Soviet Peasants

Soviet Peasants, by the pseudonymous Lev Timofeev, written in Moscow from 1979 to 1980 by a journalist specializing in agriculture, belongs to that rarest genre of Soviet literature: social anthropology. The author combines a perceptive analysis of the workings of Soviet planned agriculture with the insight of direct observation of the peasants' everyday life. He is at home with the most abstract and often intentionally abstruse publications of official Soviet researchers; he had access to "official use only" materials—sources inaccessible not only to Western researchers, but to many Soviet specialists as well. Timofeev is a gifted analytical observer, able to perceive the gist of complex social processes among the tribulations of flesh-and-blood Soviet kolkhozniks. Since the author knew he would never see his work published in the Soviet Union, he wrote it for the samizdatpublic: the Russian intellectuals with a strong interest in the history of their country and a highly developed sense of moral responsibility both for the recent past and for the future of their country.