When Peasants Took Power

Mark R. Baker focuses on Ukrainian-speaking peasants during the 1914-1921 revolutionary period. Arguing that the peasants of Kharkiv province thought of themselves primarily as members of their particular village communities, and not as members of any nation or class, he advances the historiography beyond the ideologized categories of the Cold War.

From 1979-1989 rural life in China was transformed: communes were dismantled and government domination eased. From field work in Hubei and south-central China, Kelliher traces the orgins of reform in family farming, marketing and private entrepreneurship and shows how peasants instigated reform.

This book shows how Rwanda’s development model and the organisation of genocide are two sides of the same coin. In the absence of mineral resources, the elite organised and managed the labour of peasant producers as efficient as possible. In order to stay in power and benefit from it, the presidential clan chose a development model that would not change the political status quo. When the latter was threatened, the elite invoked the preservation of group welfare of the Hutu, called for Hutu unity and solidarity and relied on the great mass (rubanda nyamwinshi) for the execution of the genocide. A strategy as simple as it is horrific. The genocide can be regarded as the ultimate act of self-preservation through annihilation under the veil of self-defense. Why did tens of thousands of ordinary people massacred tens of thousands other ordinary people in Rwanda in 1994? What has agricultural policy and rural ideology to do with it? What was the role of the Akazu, the presidential clan around president Habyarimana? Did the civil war cause the genocide? And what insights can a political economy perspective offer ? Based on more than ten years of research, and engaging with competing and complementary arguments of authors such as Peter Uvin, Alison Des Forges, Scott Strauss, René Lemarchand, Filip Reyntjens, Mahmood Mamdani and André Guichaoua, the author blends economics, politics and agrarian studies to provide a new way of understanding the nexus between development and genocide in Rwanda. Students and practitioners of development as well as everyone interested in the causes of violent conflict and genocide in Africa and around the world will find this book compelling to read. .

This author researches the Chinese Communists' wartime expansion, according to the documentation recorded by Japanese intelligence, then compares that expansion with that of the Yugoslav Communists.

Agrarianism has received relatively little attention from scholars interested in the modern history of Eastern Europe. Contending that an understanding of the agrarian constribution is necessary for an appraisal of the full dynamic of Eastern European politics, John D. Bell explors the history of the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union, the strongest of the East European organizations. Tracing the union's career from its founding to its overthrow in 1923, the author discusses the reasons for its appearnce, its ideology and program, and its accomplishments and failure in both domestic and foreign policy. He concentrates in particular on the career of Alexander Stamboliski, who guided and inspired the BANU during its rise to power. This book is thus a comprehensive, objective biography of both a movement and a man. John D. Bell is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Originally published in 1977. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Focusing on events in Hungary and Poland from 1948 to 1962, Dr Sokolovsky shows why collectivization can best be understood as an element in state-building for the new regimes of Eastern Europe. For these countries policy options were constrained by dependence upon the Soviet Union and the economic demands of a newly industrializing society. Econom

"The majority of scholarly and activist opinion by and about Aboriginal women claims that feminism is irrelevant for them. Yet, there is also an articulate, theoretically informed and activist constituency that identifies as feminist. By and about Aboriginal feminists, this book provides a powerful and original intellectual and political contribution demonstrating that feminism has much to offer Aboriginal women in their struggles against oppression. The contributors are from Canada, the USA, Sapmi (Samiland) and Aotearoa/New Zealand. The chapters include theoretical contributions, stories of political activism and deeply personal accounts of developing political consciousness."--Pub. website.