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Collectivisation in Russia. By Jordan Olney and Divesh Mayaramani. Josif ‘Stalin’ Dzhugashvili. Born in Georgia One of few Bolshevik leaders from a working-class background ‘Stalin’ means man of steel Exiled to Siberia during Tsarist rule for bank raids to raise party funds
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Collectivisation in Russia By Jordan Olney and Divesh Mayaramani
Josif ‘Stalin’ Dzhugashvili • Born in Georgia • One of few Bolshevik leaders from a working-class background • ‘Stalin’ means man of steel • Exiled to Siberia during Tsarist rule for bank raids to raise party funds • Came to power when Lenin died and after a struggle for power between him and Trotsky
What was collectivisation • Collectivisation was Stalin’s answer to Russia’s terrible agricultural state • Collective farms were set up • Where peasants would work together under government control • Large, modern and efficient • The government would be able to keep as much produce as it needed and pay the peasants for their labour
Why collectivisation? • Needed for the 5 year plan to be successful • An attempt to modernise agriculture in Russia • Required because population of industrial parts of Russia were growing rapidly • In 1928, the country was 2 million tons short of the grain it needed to feed its workers • Stalin also wanted to raise money for his industrialisation program by selling food abroad
Peasants’ view on collectivisation • Farming wasn’t organised to do this • Under the new economic policy, most peasants were agricultural labourers or ‘kulaks’ • These farms weren’t big enough to use tractors, fertilisers and other modern methods • Peasants already had enough to eat and didn’t see the point of increasing production to feed the towns
Consequences of collectivisation • 14 million households had joined collectives by the beginning of 1930 • Millions of peasants forced off land and went to swell the ranks of industrial workers in the cities • Around 5 million peasants starved • Now we know that Stalin caused this famine on purpose to crush the resistance of the peasants
Kulaks • Stalin got the people to turn on the Kulaks by saying that they were only resisting for selfish reasons • However, many kulaks were perished during the civil war • Stalin branded the unfortunate peasants as kulaks and sent them off to labour camps • These peasants burnt their crops in revenge of the communists
