The Transformation of Civil Society

The catastrophic terror unleashed by Soviet power on the Ukrainian countryside in the early 1930s altered every aspect of village life. Based on extensive interviews with villagers throughout Ukraine, The Transformation of Civil Society provides an oral history of the material and cultural destruction sustained in rural Ukraine throughout the Stalinist eras. Beginning with wholesale deportations and evictions, followed by the process of collectivization in Ukraine, the Soviet state’s impact on peasant life extended into the fabric of society. Targeting the cultural life of these Ukrainians, the 1930s began with the physical repression of religious institutions and personnel, the repression of church ritual, and later, the repression of entertainment and expressive culture such as music making. By bringing to light the experiences of more than four hundred Ukrainians who witnessed the terror of the Stalinist eras, William Noll centers the points of view of villagers on the near total destruction of their world as they knew it.

The terror unleashed by Soviet power on the Ukrainian countryside in the early 1930s altered every aspect of village life. Based on extensive interviews with villagers throughout Ukraine, The Transformation of Civil Society provides an oral history of the material and cultural destruction sustained in rural Ukraine throughout the Stalinist eras.

William Noll is an ethnomusicologist who lives in Belton, Missouri.