I would be really hesitant using these findings to frame Russian Communism, especially if we conclude that ‘peasant envy’ was a contributing factor in how horrific the Stalinist regime was. The Russian Revolution was won by workers in major industrial cities, whilst peasant uprisings, whilst present, had nowhere near the same effect as working class militancy on the Soviet Government and the state of Russian Society.
The wretched state of the peasantry and their attitudes toward another, if anything, evidence that the early Russian Marxists were right in dismissing the peasantry as an ineffectual instrument of revolutionary change (which was the opposite of the leftist mainstream at the time). As the support and participation of the peasantry in the revolution were far less important than that of the fledgling working class, and because the collectivisation measures were imposed on the peasantry by foreign actors (and not a product of their own self-emancipation), I don’t think the peasantry had that big of an influence in how horrific Communist rule was.
That being said, I really agree that comparing the state of the Russian Peasantry and Revolution to China’s peasant society and their revolution would be a really fruitful task. To my understanding, the Chinese Revolution was based almost entirely in peasant struggle, so the sociological factors in the frame of that class would be especially pertinent.
I would be really hesitant using these findings to frame Russian Communism, especially if we conclude that ‘peasant envy’ was a contributing factor in how horrific the Stalinist regime was. The Russian Revolution was won by workers in major industrial cities, whilst peasant uprisings, whilst present, had nowhere near the same effect as working class militancy on the Soviet Government and the state of Russian Society.
The wretched state of the peasantry and their attitudes toward another, if anything, evidence that the early Russian Marxists were right in dismissing the peasantry as an ineffectual instrument of revolutionary change (which was the opposite of the leftist mainstream at the time). As the support and participation of the peasantry in the revolution were far less important than that of the fledgling working class, and because the collectivisation measures were imposed on the peasantry by foreign actors (and not a product of their own self-emancipation), I don’t think the peasantry had that big of an influence in how horrific Communist rule was.
That being said, I really agree that comparing the state of the Russian Peasantry and Revolution to China’s peasant society and their revolution would be a really fruitful task. To my understanding, the Chinese Revolution was based almost entirely in peasant struggle, so the sociological factors in the frame of that class would be especially pertinent.
Good to know! [I was mostly working off of remembering kulak as a term of abuse, rather than a detailed knowledge of how the Revolution went down.]