Gleaning for Communism: The Soviet Socialist Household in Theory and Practice

by Xenia A. Cherkaev

Overview

Gleaning for Communism is a historical ethnography of the property regime upon which Soviet legal scholars legislated a large modern state as a household, with guaranteed rights to a commons of socialist property, rather than private possessions. Starting with former Leningrad workers' everyday stories about smuggling industrial scrap home over factory fences, Xenia Cherkaev traces collectivist ethical logic that was central to this socialist household economy, in theory and practice: from its Stalin-era inception, through Khrushchev's major foregrounding of communist ethics, to Gorbachev's perestroika, which unfurled its grounding tension between the interests of any given collective and of the socialist household economy itself.

A story of how the socialist household economy functioned, how it collapsed, and how it was remembered, this book is haunted throughout by a spectral image of the totalitarian state, whose jealous political control over the economy leads it to trample over all that which ought to be private. Underlying this image, and the neoliberal state phobia it justified, is the question of how individual interests ought to relate to the public good in a large modern society, which, it is assumed, cannot possibly function by the non-private logics of householding. This book tells the story of a large modern society that did.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501770258
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	07/15/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	210
File size:	4 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Xenia Cherkaev is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at the Higher School of Economics University, St. Petersburg, Russia. She has published articles in The American Historical Review; Cahiers du monde Russe; Environmental Humanities; and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Households and Historiographies
1. The "Soviet" Things of Postsocialism
2. Gleaning for the Common Good
3. Songs of Stalin and Khrushchev
4. Chuvstvo khoziaina: The Feeling of Being an Owner
Conclusion: Russian Socialism

What People are Saying About This

Kate Brown

Xenia Cherkaev sorts through socialist property law with astounding lucidity. This is the first account I have read that provides a convincing explanation of the collapse of the late Soviet economy. A human, quixotic account.

Jeremy Morris

Xenia Cherkaev shows with compelling breadth and depth how property relations in today's Russia are inflected by the contested histories of 'personal' ownership of state property, DIY activities, and the socialist household economy. However, the book provides a wider perspective – on how this political economic arrangement related to the timeless questions of individual interest and public good and the role of the state.

Peter Linebaugh

From the moral economy to communism, from socialism to the household, from private property to the commons, Xenia Cherkaev brilliantly draws on law, theory, movies, political speeches, neighborly anecdote to tell how in the largest country in the world, state, society, and folks she just met kept body and soul together.

Editorial Reviews

This book is to be praised, primarily, for granting Soviet citizens subjectivity without making them liberal subjects. It is a great contribution to the conversation about alternative modernity and a thought-provoking, engaging and clever reading.

H-Soz-Kult - Anna Ivanova

Cherkaev makes an important contribution to the history of ideas and intellectual history as she consistently traces the emergence, development, transformation, and decline of the concept of "socialist property" ("socialist economy") from the early post-revolutionary years to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Antropologicheskij forum

Cherkaev's exploration of the Soviet period is not only fulfilling on its own terms, but also provides an explanatory framework for a wide range of common practices that remain long into the post-Soviet era.

Russian Review

Cherkaev has fashioned a historical ethnography of this property regime which is both theoretically complex and convincing. Rich in emic detail, it captures the essence of how the socialist household functioned, how it collapsed, and how it was remembered.

Ab Imperio

Gleaning for Communism is, I hope, the first book of many to revisit the question of property and ethics, and how their interrelationship structures social relations. This book should inspire research on the material history of consumerism and historical and anthropological work on housing and Soviet welfare provision more generally.

Europe-Asia Studies

Cherkaev's book turns accepted Soviet historiography on its head.

Europe-Asia Studies - Lois Kalb

Cherkaev has fashioned a historical ethnography of this property regime which is both theoretically complex and convincing. Rich in emic detail, it captures the essence of how the socialist household functioned, how it collapsed, and how it was remembered.

Ab Imperio - Dominic Martin

Cherkaev's exploration of the Soviet period is not only fulfilling on its own terms, but also provides an explanatory framework for a wide range of common practices that remain long into the post-Soviet era.

Deirdre Ruscitti Harshman