Introduction

Abstract

In the decades following the death of Stalin, the Soviet Union embarked on a radical strategy with regard to the countryside. Soviet policy-makers sought to design a new approach to agricultural development based upon a refashioned rural society. A central component of this new strategy was a fundamental transformation of the Soviet village; policy-makers aimed to alter the spatial form, social organisation and economic functions of the rural communities. At the heart of the policy was a programme to urbanise the village. A struggle between village and town thus became a defining element of the final years of the Soviet order – something that was at the core of the Soviet project of modernisation.