This article is about a historical problem on which there is no consensus among the scholars. In the 1930s, peasants came to Moscow to work in the industry in very great numbers: did these workers remain peasants, was Moscow a peasant metropolis, to quote a celebrated book? Or could the authorities integrate these migrants into the enterprises and make them into urban workers? The article examines the arguments of the historians who argued for the first thesis or the second thesis and concludes in a balanced way.
