Was Stalin Necessary? Railroads and the Crumbling of the Obshchina in Tsarist Russia

Sylvia Sztern ()
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Sylvia Sztern: Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Chapter Chapter 9 in Russia on the Move, 2022, pp 371-400 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Russian agriculture in Tsarist times was a stagnant, ossified enterprise and its practitioner, the muzhik (peasant), was listless, indolent, driven by prejudices, and beholden to the Tsar and the church. As a result, agriculture was trapped with the productivity of the Middle Ages. Only a serious jolt could set the peasant on the way to a more modern way of life and to the adoption of the new technologies that were drifting in from the West. The jolt was administered by Stalin. It may have been harder than it had to have been, even unnecessarily cruel, yet the jolt itself was inescapable. This is a widely accepted view that we propose to refute in this chapter.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-89285-2_9

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