Gleaning for Communism w/ Xenia Cherkaev

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.