Records on Nationalist and Opposition Movements in Late Imperial Russia: The Police Fonds of the State Archives of the Russian Federation

This article examines collectivization as a crucial aspect of the Soviet state’s ambitious effort to “Sovietize” its postwar western borderlands. Given the enormity of this task, the state leaned heavily on local agitators to convince residents to join the farms, and to manage the farms and their workforce. This put heavy responsibility on local activists to get results, but it also gave them power. This article provides a microhistory of these dynamics in the Transcarpathian village of Bila Tserkva. Faced with a failing collective farm and increased state scrutiny in 1949, village activists blamed the local Jehovah’s Witness community for allegedly subverting a successful collectivization effort. In reality, religion provided convenient scapegoats for villagers and the state to disguise a broader indifference and animosity to Sovietization. This case study demonstrates that state control of its borderlands was limited and dependent upon locals for information and the projection of power.