The main theme of the provocatively titled book by New York University professor Yanni Kotsonis is the interaction between the ways of thinking about peasants common in educated society and the practice of rural reform in pre-revolutionary Russia. Using the example of agricultural cooperatives, the author proves that the postulate of peasant backwardness, wardship and incapacity was not only the basis of the civilized self-identification of agricultural specialists, but was also introduced into the consciousness of the peasants themselves, embodied in new institutions and orders, designed, as planned, to modernize life and everyday life villages. Class mentality, ideas about social structure, discussions about land ownership and credit, the program and progress of the Stolypin reform - these and other topics are considered in the context of cultural discrimination of peasants by non-peasants. Inviting the Russian reader to debate, the book demonstrates the fruitfulness of the union of agrarian historiography with methods of discursive analysis.