Decollectivisation, Destruction and Disillusionment: A Community Study in Southern Estonia

At the turn of the 21st century the political significance of the agrarian population and especially small farmers, was crucial in northern and eastern Europe. They were one of the most important population groups in terms of newly emerging parliamentarism, and also the group on which the new nation states were based. The farmers historical heritage accounts for the predominant nostalgic desire to reinstate family farming in post-socialist Eastern Europe. Created as a result of a research project, this work presents the results of research carried out on the privatization of Kanepi Kolkhoz in the southeastern part of Estonia. A series of events that devastated people's conditions of existence. The book puts forward the argument that it is a challenging subject of interpretation on the level of social theory and addresses questions such as: What was "real socialism" really like from the viewpoint of agriculture? How did the system finally come to a dead end; and How was it forced to give way to another system in a situation of economic collapse?