Russian Peasant Organisation Before Collectivisation: A Study Of Commune And Gathering 1925-1930

Most Russian peasants in the mid-1920s held their land as members of a commune (or mir), the old Russian form of land-holding. The revolution had brought a revival in the fortunes of the institution. This was not a welcome development to the Bolsheviks and the Soviet government unsuccessfully attempted to supplant the commune as the focus of rural affairs, by instituting the rural Soviets. The debate on land-holding in the mid-twenties bore fruit only in encouraging peasants to modify the worst inefficiencies of strip farming.