THE SOCIAL CONTRACT RECONSIDERED: PEASANT-STATE RELATIONS IN THE USSR

Abstract

An American political scientist specializing in Soviet agricultural policy assesses the current state of the Soviet countryside as the product of a persistent urban bias, rather than as a function of an implicit post-Stalin “social contract” between rural dwellers and the state. In the process, he presents much current information about rural living conditions (including that generated in the field through interviews and personal observations) and resource transfers between city and countryside. He argues that unless the structural imbalances perpetuating rural-urban inequalities are adequately addressed, piecemeal efforts at agricultural reform will do little to ameliorate the overall “agrarian problem.”