Abstract

In 1981, an extraordinary work, written by Lev Timofeev, was smuggled to the West and immediately printed in Russian. It has now been translated into English for the first time under the title Soviet Peasants (or: The Peasants'; Art of Starving).' The book is a rare exercise in social anthropology in as much as Timofeev manages to bring together an expert's knowledge of Soviet agricultural policy with penetrating observations on the everyday life of peasants based on his own direct experience of the Russian countryside. Most of what Timofeev reveals about the economic, social, and moral quality of life in the USSR are things which have long been hidden (or denied) by Soviet authorities.