The collectivization of Russian farms was the cornerstone of Soviet agricultural policy during the 1930s. Fitzpatrick's book, about Soviet forced collectivization and its impact on the Russian village, will be the first in Western or Soviet literature to explore the dramatic transformation of peasant life caused by collectivization. It is based on new and unknown material from recently-opened Soviet archives. In this richly textured and fascinatingly detailed book, the author analyses the peasants' strategies of resistance and survival in the state-inflicted drama of the collectivized village. For the first time it is possible to see real people behind the facade of the Soviet propaganda account of the happy "Potemkin Village". The regime's own strategy involved humiliation and violence.

Fitzpatrick's study is truly a landmark in studies of the Stalinist period - a thickly-documented social history told from the traumatic experiences of that long-suffering underclass of peasants. Her study has been called a "breakthrough" by specialists in her field and will affect how the history of the Soviet period will be done by subsequent generations of scholars.