Viktor Danilov’s four conceptions of collectivization[Четыре Концепции Коллективизации В.П. Данилова]

The article considers the views of the famous Russian agrarian historian V.P. Danilov on collectivization. The author identifies four stages in his studies. First, Danilov’s be- coming a historian of the Soviet village under the Khrushev’s “thaw”, when he joined the reconsideration of the Soviet history and took an active part in the critical analy- sis of Stalin’s historiography. Danilov focused on the search of macro-structures in the genesis of socialist relations in the Soviet agriculture. However, his attempts to devel- op a new conception of collectivization were not successful due to the political changes in the country in the mid-1960s. In the second half of the 1960s — 1980s, the new offi- cial conception of collectivization introduced by S.P. Trapeznikov became the main sub- ject of criticism from Danilov: he emphasized the prevalence of patriarchal relations in the Soviet village before collectivization. “Perestroika” gave new hopes to the histori- ans of the Danilov’s generation. However, he did not share the views of radical critics of the collective-farm system and developed a conception of the alternatives to the Sta- lin’s “revolutions from above” as the lost opportunities to create a true socialism. The final stage in Danilov’s scientific work consisted of preparing fundamental documentary series on history of the Soviet village, and of thinking on the ideas of totalitarian histo- riography. The author stresses Danilov’s outstanding role in developing two of three re- search programs for the study of the agrarian history of the Soviet period.