[Part 18 - 22]5. War Communism[Part 23 - This Week]6. The New Economic Policy: Politics and the Economy - 0:43New Economic Policy and Agriculture - 11:08[Part 24 - 26?]6. The New Economic Policy: Politics and the Economy[Part 27 - 30?]7. The New Economic Policy: Society and Culture[Part 31?]ConclusionFootnotes:1) 1:01The great work on the history of these years is E. H. Carr's fourteen-volume A History of Soviet Russia, which covers the period from 1917 to 1929. It falls into four parts: The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–23 (3 vols, 1950–3); The Interregnum, 1923–1924 (1954); Socialism in One Country, 1924–26 (4 vols, 1958–63); Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926–1929 (6 vols, 1969–78, the first two co-authored with R. W. Davies).2) 3:49V. P. Danilov, ‘Vvedenie', Kak lomali NEP: Stenogrammy plenumov TsK VKP(b), 1928–1929gg., 5 vols (Moscow: Materik, 2000), vol. 1, 5–13 (6).3) 4:41Mark Harrison, ‘Prices in the Politburo 1927: Market Equilibrium versus the Use of Force', in Paul R. Gregory and Norman Naimark (eds), The Lost Politburo Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 224–46.4) 7:12V. I. Lenin, ‘On Cooperation', .5) 7:30Moshe Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System (London: Methuen, 1985).6) 8:25Pirani, Russian Revolution in Retreat.7) 8:45L. N. Liutov, Obrechennaia reforma: promyshlennost' Rossii v epokhu NEPa (Ul'ianovsk: Ul'ianovskii gos. universitet, 2002), 17.8) 12:31Danilov, ‘Vvedenie', 6.9) 13:35Mark Harrison, ‘The Peasantry and Industrialization', in Davies (ed.), From Tsarism, 110.10) 13:58Wheatcroft, ‘Agriculture', in Davies (ed.), From Tsarism, 98.11) 14:47Harrison, ‘The Peasantry', 113.12) 16:20Harrison, ‘The Peasantry', 110.13) 16:59E. H. Carr and R. W. Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926–1929, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan, 1969), 971.14) 17:41Danilov, ‘Vvedenie', 9.15) 18:08Tragediia sovetskoi derevni. Kollektivizatsiia i raskulachivanie. Dokumentyi i materialy, vol. 1 (Moscow: Rossiiskaia Polit. Entsiklopediia, 1999), 37–8; James Hughes, Stalin, Siberia and the Crisis of the New Economic Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 126–33.16) 18:36V. P. Danilov and O. V. Khlevniuk, ‘Aprel'skii plenum 1928g.', in Kak lomali NEP: Stenogrammy plenumov TsK VKP(b), 1928–1929gg., 5 vols (Moscow: Materik, 2000), vol. 1, 15–33 (29).17) 20:00V. P. Danilov, Rural Russia under the New Regime (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 269.18) 20:31Danilov, Rural Russia, 171.19) 21:20James W. Heinzen, Inventing a Soviet Countryside: State Power and the Transformation of Rural Russia, 1917–1929 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004).20) 23:22Roger Pethybridge, The Social Prelude to Stalinism (Basingstoke: London, 1974), 226.21) 24:51K. B. Litvak, ‘Zhizn' krest'ianina 20-kh godov: sovremennye mify i istoricheskie realii', in NEP: Priobreteniia i poteri (Moscow: Nauka, 1994), 186–202.

Susanne Wengle (University of Notre Dame) discusses her research project on how rising global prices for agriculture products have led to an influx of capital that has transformed rural economies in Russia.

The Kremlin has been flexing economic and political muscles on the world stage but the Russian economy is struggling to keep up. Plunging oil prices, U.S. and European sanctions over Ukraine and military operations in Syria have all taken their toll. People across the country are feeling the pinch but rural areas are the hardest hit – much of the countryside is empty and dying. Almost 36,000 villages, or one in four, have 10 residents or fewer. Another 20,000 are abandoned, according to the latest census. Young people left long ago for cities and towns – the collective farms which once would have employed them disappeared along with the USSR. It's a bleak picture but some young businessmen and women are trying to revive Russia's dying villages with a mixture of traditional craftsmanship, social enterprise and shrewd marketing. In the impoverished Pskov Region, Kirill Vasilev employs 15 villagers to make Valenki –felt boots made from dried sheep's wool, the footwear of peasants and tsars for centuries. Traditionally, valenki come in brown, black, gray and white, but Vasilev produces versions in a variety of bright colours which he sells in a fashionable part of his native St Petersburg. Now he has plans to expand to London and New York. He is inspired by the world-famous UGG boots and Crocs, which also had their origins in ethnic footwear for Australian and Dutch farmers. Will he succeed and what difference could it make to the village of Dolostsy on the Belarusian border? Lucy Ash visits Kirill Vasilev at his Valenki workshop, meets his employees and finds out more about the challenges facing small businesses in Russia. Produced and presented by Lucy Ash (Image: Pile of Valenki - felt boots made from dried sheep's wool. Photo credit: Viktoria Zhgel)

On February 23, 1917, female textile-workers and housewives protested a bread shortage in Petrograd, the imperial capital of the Russian Empire. It was the beginning of twelve days of protests, riots, and political dealing that concluded with the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. This was the February Revolution. It was the beginning of the Russian Revolution, one of the most important historical events of the twentieth century, second only in consequence to the World War that midwifed its birth. Further along a lengthy chain of cause and effect from that bread protest in Petrograd, by the end of the year a Communist state had been established atop a 1/6th of the world’s territory; revolution after revolution, most momentously the Chinese Revolution, would follow the example of 1917; Fascism would in part arise as a reaction to it; and following 1945 it would for almost fifty years shape international politics. My guest today to explain the complex events of the first year of the revolution to us is Professor Richard L. Hernandez of the Department of History at East Carolina University. He is particularly interested in the social, cultural, and religious aspects of the Russian Revolution, particularly in rural areas. Currently he is completing a book tentatively entitled Political Religion and Religious Politics: Radical Modernity, Traditional Culture, and the Building of Socialism in Rural Russia.

