Red Bread
by Maurice Hindus, Ronald Grigor Suny

Paperback Book, 396 pages

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Description

First published in 1931 and long out of print, Red Bread is Russian-bornjournalist Maurice Hindus's account of his return to his native village in 1929-30to see for himself how Stalin's collectivization campaign was transforming the livesof the peasants among whom he had grown up in prerevolutionary times. This warm andhuman narrative conveys in personal and immediate terms his peasant neighbors'responses to being forced out of a centuries-old way of life and into the unfamiliarsocial setting and industrialized large-scale agriculture of the kolkhoz. Convincedthat collectivized farming would bring Russian agriculture and the Russian peasantinto the modern age, Hindus was nonetheless deeply troubled by the huge social costand personal suffering inflicted by Stalin's ruthless campaign. Red Breadcontributes an invaluable grassroots perspective on the era's dynamism and despairto the current discussion of the Soviet historical experience in the Soviet Unionand the West.