Seeds of Exchange: Soviets, Americans, and Cooperation in Agriculture, 1921–1935 by MariaFedorova. NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Ithaca: Northern Illinois University Press, 2025. 234 pp. $49.95. ISBN 978‐1‐5017‐8279‐4

Maria Fedorova has written an interesting and well-researched book that contributes to a growing literature reconsidering what we know about Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union. Showing scientific, technological, economic, and political initiatives and dynamics in agriculture, Fedorova challenges the view of Soviet experts and industrialization policies as merely recipients of Western ideas and technologies before high Stalinism. The book is grounded in an analysis of how both Soviet and US experts envisioned the development of productive agriculture, how they cooperated on ambitious projects, and how they experimented with farm practices during the 1920s and mid-1930s. In this way, the book functions as a great study of transnational history. At first glance, the book largely confirms our understanding of Soviet agricultural modernization as a rise-and-fall narrative: from a strong technopolitical belief to the repression of key figures. However, by exploring numerous episodes and fresh stories, it demonstrates that Russia/the Soviet Union was not merely a recipient of generous Western aid—from food during the famine of the early 1920s to machinery in later years. Soviet experts worked on a wide range of projects, dedicating their efforts to creating a productive agricultural system and improving types of seeds in particular. Through this detailed analysis, the book emphasizes cooperation—or, more precisely, exchange—rather than the transfer of technology from the United States to Soviet Russia/the Soviet Union. Fedorova shows that “behind the curtain of capitalist propaganda, many [American] agricultural experts and policymakers were eager to participate in an exchange with their Soviet counterparts” (p. 4). This exchange reflected a broader aspirational belief in modernization through transnational collaboration. Soviet experts emerge as peers and weighty participants in this exchange, integral to “the conceptualization of modern agriculture” (p. 13). The book is structured around six chronologically organized chapters, each focusing on a featured project or episode. The first chapter discusses seed exchange through the lens of the Russian Agricultural Bureau, established in New York in 1921. It enhances our understanding of how US, European, and Soviet scientists shared technocratic beliefs in the potential to improve seeds and establish modern agriculture. Soviet experts, in this sense, were integral participants in international agricultural development. Chapter 2 focuses on the journeys of Soviet “agricultural travelers” to the United States in the 1920s, providing rich details about bureaucratic processes and practical experiences, particularly based on the career of Nikolai Tulaikov, a leading figure in Soviet soil science. The chapter demonstrates that Soviet agricultural travel to the United States in the 1920s was a crucial channel of exchange between the two countries. The following two chapters examine US agricultural projects based in the Soviet Union. Chapter 3 highlights the influential work of the US communist agrarian Harold Ware. Chapter 4 emphasizes innovative agricultural models, particularly the so-called Maslov Kut “farm laboratory” in the North Caucasus. Chapter 5 continues this discussion by examining how US experts presented their Soviet experiences. Collectively, these chapters show that Americans considered Soviet farming practices and planning both useful and promising. They also trace how US peers disseminated their visions of Soviet agricultural systems in the United States, portraying them as valuable knowledge that could assist US farmers during the Great Depression. Chapter 6 explores how changes in the Soviet political landscape brought this exchange to a tragic end, demonstrating once again that Soviet policy had a decisive impact on the development of science. Often, however, the book lacks a broader engagement with the scholarship on the topics it touches upon. Considerable literature exists on knowledge circulation and technology transfer, science and agriculture, industrialization, and early Soviet technopolitics. Positioning Fedorova’s argument within some of these discussions would make the book even more compelling and clear. The analysis could also benefit from deeper contextualization of the technological level of the Soviet economy and production, as well as a broader view of science and agricultural development. Before the book addresses the Great Depression, it is not always clear how the technological levels of the two countries compare. Clarifying in more detail how advanced or backward Soviet agriculture was in general over time would strengthen the book’s argument against portraying Soviet agricultural technology as dependent, while also highlighting the limits of the widespread commitment to progress in the Soviet Union. A classic question arising from the book concerns the experts themselves and how best to characterize them when analyzing Soviet actors. The book notes that “the experts were a motley group of botanists, agricultural economists, geneticists, agricultural enthusiasts, and farmworkers” (p. 9). How coherent were these groups? Did they communicate effectively? Were there opponents of the exchange? How diverse were their areas of expertise? Since knowledge is a key category in the book, further information on the backgrounds, institutional affiliations, and internal contradictions of these experts would have been useful. That said, these comments do not detract from the book’s value; rather, they underscore how stimulating the work is. Fedorova’s book compellingly illustrates the complexity of the past, where expertise, development, material infrastructures, internal politics, international connections, exchanges, and geopolitical processes intertwined to shape a challenging historical period.