Russian to modern world history: Teodor Shanin and peasant studies.

This paper is a retrospective of Teodor Shanin's work, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s, the principal period of his publications in English. It may also serve as a guide to tracing Shanin's main themes and issues, which included establishing a 'generic' peasant studies ('peasantology') and how he aimed to do so; his explorations of the development of capitalism and its impact on peasantries in Russia from the late 19th century to the contemporary Third World; similarly, his ideas of the promotion of 'modernization' of peasant agriculture by states; his relationship to Marxism in the historic Russian context and beyond; his views of peasant 'classness' and politics; and his vision of an alternative path of agricultural development based in peasant farming, which he drew largely from Chayanov. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]