The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization [signed]

In this ground-breaking study, Lynne Viola--the first Western scholar to gain access to the Soviet state archives on collectivization--brilliantly excavates a lost chapter in the history of the Stalin revolution. This book affords an intimate look at the campaign of the 25,000ers, the industrial workers who were sent into the Soviet countryside to implement collectivization during the 1930s. Examining the backgrounds, motivations, and mentalities of these workers, Viola embarks on the first Western investigation of the everyday activities of Stalin's rank-and-file shock troops as they strove to realize the First Five-Year Plan revolution and who, in doing so, enacted the final chapter in the Russian revolution. In the process, Viola sheds light on how the state mobilized working-class support for collectivization and shows that, contrary to common belief, the 25,000ers went into the countryside as willing recruits. The first social history to present an "on the scene" line of vision, this book brings readers one step closer to penetrating the elusive Soviet mind at a critical historical moment.