History, M. N. Pokrovskii reminded us, is politics projected upon the past. Mark Baker is aware of this dictum as he confronts two myths: that of Soviet historians portraying a stratified Ukrainian village offering Bolsheviks support from the poor and parts of the middle peasantry, and that of Ukrainian nationalists depicting an all but unified peasantry struggling for the Ukrainian nation against communists and Russians. As demonstrated through a concentration on peasant actions rather than politicians' words, both myths lack support in the historical record.

Baker argues that the peasants of Kharkiv province (and throughout Ukraine) proved through their behavior that they cared little for the concerns of elites, communists or nationalists. Kharkiv peasants viewed the revolution through the prism of locality—their village and at best their volost΄. If there was an “ideology” at work, it was “localism.” Appeals by outsiders (Ukrainian or Russian communists or Ukrainian students or nationalist politicians) for grand abstractions fell on deaf ears. Even when seizing estates, Baker argues the peasants were not demonstrating “class” identity, a fact suggested by the propensity of peasants to turn on each other (that is to say, neighboring villages) in conflict over the spoils. What the Ukrainian peasants desired was not a free Ukraine or a communist revolution—they sought “the final fulfillment of their generations-old dream of the great ‘Black Repartition’” (47). Peasants in Kharkiv seized the land, contested among themselves over the new acreage, and resisted any and all who attempted to either take back the land (German occupiers and their pany allies; the Hetmanate; the Central Rada) or to confiscate grain (everyone). The period of the Civil War thus was a history of uniformed chuzhie (“strangers”) with guns alienating the peasantry with demands for grain, money, and sons.

By analyzing the resistance of Kharkiv peasants to these outsiders, either passively or through armed uprising, Baker proves that the central peasant concerns were to protect their commune and free trade in grain. They did so, however, without demonstrating an “identification with such broader ideas as ‘Ukraine,’ let alone ‘All of Russia’” (69). Ukrainian peasant behavior proves they had no sense of an “imagined community” because they were conscious of their local one, one for which they were prepared to fight.

The Kharkiv peasants were, nonetheless, prepared to offer grudging tolerance (not necessarily support) to a vlast΄ (“government”) that would allow local control. Baker therefore explores one of the more intriguing periods of the Civil War: “There was a moment in early 1920 when a rapprochement between villagers and the newly reformed Worker-Peasant Government seemed quite possible” (153). Utilizing documents from the non-party peasant conferences of early 1920, when some actual peasant voices can be heard, Baker argues convincingly that for these peasants the Bolsheviks appeared the best of bad choices: “Although peasants disagreed with a number of the new regime's policies and actions, they still preferred it to the most easily imaginable alternatives—the return of Denikin's Volunteer Army or the Germans” (172). But compromise proved all but impossible. For the Bolsheviks the existential problem was grain supply for the Red Army and the cities. For the peasants the primary goal remained radically democratized local control, including control of grain. Compulsory grain requisition quotas (razverstka) destroyed the possibility of détente at this time.

Following renewed Soviet efforts to forcibly extract grain and revitalized peasant armed uprisings across Ukraine and Russia, the Soviet government, despite resistance from some Ukrainian Bolshevik leaders [KP(b)U], decided it had to compromise with the peasantry by replacing razverstka with a tax-in-kind (prodnalog): “In general, the peasants of Kharkiv province responded positively to the implementation of the tax-in-kind. … The tax-in-kind and goods exchange system seems to have been sufficient concessions for many peasants to give up their grain—a sacrifice of 25 percent or less for the right to do what they wanted with the rest of the harvest” (196). Furthermore, the Red Army's decisive victories against “banditry” convinced many peasants that the Soviet government was permanent. As Baker concludes, however, this was at best a truce, for no government, confronted with the realities of European power conflict, could afford to allow the peasants to live their dream—a world of radically democratized local control. Modernization of the village was inevitable. Whether that was possible without massive violence is left unanswered.