Stalin’s “Revolution from Above” or the Radical Etatization of the Early Soviet Rural Society? To Rethink Approaches

The concept “revolution from above” as a large-scale socio-political experiment demands a nuanced theoretical understanding. This article examines a model that provides a comprehensive analysis of this experience through the lens of social and humanities sciences. The “revolution from above” was an ambitious project that was realized from a “seeing like a state” perspective. However, it led to destructive consequences for both society and the system as a whole. The study highlights several “traps” encountered during the implementation of “socialist transformations”, such as limited transformations, lack of necessary financial resources, normalization of emergency measures, limited potential, unintended consequences. These factors played a pivotal role in the negative effects observed. To explore the transformation of rural Soviet society at the turn of the 1920s – 1930s, the article proposes a model of radical etatization. It concludes that the “revolution from above” was a natural culmination of the comprehensive process of etatization that had been underway since 1917. The forced and etatization of society during this period was executed by the party state through radical measures in both the political and socio-economic spheres. Consequently, this provoked a corresponding radicalization of positions and actions from rural society. The radical etatization project in rural areas was characterized by significant social conflict between the interests of the party state and those of early Soviet society.This article, which incorporates regional examples, delineates the destructive consequences of such societal transformations.