The Cooperative Movement and Soviet Rule

Abstract

Since the 1920s, considerable attention has been focused on relations between the state and the cooperative system in the first years of Soviet rule.1 Various aspects of the problem were clarified in the literature between the 1960s and the 1980s.2 Despite the considerable time gap spanned by these studies, the originality of their methods of analysis, and the scholarly focus on different aspects of the problem, most of the studies combine unconditional acknowledgment of Lenin's cooperative plan with its elevation to absolute truth. Moreover, they have not so much investigated the essence of relations between Soviet rule and the cooperative movement as defended the objective necessity of the decisions made by the state and the party. There exists, however, another—albeit less widespread—approach to the problem, that taken by representatives of the old cooperative movement: this attributes all the problems of the cooperative system from 1917 to 1920 exclusively to the unwise activities of the organs of...