Women’s Peasant Protest in Siberia in the First Half of 1930: The Phenomenon of a Radical Response to the Policy of Violent Etatization

The paper deals with the problem of the phenomenon of women’s protest during the process of “total collectivization” of the agricultural sector. The author investigates the phenomenon as social action within the framework of the structural-functional approach (M. Weber, R. Merton), which allows to eliminate ideological cliches and analyze women’s protest not as an affective social action (“Bab’i bunt” - women’s revolt), but as a complex social action in which the role of goal setting can be dominant. This approach makes it possible to establish the main characteristics of women's protest, its effect, and impact on the culture of peasant protest. It provides an opportunity to consider the processes of interaction between “authority – society” in the extraordinary conditions of “the Great socialist transformation”. Main sources are archival documents of the OGPU authorized representative in the Siberian region (krai); minor sources include archival documents of local party committees and Soviet organisations and also regional press. The author analyzes protest actions recorded by the OGPU officers with the participation of women in the first half of the 1930s, identifying the main characteristics of women’s protest, its forms, causes and motives, as well as the impact on peasant society and state policy. The author also reveals that this social action in the absence of a legal opportunity to influence the agrarian/peasant policy of the party was quite an adequate means to achieve certain goals of the protesters. “Bab’i bunt” was a marker of the extreme social life of early Soviet society during the “Great Break”, which demonstrated the radicalization of relations between the peasant society and authorities during a violent etatization of the village. The conclusion is that the women’s protest, as part of the general peasant protest at the first stage of “complete collectivization”, forced the authorities to adjust their policies and even seek some compromises.

Provisions situation in the Tambov Governorate in the early 1918

We examine the provisions situation in the early 1918 in the producing regions of Russia using materials from the Tambov Governorate. Published documents indicate a strong rise in prices for consumer goods, the population was concerned about high prices for food. The provisions problem was clearly taking on political overtones. The Bolsheviks who came to power did not only impose power, proceeding from their political and economic preferences, starting socialist transformations and fighting the remnants of the old organs of power. All this is shown in pub-lished sources on the peasant movement that swept the province, as well as in memoirs, witnesses of all those problems associated with food and the deterioration of the political and economic situation in the city and the governorate as a whole. In particular, the Soviet power immediately faced huge provisions problems, both inherited and generated by their own requisitions, as well as with the peasant protest movement. The peasant movement itself, caused by hunger and chaos, in the future will play a huge role in the policies pursued by the Bolsheviks. Documents and memoirs can serve in the study of the state of the population in the specified period.

A Constructive Beginning in Peasant Protest: “Red Army of Truth” in Buzuluk (July 1920)

The question of the content of the insurrectionary protest of the 1920s is considered. The relevance of the study is due to the tendency in historiography to develop any speech of this period in two directions: analysis of program and campaign documents and understanding of the process of suppressing protest. It is proposed to highlight the aspect of the implementation of program provisions for assessing the constructive beginning in the protest movement: how realizable were the programs of the rebels, and also how the rebels managed to implement their plans. Particular attention is paid to the performance of the “Red Army of Truth” in the summer of 1920, which the author defines as “communist” and pro-Soviet. The results of a comparative analysis of sources, which by their origin are related to the insurgent environment, and real actions of the insurgents are presented in the article. The novelty of the study is seen in the fact that the analysis of the actions of the insurgents is carried out without regard to the stereotypes existing in historiography and with the attraction of new facts from previously closed sources. A significant part of the plans and slogans of the “Army of Truth” were implemented in the controlled territory, which testifies to their realism. This allows us to question the well-established thesis that at that time the communist leaders in the center offered the only correct option for building a new Soviet state.

An Amazing Record of Red Plotting

This chapter examines how anticommunist politics emerged alongside international socialist and communist anti-imperial movements during the late 1920s and early 1930s, when U.S. and Philippine political and military officials turned to anticommunism politics to explain the rise of labor and peasant protest, proscribe class-based anti-imperial critiques, and bolster the nationalism of the governing Filipino political elites. Indeed, even before the official formation of the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) in 1930, U.S. and Philippine officials deployed “anti-red” politics to limit the acceptable range of political debate and protest in the archipelago. Throughout the 1930s, U.S. and Filipino policymakers attempted to eliminate socialist, communist, and peasant labor activists' ideas from the political sphere through state repression. Yet by 1939, with the rise of fascism in Europe and Japan and the subsequent embrace of the “popular front” by Western communist parties, Franklin D. Roosevelt pressured the Philippine Commonwealth to minimize its persecution of the political Left. Focusing on the economic, political, and social structures of the colonial state that gave rise to anticolonial critiques and movements, the chapter shows how a transnational political class of Americans and Filipinos anticipated independence by tightening their hold on social, economic, and political power within the islands.