ABSTRACT
Twentieth-century political revolutions, particularly those influenced by the socialist ideologies of the Russian revolution, have envisioned land reforms as a key policy strategy for addressing economic development and social change. Within these, collectivisation of agriculture has been a recurring policy, though not always an enduring one. Studies of collectivisation, while recognising their class implications, have generally overlooked implications for gender relations. In this chapter, I therefore discuss case studies of those states where researchers have made some attempt to incorporate gender. This chapter begins with the Soviet Union and then discusses the ex-Soviet state of Uzbekistan. It then follows with examples from two formerly Soviet-type European states, Bulgaria and Hungary, which were pressured to collectivise (Meurs 1999 a). Lastly, I examine the transformations within Cuba, influenced not only by its political relations but also because it represents a different agricultural economy and historical relationships.
