I'm looking for either unbiased nonfiction, or translated stories directly from the time and place. I figured you all here would be a good source to ask :p
I'm looking for either unbiased nonfiction, or translated stories directly from the time and place. I figured you all here would be a good source to ask :p
Caroline Humphrey's Karl Marx Collective, Economy, Society and Religion in a Siberian Collective Farm is very, very local but a really interesting look at day-to-day functioning of collective farming in the 80s. The more recent edition, sub-subtitled "Marx Went Away--But Karl Stayed Behind" (A reference to the fact that post 1991 the Karl Marx collectives renamed themseves to Karl collectives).
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9098764
It's very, very dry reading (and the goodreads description is right when it calls it 'dispiriting'), but lets you get a closer look at people who don't get much attention (other than as vague "the farmers"), and who generally aren't able to write themselves (and those who do write don't tend to be representative of those who stay on the farms)
Also there's some interesting descriptions of how local religions interacted with socialism e.g.