Based upon research from various Soviet archives, this work reconstructs the revolutionary experience of the peasantry in the crucial Volga region, situated immediately behind the military fronts between the Red and the Whites. The book begins with a detailed description of the revolution in the villages. The destruction of the old agrarian state left the peasantry to reform the entire social life of the countryside through its own autonomous organs, according to traditional peasant notions of social justice. The peasantry's relations with the Reds and the Whites are discussed in depth. The greater ability of the Bolsheviks to mobilise the peasantry is explained in terms of political and social developments at the village level during the Civil War. The Civil War, as the last chapters illustrate, left a deep scar on the peasant economy and peasant-state relations, which influenced the entire development of the Soviet regime.
- ISBN10 0198228988
- ISBN13 9780198228981
- Publish Date December 1989
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 6 February 1997
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Oxford University Press
- Imprint Clarendon Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 420
- Language English