For most of its history, nearly everyone in the USSR was a farmer, so not proletariat and not communist.
> I would suggest watching the film
The first few paragraphs on how the movie is about a person remembering important episodes of his life got me curious and gave me Butterfly Effect vibes (good), but reading further down I started getting Mulholland Drives vibes (not good).
"For most of its history, nearly everyone in the USSR was a farmer, so not proletariat." They certainly were in the context we are speaking of here. Official Soviet terminology, apparently starting at least from Lenin but I haven’t checked this thoroughly, divided the proletariat into rural proletarians (in Russian селские пролетарии) and urban proletarians (городские пролетарии). In any event, in colloquial contexts the word serves handily to refer to a life of rather menial trudging wherever it’s lived.
Of course Lenin had an interest in selling the idea that everyone is actually proletariat. In reality by Marx's definition, proletariat are those who don't own the means of production (and are therefore stuck in earning by selling their labour), whereas farmers at least until the NEP died, mostly owned their own farms which means they did own the means of their production, which is also why farmers, or virtually everyone in the USSR outside the cities hated the communists.
> nearly everyone in the USSR was a farmer, so not proletariat and not communist
This statement has a number of flaws.
> nearly everyone in the USSR was a farmer
True during the early years, but after WW2 changed rapidly (in line with the West). [1] shows rural population percentage dropped from 67% in 1939 to 56% in 1956, and it rapidly decreased after that. [2] is female specific but by 1975 under 1/3 were working in agriculture.
In addition, everyone other than the actual owner of the land was considered "The Agricultural Proletariat". Engels wrote [3] about this in 1845 well before the establishment of the Soviet Union.
> so not proletariat
As seen above, this doesn't follow especially after the establishment of collective farming where everyone were considered workers.
> As seen above, this doesn't follow especially after the establishment of collective farming where everyone were considered workers.
Correct! Farmers owned the landed, the communists came and stole it from them - sorry "collectivized" it - and so made it worse for the farmers turned proletariat. So you understand that farmers hated communists.
For most of its history, nearly everyone in the USSR was a farmer, so not proletariat and not communist.
> I would suggest watching the film
The first few paragraphs on how the movie is about a person remembering important episodes of his life got me curious and gave me Butterfly Effect vibes (good), but reading further down I started getting Mulholland Drives vibes (not good).