The lives, let alone the fates, of Imperial Russia’s priesthood have garnered little attention among historians. I think the reason is partially because the research of most Russian historians has been focused on explaining the country’s torturous modernization. The orthodox clergy were hardly (so the story goes) modernizers, so they could be ignored. I, too, accepted the clergy as a moribund social caste after reading I. S. Belliustin’s Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia in graduate school. A parish priest himself, Belliutsin lambasted his colleagues for their drunkenness, parasitism, and utter disregard for the souls of their flock. Only Bolshevik anti-religious propaganda could surpass the passion of Belliutsin’s indictment. Enter Laurie Manchester‘s Holy Fathers, Secular Sons: Clergy, Intelligentsia, and the Modern Self in Revolutionary Russia (Northern Illinois UP, 2008). In this fascinating book, Manchester traces the paths of the sons of priests (popovichi) out of the castelike clergy and into more “modern” and “secular” professions and political movements. After their emancipation in 1860s, popovichi increasingly became academics, doctors, journalists, educators, businessmen, and revolutionaries. Manchester explains, however, that we would be wrong to assume that this departure from traditional roles meant the priest’s sons abandoned their Orthodox upbringing. On the contrary, many popovichi stressed their religious traditions, ethics, and worldview in their new “secular” mission to save Russia. Their Orthodox values provided a moral foundation that made them distinct in the ranks of Russia’s intelligentsia. These values also outlasted the Bolshevik Revolution. The Bolsheviks may have destroyed the Orthodox clergy as a social class, but eliminating its ethos proved far more difficult. Manchester’s complex tale provides a much needed challenge to our image of the backward priest and secular, westernized intelligent by showing that for the sons of priests the self-fashioning of a secular identity never strayed to far from its religious antecedents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The lives, let alone the fates, of Imperial Russia’s priesthood have garnered little attention among historians. I think the reason is partially because the research of most Russian historians has been focused on explaining the country’s torturous modernization. The orthodox clergy were hardly (so the story goes) modernizers, so they could be ignored. I, too, accepted the clergy as a moribund social caste after reading I. S. Belliustin’s Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia in graduate school. A parish priest himself, Belliutsin lambasted his colleagues for their drunkenness, parasitism, and utter disregard for the souls of their flock. Only Bolshevik anti-religious propaganda could surpass the passion of Belliutsin’s indictment. Enter Laurie Manchester‘s Holy Fathers, Secular Sons: Clergy, Intelligentsia, and the Modern Self in Revolutionary Russia (Northern Illinois UP, 2008). In this fascinating book, Manchester traces the paths of the sons of priests (popovichi) out of the castelike clergy and into more “modern” and “secular” professions and political movements. After their emancipation in 1860s, popovichi increasingly became academics, doctors, journalists, educators, businessmen, and revolutionaries. Manchester explains, however, that we would be wrong to assume that this departure from traditional roles meant the priest’s sons abandoned their Orthodox upbringing. On the contrary, many popovichi stressed their religious traditions, ethics, and worldview in their new “secular” mission to save Russia. Their Orthodox values provided a moral foundation that made them distinct in the ranks of Russia’s intelligentsia. These values also outlasted the Bolshevik Revolution. The Bolsheviks may have destroyed the Orthodox clergy as a social class, but eliminating its ethos proved far more difficult. Manchester’s complex tale provides a much needed challenge to our image of the backward priest and secular, westernized intelligent by showing that for the sons of priests the self-fashioning of a secular identity never strayed to far from its religious antecedents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The lives, let alone the fates, of Imperial Russia’s priesthood have garnered little attention among historians. I think the reason is partially because the research of most Russian historians has been focused on explaining the country’s torturous modernization. The orthodox clergy were hardly (so the story goes) modernizers, so they could be ignored. I, too, accepted the clergy as a moribund social caste after reading I. S. Belliustin’s Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia in graduate school. A parish priest himself, Belliutsin lambasted his colleagues for their drunkenness, parasitism, and utter disregard for the souls of their flock. Only Bolshevik anti-religious propaganda could surpass the passion of Belliutsin’s indictment. Enter Laurie Manchester‘s Holy Fathers, Secular Sons: Clergy, Intelligentsia, and the Modern Self in Revolutionary Russia (Northern Illinois UP, 2008). In this fascinating book, Manchester traces the paths of the sons of priests (popovichi) out of the castelike clergy and into more “modern” and “secular” professions