The New History of the Russian Peasantry.

Since the end of the 1970s, there has been an upsurge in writing on the Russian peasantry during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and some of the most recent examples are discussed here. The work is characterized by its richness of new information and an extension of scholarship into new aspects of peasant economy, society and culture of the period. Much of this new work avoids detailed theorizing, presenting itself as a more grounded and complex understanding than provided by earlier, 'ideologically driven' Marxist and neo-populist approaches, while at the same time drawing on concepts introduced by J.C. Scott and others. This essay offers an account of this body of research and explores its implications for an understanding of the period in terms of class analysis and capitalist development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]