Tracy McDonald | McMaster University (original) (raw)

Books by Tracy McDonald

Richly rooted in archival sources, including local and central-level secret police reports, detailed cases of the local and provincial courts, government records, and newspaper reports, Face to the Village is a nuanced study of the everyday workings of the Russian village in the 1920s. Local-level officials emerge in Tracy McDonald's study as vital and pivotal historical actors, existing between the Party's expectations and peasant interests. McDonald's careful exposition of the relationships between the urban centre and the peasant countryside brings us closer to understanding the fateful decision to launch a frontal attack on the countryside in the fall of 1929 under the auspices of collectivization.

Papers by Tracy McDonald

Canadian-American Slavic studies =, 2001

In the early morning hours of November 6, 1927 the body of sel'kor V. T. Shchelokov was discovere... more In the early morning hours of November 6, 1927 the body of sel'kor V. T. Shchelokov was discovered in a Moscow apartment. Shchelokov had helped himself to a considerable quantity of strychnine and added a tragic crescendo to the "case of the Riazhsk bandits," as the case had become known both in the local Riazan press and in the national press. His suicide note read, "I am dying for communism." (Umirt�iu za kommunizm.) Shchelokov had been waging an all out war with the bandit gang of Popov and Gavrilov for years. Eventually his tortured imagination "painted enemies all around him," until, in a Moscow apartment belonging to relatives and safe from the threats to his life in his native village in Riazan, he took his life.l I Rather a melodramatic story yet, beyond the melodrama, the case of the Riazhsk bandits provides a gaze into the workings of one Riazan village in the 1920s. The village of Borets was located in Riazhsk uezd, in the southern section of Riazan province. Before the revolution bores was "specially handled" (osobenno orudovan) by a village constable (uriadnik) by the name of Malinin. Malinin had three sons, Aleksei, Ivan and Mikhail, and two daughters, Anna and Antonia. It seems that the Malinin clan remained very powerful in the village of Borets after the October Revolution. Aleksei Malinin worked for the Criminal Investigation Department (ugolovnyi rozysk) and his brother Ivan was chairman of the local village soviet. As his daughters came of age in revolutionary Russia, Malinin senior strengthened his position in a traditional village way, through marriage ties. His daughter Antonia married a certain M. S. Gavrilov, who was a party member and a member of the Riazhsk uezd level executive committee (uezdispolkom). Anna married T. E. Popov, the criminal mastermind of a well-organized local bandit operation. Already sentenced to death in 1917 for his criminal activities, Popov was saved by an amnesty only to be re-arrested in 1922 and released once more. In 1923, , , Popov murdered at least two witnesses to his bandit activities. He murdered Stepan Sitnikov because Sitnikov witnessed Popov stealing a horse from another villager. In another case, Popov asked the wife of one of his victims to

Journal of Social History, Sep 1, 2001

... plow the fields. But by the end of February, peasant households were already signing out of t... more ... plow the fields. But by the end of February, peasant households were already signing out of the collective farms en masse. They were further emboldened by Stalin's "Dizzy With Success" speech of 2 March 1930. 76 The theme ...

McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, Jun 19, 2019

Canadian Slavonic papers, Mar 1, 2007

Brian Bonhomme. Forests, Peasants, and Revolutionaries: Forest Conservation and Organization in S... more Brian Bonhomme. Forests, Peasants, and Revolutionaries: Forest Conservation and Organization in Soviet Russia, 1917-1929. East European Monographs. Boulder, Colorado: Distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 2005. 252 pp. $ 55.85, cloth.In his monograph, Forests, Peasants, and Revolutionaries: Forest Conservation and Organization in Soviet Russia, 1917-1929, Brian Bonhomme has made a vital contribution to the still sparse work available on the Russian forest, particularly from the historian's perspective. Together with Douglas Weiner's work on forests and conservation, these studies stand as the beginning of an incredibly important, fruitful, and expansive reserve for the historian. Research on the management, usage, conservation, and conflicts over the forest provides crucial insights into institutions, legislation, social history, environmental history, culture, and ecology.Bonhomme's title is especially revealing in that it prioritizes his subjects and his affections: forests first, peasants second, and revolutionaries last. His chief interest and focus is conservation and he clearly lays out his primary claims from the start. He argues that early Soviet forest conservation had its roots in pre-revolutionary forest conservation which has "hitherto been underrated or ignored." He challenges Weiner's claims on early Soviet conservation as being too narrowly focused on designated nature preserves (zapovedniki) which in turn created an overly optimistic portrait of conservation because of the degree to which these limited areas were protected. Bonhomme argues that Soviet conservation efforts should not be "judged 'cutting edge' (unless, of course, that term be taken quite literally!)." Bonhomme's third key claim is worth noting in its entirety:Third, and most important, Soviet efforts at forest protection during this period, it turns out, where significantly hampered-even undermined-not only by the inevitable contemporary changes of the Revolution and Civil War, but more fundamentally by the unfailing noncooperation of the Russian peasantry, the nation's majority population, for whom nature conservation and forest planning held little appeal and were instead constant sources of irritation and resentment. This conflict, aptly characterized by a Bolshevik observer in 1924 as 'the war between the population and the forest economy' is the dominant theme of much of this study (p. 5).Concentrating as he does on the early conservationists, Bonhomme lends to repeat their characterization of the peasantry as downright hostile to the forests without a thought for the future. However, it seems unfair to pass such a judgment on peasant consciousness given the circumstance and the time frame of a few years marked by extreme shortages and hardship. …

The American Historical Review, Dec 1, 2019

Canadian Slavonic papers, Oct 1, 2020

In the summer of 1924, the Bolshevik Party called on scholars, the police, the courts, and state ... more In the summer of 1924, the Bolshevik Party called on scholars, the police, the courts, and state officials to turn their attention to the villages of Russia. The subsequent campaign to 'face the countryside' generated a wealth of intelligence that fed into the regime's sense of alarmed conviction that the countryside was a space outside Bolshevik control. Richly rooted in archival sources, including local and central-level secret police reports, detailed cases of the local and provincial courts, government records, and newspaper reports, Face to the Village is a nuanced study of the everyday workings of the Russian village in the 1920s. Local-level officials emerge in Tracy McDonald's study as vital and pivotal historical actors, existing between the Party's expectations and peasant interests. McDonald's careful exposition of the relationships between the urban centre and the peasant countryside brings us closer to understanding the fateful decision to launch a frontal attack on the countryside in the fall of 1929 under the auspices of collectivization.

The Soviet and Post-soviet Review, Mar 19, 2014

is another very good contribution to the extraordinary Annals of Communism documentcollection ser... more is another very good contribution to the extraordinary Annals of Communism documentcollection series published by Yale University Press. The main source for the collection's letters is the fond of Krestianskaia gazeta, a mass circulation newspaper of the 1920s which combined news, advice, and responses to questions and concerns relevant to rural life. By the end of the decade, the newspaper was being published biweekly and had a circulation of 1.4 million. (p. 23) In this new primary-source collection, the letters are supplemented by other key documents which are well chosen to provide the wider context of a particular moment or issue in the lives of Soviet villagers. Clear and thoughtful, the introduction does justice to the variety and complexity of peasant letters of the early years of Russia and the Soviet Union. It provides a brief history of Krestianskaia gazeta, its origins, mandates, circulation, form, content and subscriptions. The student would be well-served to keep an eye on the footnotes as the authors reference and engage well with the existing historiography. The editors discuss the bases on which they chose the letters for the collection and the attempts made to provide samples of all levels of literacy and all types of language use, as well as providing as wide a range of opinions, views, concerns, demands, and ideas as possible. They point out that the letters were not selected to promote a particular position or interpretation within the book. Rather as Storella and Sokolov explain, the documents reproduced in the volume "may lend support to divergent viewpoints. The people of rural Russia did not speak in one voice…" (p. 25) To their credit, Storella and Sokolov's choices certainly establish, beyond a doubt, the diversity and intelligence of Russia's rural inhabitants. The book's chapters are organized more or less chronologically, with an eye to certain themes, from the revolutions of 1917 to collectivization at the end of the 1920s. Within each chapter, letters are organized thematically. There are short introductions at the beginning of each chapter which adroitly establish key issues, the political and economic context, and the historiographical questions. The skillful summaries and transitions between each document are very useful for any reader not utterly familiar with Russia in the 1920s. In particular, the student reader is provided with a good sense of what to look for in the letter, helpful references to relevant secondary literature, and guidance on how to make connections between documents.

Cornell University Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2018

Russian History-histoire Russe, 2000