Collectivization

1. Collectivization Stalin’s agricultural policy for the Soviet Union

2. What was collectivization? • Collectivization replaced individual ownership of the land with State ownership.

3. What was collectivization? • The plan was to group between 50 and 100 farms together into single units, with all the land, farm machinery, and labour shared by all. The food produced by each unit would then be handed over to the State.

4. What was collectivization? • There were two types of farms: the kolkhozy, or collective farms, which were run by the peasants, and the wages shared, and the sovkhozy, or state farms, in which the peasants were paid directly by the State.

6. Why was it introduced? • First of all, it was hoped that the larger farms would increase the efficiency of production, and therefore supply more food. It was hoped that this extra food would increase the amount of food exported by the USSR, making more money for the state, and allowing more investment in the process of industrialization.

7. Why was it introduced? • Secondly, as the use of machines (especially tractors) increased, there would be fewer farm workers needed, so they would be released to work in the new factories.

9. Why was it introduced? • Thirdly, alongside the five year plans, collectivization was a part of the planned economy, a concept which established the government as the driving force of the country, rather than the people. Collectivization was another way in which Stalin was proving that he was the boss.

10. Why was it introduced? • Finally, there was a reason closer to Stalin’s own heart. In 1929, he defined collectivization as ‘the setting up of kolkhozy (collective farms) and sovkhozy (state farms) in order to squeeze out all capitalist elements from the land.’

11. Why was it introduced? • In other words, collectivization was part of Stalin’s attack on the enemies of the state, in this case, the kulaks. In historian Roy Medvedev’s words, this was a ‘war against the peasant.’

13. How was it organized? • Collectivization was introduced in 1928. From December 1929 to March 1930, nearly 60% of the peasant farms were collectivized. Stalin insisted that it was a voluntary process, and that peasants had the right to opt out of collectivizing their farms. In reality, it was a policy which was enforced upon a very reluctant peasantry.

14. How was it organized? • Their resistance was defeated by using three tactics: propaganda, political ideology, and terror.

15. How it was organized: propaganda • In a major propaganda offensive, Stalin identified the Kulak class as one holding back the workers’ revolution. • The Kulaks were portrayed as having grown wealthy under the NEP, monopolizing the best land, and maintaining the price of food artificially high. By hoarding their grain to raise prices, they had ensured that there was never enough food for the people of Russia.

16. How it was organized: propaganda • The argument ran that unless their power was broken, the USSR would never be able to modernize. This was mostly an invention. Most of the Kulaks were merely peasants who had worked very hard to build up larger farms, and did not resemble the old landlords who had exploited the serfs. Nevertheless, the myth of the Kulak class was one which convinced many people throughout the country.

18. How it was organized: political ideology • Bolshevism was all about the proletariat. The future belonged to the urban worker. October 1917 had been the beginning. Now the USSR would grow strong through industry, and defeat her class enemies. The only role for the peasant was a subservient one.

20. How it was organized: terror • This led to many attacks on the so-called Kulaks from the poorer peasants. Land and property was seized, and people were physically attacked. This was just the beginning. Anti-Kulak squads, organized by the OGPU (renamed the NKVD in 1931), then moved in to further ‘persuade’ the peasants to accept collectivization.

22. How did the people react? • Peasants in their millions resisted collectivization. Some people have described the violence which accompanied this as resembling a civil war. Stalin called a halt to the process, blaming over-zealous officials ‘dizzy with success’. Some peasants were even allowed to their original farms.

23. How did the people react? • However, this was only a means for Stalin to clear his name, and was only a temporary halt. When collectivization began again, it was pursued with even more determination. By 1941, 98 % of the peasantry had been collectivized.

24. What were the results of collectivization? • The results of collectivization were horrific, at least for the people in the countryside. The peasantry never became willing to cooperate with the state, instead, most ate their crops, and slaughtered their animals. The authorities responded with imprisonment, deportation, and execution – people were tortured to reveal where they had hidden non-existent grain.

26. What were the results of collectivization? • State officials sent into the countryside to increase food production levels were deeply ignorant of farming techniques. And what little grain there was was mostly exported to obtain foreign capital for industrial investment.

27. What were the results of collectivization? • The migration of people from rural to urban areas was so great that a system of internal passports had to be introduced.

28. These figures show the annual consumption of certain types of food, per head, in kilos:

29. …however, these figures are for the whole of the country, and in reality, people living in urban areas there was actually more food available, such was the efficiency of grain requisition squads. Those living in rural areas suffered starvation on a massive scale. In the Ukraine and Kazhakstan areas, which were particularly badly hit, an estimated five million people died from starvation during the period 1932 – 1938.

30. A Reuters journalist, travelling in the USSR in 1932: • ‘Russia today is in the grip of famine. I walked alone through villages and twelve collective farms. Everywhere was the cry, ‘There is no bread; we are dying.’ This cry came to me from every part of Russia. In a train a Communist denied to me that there was a famine. I flung into the spittoon a crust of bread I had been eating from my own supply. The peasant, my fellow passenger, fished it out and ravenously ate it. I threw orange peel into the spittoon. The peasant attain grabbed it and devoured it. The Communist subsided…’

32. What was the ‘official line’? • There was no famine, according to Stalin. It was actually illegal to talk about it. This conspiracy of silence meant that Stalin’s reputation was protected, second, it meant that no measures were introduced to help the situation – because as the famine did not exist, no official steps could be taken to deal with it. Neither could foreign aid be given.

33. Assessing collectivization • Judged purely on Stalin’s own ruthless terms, collectivization was successful. • He had broken the will of the peasantry and subjugated it to the purposes of the state. • More manpower was made available for the new factories.

34. …and: • He had managed to gain revenge against a group of people whom he hated. • And by using the force of the NKVD, had managed to seize more food for urban areas. In 1940, the proportion of the grain harvest given to the workers was twice that of 1929.

35. But: • By any other judgement, collectivization must be judged a terrible failure, one of the most inhumane policies that any country has ever pursued. • Between ten and fifteen million people died from starvation, and even by the end of the 1930s, there were still serious food shortages in the countryside.

36. …and: • Production never provided the USSR with the foreign capital it was hoped would be earned through exports. • By 1939, Soviet agricultural productivity had barely returned to the level recorded for Tsarist Russia in 1913. • In the words of Isaac Deutscher, historian (and former Trotskyite), this was: ‘the first purely man-made famine in history.’