In this pathbreaking study, Lynne Viola produces a monumental history of the vast peasant rebellion against collectivization. Peasant Rebels Under Stalin retrieves a lost chapter from the history of Stalin's Russia. This chapter is of immense significance because the peasant revolt against collectivization was the most violent and sustained resistance to the Soviet state after the Russian Civil War. This book presents the history of a peasantry on the brink of destruction.

It is a study in peasant culture, politics, and community seen through the prism of resistance. Based on newly declassified Soviet archives, including secret police reports, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin documents the manifestation in Stalin's Russia of universal strategies of peasant resistance in what amounted to a virtual civil war between state and peasantry.