Gleaning for Communism

In this episode, Christoph Brumann speaks with Xenia Cherkaev about her book 'Gleaning for Communism', which Focaal: The Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology has listed among their "One Hundred Indispensable Works for Thinking in Our Times." The book is a historical ethnography of Soviet-era collectivist economies and their lasting legacy. It examines its object through a conceptual lens informed by everyday recollections of pilfering industrial scrap home from the work to make useful things, and by Soviet legal scholars' theories of the state as a "socialist household," characterized by shared resources and communal ethics. Cherkaev and Brumann unpack how these ideas played out in practice—ranging from the Stalin-era personal redistribution around the plan to the tensions between collective interests and personal ownership during Gorbachev’s perestroika. Delving into the ethics of exchange, the concept of gleaning, and the symbolic relationship between socialist ideals and individual responsibility, they discuss the broader implications of these ideas for understanding modern economies and the role of the state in balancing public and private interests.