Советско-американская агрогигантомания 1920–1930-х годов: проекты, противоречия, результаты

• Authors: Александр Никулин

Title variants

EN

Soviet and American Agrarian Giant-mania in the 1920’s – 1930’s: Projects, Contradictions, Outcomes

• Languages of publication: RU

Abstracts

EN

The article is devoted to the phenomenon of agrarian giant-mania in the 1920’s – 1930’s, whose technical ideas emerged at the turn of the XX century in the USA and which were put into practice with vigor and enthusiasm in establishing the system of giant farms (sovkhozes) in the USSR. The article is based on the analysis of three biographic cases of three American agro-consultants, who worked in the soviet Russia. The first case is connected with the work in the USSR of Harold Ware, manager and communist, who created the first Soviet-American sovkhoz in 1922. The second case is the story of life and work in soviet sovkhozes of Lement Harris, leftist agro-mechanic. The third case is devoted to Thomas Campbell, an American agrarian tycoon and owner of the biggest grain factory in the world, who consulted Stalin and his government in the years of the 1st five-year plan. The article reconstructs and analyses the peculiarities of the mentality and activity of different strata of Soviet society, ranging from sovkhoz workers to communist leaders, in their interaction with the representatives of the American industrial-agrarian culture. Finally, conclusions are made on the significance of big and super-big highly technological agrarian production in the Soviet history, and the question of the causes of recurrence of the giant-mania phenomenon is raised. On the whole, this research is based on the multi-disciplinary understanding of social history as a broad field of interplay and interaction between political-economic and social-cultural factors and contradictions, where statistics and anecdotal facts appear to be natural components of human history.

Keywords

EN

Russian-American relations; economic competition; agrarian policy; industrialization of agriculture

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Warmińsko-Mazurskiego
• Journal: Przegląd Wschodnioeuropejski
• Year: 2010
• Volume: 1
• Pages: 181-200

Dates

published

2010

Contributors

author

Александр Никулин

• The Moscow Scool of Social and Economic Sciences

Identifiers

ISSN

2081-1128