Red Bread: A Literary Analysis

The Soviet region’s peasantry has mainly been reliant on agriculture for sustenance both financially and by providing food. This dependence is geographically rooted long before the creation of the USSR itself, spanning to the start of the very population of the area. The very dynamic of the agricultural community began to shift as Joseph Stalin rose to power. Numerous changes were enacted starting in 1927, many of which are found within the first five year plan of 1928 through 1932. This new method of enforcing and imposing Stalinism unto the Soviet people included the practice of collective farming, also known as kolkhoz. While agricultural development was progressing toward this style since the fall of Imperial Russia, Maurice Hindus and his family immigrated to the United States years prior to the change in power. In his memoir, Hindus’ describes his return to the village of his childhood, he divulgates the affects the change has brought upon those whose lives were more closely altered. Through accounts of the hardships faced by the peasantry, a new lens is created, …show more content…
Unfortunately, his prior beliefs leave the piece with little analytical value; depriving it of the potential it held to address larger issues. The overall affects of collective agriculture within the Soviet Union are addressed historically, but the voices of the individual are rarely heard. The tale of the man returned from a foreign land to his home allows for a fresh perspective and scope by which to view the policy change, but with it came a set of biased opinions that could have otherwise been absent had he not aimed the memoir at a western audience. Agriculture, as a construct, continued to serve as an inescapable part of Soviet peasant life, but in a way that is different than it once had