Red Bread: Collectivization in a Russian Village

Bloomington, Indiana, U.S.A.: Indiana University Press, 1988. First Printing . Trade Paperback. Near Fine. 5 1/2" x 8. Yefanov, V - Cover Poster. 372 Pages. Foreword by Ronald Grigor Suny. First Midland Book Edition of a 1931 copyright. Tight, bright, square book with no marks or stamps and has a faultless interior. This is Russian-born journalist Maurice Hindus's account of his return to his native village in 1929-30 to see for himself how Stalin's collectivization campaign was transforming the lives of the peasants among whom he had grown up in prerevolutionary times. This warm and human 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 unfamiliar social setting and industrialized large-scale agriculture of the kolkhoz. Convinced that collectivized farming would bring Russian agriculture and the Russian peasant into the modern age, Hindus was nonetheless deeply troubled by the huge social cost and personal suffering inflicted by Stalin's ruthless campaign. Red Bread contributes an invaluable grassroots perspective on the era's dynamism and despair. The author emigrated to America in 1905. As a writer, lecturer, and war correspondent, he made many trips to Russia during the 1920s, thirties, and forties. Contents in 19 Chapters: Nadya's Letter, The Gathering of the Storm, The Spirit of Sunday, The Coming of the Storm, Moscow Marches On, Beyond the Pale, The Daily Ordeal, The Return of the Native, The voice of the Mass, The White Wedding, The Kolhoz, The New and the Old, The Koolack, The Puzzled Little Father, The Landlord Herdsman, A New Girl, Gips;yRosa, The Farewell Visit, and Red Bread.