The revenge of the peasant? The collapse of large‐scale Russian agriculture and the role of the peasant ‘private plot’ in that collapse, 1991–97

This article re‐examines the old question of whether the agricultural workforce on the (former) state and collective farms of rural Russia are properly to be called ‘peasants’. It shows that the question itself involves an important degree of conceptual confusion. These people still, it is true, call themselves peasants, but this is an expression of their attitudes toward the state, not ‐ or not primarily ‐ a description of their economic or social role. The article then goes on to show, however, that the expansion of ‘private plot’ production in post‐Soviet Russia has been an important cause of the current crisis of large farm ('collective') production there. It ends by considering the question of how far this ‘triumph’ of private plot production over large‐scale production can be considered a ‘peasants’ revenge’ whether by the people themselves or by an ‘outside’ observer. It concludes that all possible answers to this latter question are gloomily ironic.

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