ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Soviet community spirit, particularly its manifestations during agricultural decollectivisation, which will be analysed with the aid of James C. Scott's conception of the 'moral economy of peasantry'. Everyday life in an ordinary collective farm in Estonia was most clearly specified by Max Weber's ideal types of patrimonial bureaucracy and officialdom. Kolkhoz leaders were more a sort of bureaucratic authority, whose personal and Gemeinschaft-like characteristics formed an additional basis of legitimacy for the kolkhoz system. Patrimonial bureaucracy, at least in the Estonian countryside, reinforced and reproduced the community spirit. The Board of Management of the Soviet farm usually had a key role in the privatisation process since it prepared action plans for the Reform Committee. The chapter demonstrates that the community is capable of re-interpreting this cultural tradition in the post-collective context.
