Collectivization Generation: A Social Revolution in Uzbekistan

Marianne Kamp reads from and discusses her new book, Collectivization Generation: Oral Histories of a Social Revolution in Uzbekistan (Cornell 2024). Born between the early 1900s and the early 1920s, the collectivization generation were rural youth who participated in the transformation of Uzbekistan’s agricultural life in the 1930s as children or young adults. A top-down restructuring ruptured their predictable life trajectories and created new categories for understanding self and society. We meet Uzbeks whose fathers disappeared into the Stalinist gulag, who suffered from starvation and orphanhood, and we meet Uzbeks who told of embracing the collectivization project and of feeling rewarded with pay and recognition.

Event Speakers:

Marianne Kamp: Associate Professor, Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University

Nargis Kassenova: Senior Fellow; Director, Program on Central Asia, Davis Center

Host or Publisher Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies