Description: Since the collapse of the USSR there has been a growing interest in the Stolypin Land Reform as a possible model for post-Communist agrarian development. Using recent theoretical and empirical advances in Anglo-American research, Dr Pallot examines how peasants throughout Russia received, interpreted, and acted upon the government's attempts to persuade them to quit the commune and set up independent farms.
Review Quotes: "Pallott has provided a convincing new perspective assessing the impact of the Stolypin land reform project on rural Russia and explaining why the reform failed to alter significantly the key aspects of Imperial Russian peasant society."--The Historian
"Pallot has brought a different emphasis to her study of the great land reform...Pallot has approached her study from the vantage point of the peasantry...[Her] reputation as a noted scholar of Russian peasant studies is reaffirmed in this monograph...This work meets the highest scholarly standards...[A]n important contribution to our understanding of the efficaciousness of the Stolypin reform in attempting to bring about change in the peasant husbandry of late imperial Russia...[S]he has added to our understanding of one of the great administrative reforms in modern European history and tsarist Russia in particular. I strongly recommend this monograph to scholars of this period and to anyone interested in fathoming the process of modernization in a traditional society..."--Slavic Review