Collectivization Generation - by Marianne Kamp (Paperback)

About the Book

"This book is a history of agricultural collectivization in Soviet Uzbekistan, but it is not focused on Party decisions. It is instead a history of everyday life that relies on voices of oral history respondents whom I call the collectivization generation. Born between the early 1900s and the early 1920s, the collectivization generation were rural youth who, willingly or unwillingly, participated in this transformation of agricultural life in the early 1930s as teens or young adults"--

Book Synopsis

Winner of the Central Eurasian Studies Society Book Award

Collectivization Generation is a history of agricultural collectivization in Soviet Uzbekistan, but it is not focused on Party decisions. Instead, Marianne Kamp offers a history of everyday life that relies on oral history accounts from those she calls the collectivization generation. Born between the early 1900s and the early 1920s, the collectivization generation were rural youth who participated in the transformation of agricultural life in the early 1930s as teens or young adults. A top-down restructuring ruptured their predictable life trajectories and created new categories for understanding self and society. For many, the newly formed kolkhozes became their economic, social, and political milieu throughout their working years, shaping their identities and their material lives. In Collectivization Generation, we meet Uzbeks who were driven from their homes by bandits, whose fathers disappeared in the Stalinist gulag, who suffered starvation and orphanhood. We also meet Uzbeks who told of embracing the project of collectivization, of feeling rewarded with dignity, recognition, pay, association with national triumphs, and with the progress represented by a tractor.

Review Quotes

Collectivization Generation is an excellent work that was decades in the making.

-- "Oral History Review"

Marianne Kamp's book is a landmark contribution to the social history of Soviet Central Asia, particularly to our understanding of Uzbekistan during one of the most transformative and traumatic periods of the twentieth century.

-- "American Historical Review"

Marianne Kamp's new monograph provides a marvelous example of the value of... research in Central Asia, where collectivization, like Soviet history more broadly, is understudied compared to other regions.

-- "Russian Review"

About the Author

Marianne Kamp is Associate Professor in the Central Eurasian Studies Department, Indiana University. She is the author of The New Woman in Uzbekistan, and editor and cotranslator of Muslim Women of the Fergana Valley.