James Heinzen

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A historian who anatomized the Soviet countryside state

Robbed in Moscow in 1992, he went to the police station to file a report, where the captain served him tea and cookies and casually told him he would have to pay bribes to move the case forward.

James Heinzen is an American historian of modern Russia and Soviet society, whose work spans political, social, and cultural history. His major study, Inventing a Soviet Countryside, traces how the state sought to transform rural Russia after the 1917 Revolution through the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, or Narkomzem. He analyzes the clash between overcoming rural backwardness and building socialism through the choices and conflicts of officials, Communist leaders, and peasants. His later research examined bribery and everyday corruption under Stalin, extending his study of tensions between state policy and social practice.