Socio-Cultural Worldview of Soviet Collective Farmers in Mid-1930s as Reported by Students of Sverdlov Communist Agricultural University

The mentality of Russian peasants underwent a fundamental transformation during the late collectivization. These changes were reflected in reports made by students of the Moscow All-Union Communist Agricultural University in 1934–1936 during their annual summer practices on collective and state farms or in tractor depots of Central Russia. The documents demonstrated a great information potential as a source on the Soviet rural history in the period of turbulent social transformations. The theoretical part of the research relied on the historical and anthropological approach that focuses on the human dimension in the history of social development. The empirical part included several dozen reports stored in the State Archive of the Russian Federation. The students’ reports described anti-technical and anti-machine sentiments in rural workers, who demonstrated a general reactionary attitude to Soviet culture. Collective farmers were only superficially familiar with the new approaches to organized farming labor. As a result, they gave their own meanings and interpretations to the new concepts. Farmers in retrogressive collective farms mistrusted machine technology. They lacked the necessary skills to use machines and were not aware of their benefits. It took new values and skills a long time to take root in the peasant environment: the new worldview coexisted with the old morals and habits, which endured the blunt propaganda and administrative pressure. The resulting clash of rural and urban attitudes illuminated the gap between the traditions and the revolutionary ideology. These findings expand the scientific ideas about the everyday life, customs, and worldview of Russian peasants during the early years of Socialism.