The essays in this collection explore the social 'construction' of the Russian peasantry in the period between Emancipation and Collectivisation, and the impact of these constructions on Tsarist and Bolshevik agrarian policy. The international group of authors represent different trends in the historical, sociological and geographical investigations of the East European peasantry and draw both upon the insights of cultural studies and recently available archival materials to throw new light on the relationship between peasantry and other classes.

RONALD J. HILL Professor, Trinity College, Dublin MARCO BUTTINO Lecturer in History of Eastern Europe, University of Turin CHRIS CHULOS Research Fellow, Renvall Institute of History, University of Helsinki DAVID HOFFMANN Associate Professor in History, Ohio State University JAMES HUGHES Lecturer in Russian Politics, London School of Economics and Political Science YANNI KOTSONIS Assistant Professor of History, New York University DAVID MACEY Professor of History and C. V. Starr Professor of Russian Studies, Middlebury College LOUISE MCREYNOLDS Associate Professor of History, University of Hawaii LEWIS SIEGELBAUM Professor of History, Michigan State University ALESSANDRO STANZIANI Assistant Professor of Economic History, University of Naples KEELY STAUTER-HALSTED Assistant Professor of East European History, Michigan State University IHOR STEBELSKY Professor and Head of Geography, University of Windsor MARKUS WEHNER Currently works for Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung.

List of Tables List of Figures General Editor's Introduction Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction; Judith Pallo t PART 1: SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS How Peasants Became Backward: Agrarian Policy and Co-operatives in Russia, 1905-14; Y. Kotsonis Exhibiting Kustar Industry in Late Imperial Russia/Exhibiting Late Imperial Russia in Kustar Industry; L. Siegelbaum Tracking Social Change Through Sport Hunting; L. McReynolds The Moral Community and Peasant Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Poland; K.Stauter-Halsted Revolution and Grass-Roots Re-Evaluations of Russian Orthodoxy: Parish Clergy and Peasants of Voronezh Province; C.J. Chulos The `Peasantisation' of the Soviet Working Class: Peasant Migration's Ebb and Flow; D.L.Hoffmann Ukrainian Settlement Patterns in the Kirgiz Steppe Before 1917: Ukrainian Colonies or Russian Integration?; I. Stebelsky Transforming Peasants PART 2: POLICY IMPLICATIONS AND PEASANT RESPONSES `A Wager on History': The Stolypin Agrarian Reforms as Process; D.A.J. Macey The First World War and the Disintegration of Economic Spaces in Russia; A. Stanziani Economic Relations Between Russia and Turkmenistan, 1914-18, or How to Start a Famine; M Buttino The Soft Line on Agriculture: The Case of Narkomzem and its Specialists, 1921-27; M. Wehner Re-evaluating Stalin's Peasant Policy in 1928-30