In the Name of the Great Work: Stalin’s Plan for the Transformation of Nature and its Impact in Eastern Europe

Beginning in 1948, the Soviet Union launched a series of wildly ambitious projects to implement Joseph Stalin’s vision of a total “transformation of nature.” Intended to increase agricultural yields dramatically, this utopian impulse quickly spread to the newly communist states of Eastern Europe, captivating political elites and war-fatigued publics alike. By the time of Stalin’s death, however, these attempts at “transformation”―which relied upon ideologically corrupted and pseudoscientific theories―had proven a spectacular failure. This richly detailed volume follows the history of such projects in three communist states―Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia―and explores their varied, but largely disastrous, consequences.