Power and Possession in the Russian Revolution - (Histories of Economic Life) by Anne O'Donnell (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A history that reframes the Bolsheviks' unprecedented attempts to abolish private property after the revolutions of 1917

The revolutions of 1917 swept away not only Russia's governing authority but also the property order on which it stood. The upheaval sparked waves of dispossession that rapidly moved beyond the seizure of factories and farms from industrialists and landowners, envisioned by Bolshevik revolutionaries, to penetrate the bedrock of social life: the spaces where people lived. In Power and Possession in the Russian Revolution, Anne O'Donnell reimagines the Bolsheviks' unprecedented effort to eradicate private property and to create a new political economy--socialism--to replace it.

O'Donnell's account captures the story of property in reverse, showing how the bonds connecting people to their things were broken and how new ways of knowing things, valuing them, and possessing them coalesced amid the political ferment and economic disarray of the Revolution. O'Donnell reminds us that Russia's postrevolutionary confiscation of property, like many other episodes of mass dispossession in the twentieth century, largely escaped traditional forms of record keeping. She repairs this omission, drawing on sources that chronicle the lived experience of upheaval--popular petitions, apartment inspections, internal audits of revolutionary institutions, and records of the political police--to reconstruct an archive of dispossession. The result is an unusually intimate history of the Bolsheviks' attempts to conquer people and things.

The Bolsheviks' reimagining of property not only changed peoples' lives and destinies, it formed the foundation of a new type of state--one that eschewed the defense of private property rights in favor of an enduring but enigmatic new domain: socialist state property.

Review Quotes

"Power and Possession offers a clear picture of how the Soviet state sought to know and document the urban material world. . . . [A] welcome addition to the literature on the 1917 Revolutions and the Bolsheviks' struggles to transform Russia."---Peter Fraunholtz, H-Net Reviews

"One of the most thought-provoking and well-researched books on the Russian Revolution and is essential reading to understand the revolutionary experience."---Aaron B. Retish, The Russian Review

"[A] powerful and illuminating account of how people lost and laid claim to things - apartments, household items and other personal possessions - in revolutionary Moscow. . . . O'Donnell's calm analysis of the phases of revolutionary dispossession makes compelling reading. The book also contains some surprises even for readers under no illusions about the chaos and coercion of early Bolshevik Russia."---Stephen Lovell, Times Literary Supplement

About the Author

Anne O'Donnell is assistant professor of history and Russian and Slavic studies at New York University.