Black Earth, White Bread: A Technopolitical History of Russian Agriculture and Food

by Susanne A Wengle

Like all facets of daily life, the food that Russian farms produced and citizens ate—or, in some years, didn’t eat—underwent radical shifts in the century between the Bolshevik Revolution and Vladimir Putin’s presidency. The modernization of agriculture during this time is usually understood in terms of advances in farming methods. Susanne A. Wengle’s important interdisciplinary history of Russia’s agriculture and food systems, however, documents a far more complex story of the interactions between political policies, daily cultural practices, and technological improvements.

Examining governance, production, consumption, nature, and the ensuing vulnerabilities of the agrifood system, Wengle reveals the intended and unintended consequences of Russian agricultural policies since 1917. Ultimately, Black Earth, White Bread calls attention to Russian technopolitics and how macro systems of government impact life on a daily, quotidian level.

Genres: History, Russia, Agriculture, Academic

296 pages, Hardcover

Published March 15, 2022

Reviews

[Mat]

Foreign Affairs : Wengle, a political scientist, offers a novel approach to the transformations of Soviet and post-Soviet agriculture, emphasizing the connections between the state, production, and technology, as well as consumers and nature, the latter two often neglected in political science. Concerned about feeding their increasingly urban population, communist leaders resorted to a variety of measures, from Stalin’s brutal collectivization in the 1930s to the concerted use of agricultural science and tractors. But throughout the Soviet decades, the “grain problem” was never solved and food shortages persisted. In the first post-Soviet decade, Russia grew overly dependent on imports of food. Under Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russia saw a “meteoric rise” of corporate agroholdings, which adopted the latest technological and methodological advances from the West. Russia reduced its dependence on food imports and, for the first time since the collapse of the Russian Empire, once again became a global breadbasket. This success reinforced Putin’s public support and turned rural Russian agricultural elites into his staunch allies. But it also profoundly westernized the Russian food system and everyday eating habits. With Western agricultural practices came problems all too familiar in the West, including obesity, waste, and unequal access to food.

[Alex Cotterill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very excited tbh to read this as agricultural history and more specific facts and figures on agronomy is a must for my journalism - bonus with it being about Russian and Soviet agriculture.

It feels like a very well researched PhD thesis due to its way of wording, sentence structure and the way in which she quotes sources.

Interestingly, yes the book centres on Russian politics and thus, its influence on agriculture, but I enjoyed how she established the succinct divide between livestock and arable farming on the Chernozem and central Russia for example, and then the history of tyrannical dictators like Putin and Stalin and how that influenced things all the way to Vladivostok and back to the western Ukrainian and Belarusian borders - e.g. subsistence agriculture, diets and imports.

However, instead of a wasted 5/6 pages on fatties and obese people, why not include specific brands of Russian machinery and their enhancements of innovation through the renowned firms of Kirovets, Belarus, Rostselmash and XTZ for example???

Something of much more relevance

[Norah Train · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stalin was a pretty bad guy, I don't like his agriculture policies. Book had very good coverage of the influence of Westernization in the United Sates.