and political movements. After their emancipation in 1860s, popovichi increasingly became academics, doctors, journalists, educators, businessmen, and revolutionaries. Manchester explains, however, that we would be wrong to assume that this departure from traditional roles meant the priest’s sons abandoned their Orthodox upbringing. On the contrary, many popovichi stressed their religious traditions, ethics, and worldview in their new “secular” mission to save Russia. Their Orthodox values provided a moral foundation that made them distinct in the ranks of Russia’s intelligentsia. These values also outlasted the Bolshevik Revolution. The Bolsheviks may have destroyed the Orthodox clergy as a social class, but eliminating its ethos proved far more difficult. Manchester’s complex tale provides a much needed challenge to our image of the backward priest and secular, westernized intelligent by showing that for the sons of priests the self-fashioning of a secular identity never strayed to far from its religious antecedents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The lives, let alone the fates, of Imperial Russia’s priesthood have garnered little attention among historians. I think the reason is partially because the research of most Russian historians has been focused on explaining the country’s torturous modernization. The orthodox clergy were hardly (so the story goes) modernizers, so they could be ignored. I, too, accepted the clergy as a moribund social caste after reading I. S. Belliustin’s Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia in graduate school. A parish priest himself, Belliutsin lambasted his colleagues for their drunkenness, parasitism, and utter disregard for the souls of their flock. Only Bolshevik anti-religious propaganda could surpass the passion of Belliutsin’s indictment. Enter Laurie Manchester‘s Holy Fathers, Secular Sons: Clergy, Intelligentsia, and the Modern Self in Revolutionary Russia (Northern Illinois UP, 2008). In this fascinating book, Manchester traces the paths of the sons of priests (popovichi) out of the castelike clergy and into more “modern” and “secular” professions and political movements. After their emancipation in 1860s, popovichi increasingly became academics, doctors, journalists, educators, businessmen, and revolutionaries. Manchester explains, however, that we would be wrong to assume that this departure from traditional roles meant the priest’s sons abandoned their Orthodox upbringing. On the contrary, many popovichi stressed their religious traditions, ethics, and worldview in their new “secular” mission to save Russia. Their Orthodox values provided a moral foundation that made them distinct in the ranks of Russia’s intelligentsia. These values also outlasted the Bolshevik Revolution. The Bolsheviks may have destroyed the Orthodox clergy as a social class, but eliminating its ethos proved far more difficult. Manchester’s complex tale provides a much needed challenge to our image of the backward priest and secular, westernized intelligent by showing that for the sons of priests the self-fashioning of a secular identity never strayed to far from its religious antecedents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The lives, let alone the fates, of Imperial Russia’s priesthood have garnered little attention among historians. I think the reason is partially because the research of most Russian historians has been focused on explaining the country’s torturous modernization. The orthodox clergy were hardly (so the story goes) modernizers, so they could be ignored. I, too, accepted the clergy as a moribund social caste after reading I. S. Belliustin’s Description of the Clergy in Rural Russia in graduate school. A parish priest himself, Belliutsin lambasted his colleagues for their drunkenness, parasitism, and utter disregard for the souls of their flock. Only Bolshevik anti-religious propaganda could surpass the passion of Belliutsin’s indictment. Enter Laurie Manchester‘s Holy Fathers, Secular Sons: Clergy, Intelligentsia, and the Modern Self in Revolutionary Russia (Northern Illinois UP, 2008). In this fascinating book, Manchester traces the paths of the sons of priests (popovichi) out of the castelike clergy and into more “modern” and “secular” professions and political movements. After their emancipation in 1860s, popovichi increasingly became academics, doctors, journalists, educators, businessmen, and revolutionaries. Manchester explains, however, that we would be wrong to assume that this departure from traditional roles meant the priest’s sons abandoned their Orthodox upbringing. On the contrary, many popovichi stressed their religious traditions, ethics, and worldview in their new “secular” mission to save Russia. Their Orthodox values provided a moral foundation that made them distinct in the ranks of Russia’s intelligentsia. These values also outlasted the Bolshevik Revolution. The Bolsheviks may have destroyed the Orthodox clergy as a social class, but eliminating its ethos proved far more difficult. Manchester’s complex tale provides a much needed challenge to our image of the backward priest and secular, westernized intelligent by showing that for the sons of priests the self-fashioning of a secular identity never strayed to far from its religious antecedents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices