Reassessing Soviet industrialization as primitive Soviet accumulation: Social reproduction, collectivization and peasant women's revolts under Stalin

Abstract

This paper adopts a novel Social Reproduction feminist approach to re-evaluate the Soviet experience of industrialization within the context of global research on primitive accumulation. I analyse the first Five-Year Plan as a unique process of ‘primitive Soviet accumulation,’ focusing on the Zhenotdel collectivization campaign and the often-overlooked role of Zhenotdel peasant women delegates [krestyanki delegatki]. The study explores their involvement in peasant women's revolts against collectivization, emphasizing the significance of these events for the Zhenotdel's emancipatory programme in the village. Considering class as a social relation to the conditions of life's reproduction, I demonstrate: (1) how primitive Soviet accumulation reshaped the gendered metabolic relationship between land and labour during the first Five-Year Plan and (2) yet, the allocation of surplus into the expanded Soviet state apparatus laid the foundation for the distinctive Soviet mother–worker gender contract and social citizenship model.