Download or read book The Post-Soviet Potemkin Village written by Jessica Allina-Pisano and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-09-24 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1990s, as the Soviet Empire lay in ruins, the Russian and Ukrainian governments undertook a project to dismantle the collective farm system that was created under Stalin and in the process privatize an expanse of farmland larger than Australia. Ordinary people were supposed to benefit from the reform, but local government leaders quietly rebelled against it. The end result was the dispossession of millions of rural people. This is the first book to explain why and how this happened through the perspective of a firsthand observer in the Black Earth region.