In the Name of the Great Work

<p> 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.</p>