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

Susanne A. Wengle (Author)

9780299335403

Hardback, published 15 March 2022

296 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.5 cm, 0.574 kg

Like all facets of daily life, the food that Russian farms grew and citizens ate—or, in some years, didn't eat—underwent radical shifts in the century between the Bolshevik Revolution and 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 documents far-reaching changes on farms, along with their effects on ordinary people and for successive political regimes. 

Wengle argues that we need to focus on the political actors who employed and favored particular agrotechnologies to provide "the good life" for citizens. Each of the large-scale rural reforms was rooted as much in political ambitions as in the need to increase crop and meat yields. Attempts to create the conditions of abundance relied heavily on top-down programs that nearly always had unexpected, and occasionally devastating, outcomes. 

Bringing together a narrative on governance, production, consumption, nature, and the ensuing vulnerabilities of the agri-food system, Wengle reveals the intended and unintended consequences of Russian agricultural policies since 1917. Ultimately, Black Earth, White Bread is a call for attention to states' reliance on specific technologies to illuminate transformations in food systems everywhere. 

• List of Illustrations
• Introduction: Setting the Table
• 1. Governance
  or, How to Solve the Grain Problem?
• 2. Production
• 3. Consumption
  or, The Perestroika of the Quotidian
• 4. Nature
• Conclusion: Vulnerabilities
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index