Stalin and the rural economy and treatment of the rural masses: collectivisation

As Stalin established his authority as the clear sole leader of the USSR in 1928-29 he made what is known as the
Great Turn – revolutionary economic policies which would restructure the basis of Russian society. In the
countryside this would involve the collectivisation of agriculture, where peasants would be forced to pool resources
and manpower to work on large collective farms instead of small family plots. For industry the Great Turn centred on
the Five-Year Plans, where the government set high production targets as part of a centrally planned command
economy. Both elements of the Great Turn involved enormous upheaval and came at massive human cost. To these
economic aims was added a cultural revolution which sought to create a new Soviet society formed by new citizens
who would be capable of superhuman achievements when they worked together with a common determination to
make the USSR a great world power and a great society. These changes were to be brought about through
totalitarian control and elimination of opposition through the purges of the Great Terror.
A key aim for collectivisation and the Five-Year Plans was to end the backwardness which had
been a feature of Russian history throughout the period 1855-1928 by making progress at a
breakneck speed. In a speech in 1931 Stalin said:

“We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this
distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall be crushed.”

Problems with the NEP

When compared with the disastrous decline in output under War Communism, the NEP had made strong progress in
the mid-1920s. However, there were problems with it which were clear in the late 1920s and help to explain why
collectivisation were brought in:
 Grain exports were never more than ¼ of the levels they had reached before the First World War
 The USSR was unable to bring in the technology needed to improve agriculture or industry – inefficient
wooden ploughs were still being used by millions of peasant which had been unchanged in centuries
 After the revolution land had been split into smaller units, which tended to be less efficient and encouraged
subsistence agriculture which produced no excess to contribute to the national market or exports
 Problems over food supply reappeared when agricultural prices fell well below those of manufactured goods
 Peasants saw little point in selling grain when there was little available to buy and held grain back or used it
as feed for livestock
 There were problems of unemployment and low wages for workers, who came to resent the peasants who
they saw as doing well at their expense, and the bourgeois specialists (capitalist managers from the pre-
revolutionary era who had been reinstated under the NEP to improve the functioning of industry)
A particular grain crisis occurred in 1927, when the state only procured 75% of the grain it had obtained in 1926.

Make notes to answer the following questions using your Corin and Fiehn textbooks pg 195-199
1) Use the blue box and information at the bottom of pg 174

How Stalin solved the problem of grain supply 1927-28

1927: Gov only received ¾ of amount they got in 1926
 S  officials to requisition; backed by police
o 1928:  Urals+ W Siberia on requisitioning campaign
 Urals-Siberian method: requisitioning backed up w ‘emergency measures’
 Article 107 of Criminal Code: allowed to arrest/confiscate property of peasants
suspected of withholding grain
 MORE grain; BUT  peasants/gov relationship  increased resistance
o Basically reversed NEP; “collective economy in agriculture + industry”
2) Use pg 195
Give details of the collective farms known as kolkhozy, explaining how Stalin believed they would make
better use of resources.

Forced collectivisation
Aims for collectivisation:
 Increase state’s share of larger harvests at lower price
 Release surplus rural labour  for industry

S: forced collectivisation + elimination of kulaks = bring peasants under control

 Peasants X typical supporters of Bols  More SR oriented
 Bc experienced resistance in Urals + W Siberia

Collective farms/ Kolkhoz:

 Run by ELECTED committee; 50 – 100 households = 1 kolkhoz
 Common ownership of:
o Land
o Tools
o Livestock

NB Stalin hoped that each kolkhoz would eventually turn into a sovkhoz. The difference between the
two was that in a kolkhoz the land was owned by the peasants collectively and profits would be split
amongst them, whereas in a sovkhoz the land was owned by the state and the peasants would be
paid a wage. Most collective farms remained as kolkhozy rather than becoming sovkhozy.

MTS
State run org that supplied farms w machinery
 Tractors + other machines  more efficient farming
 Experts aided peasants: better farming methods (eg. Metal ploughs + fertiliser)

3) Outline the main aims of collectivisation:

Kulaks: elimination through collectivisation
Harvests and grain supply: Increase in supply through efficient large scale farming with MTS
Agricultural prices: Fall in prices due to larger supply  better for industry & workers
Grain exports to fund industry: Increased  better for workers
Surplus labour: more surplus labour  industry; boost industrial growth through high employment

4) On what scale was collectivisation introduced in early 1930s?

1929: recruited 25,000 workers to set up Kolkhozy w/ help of Bols officials + police
 1/2 peasantry  Kolkhoz in 2 months (relatively successful!)

BUT: process v. disruptive; S stopped it to make sure harvests could proceed

 3-month halt – pragmatic action? (similar to NEP?)
 60% of peasants left Kolkhozy

5) What did Stalin order in his article in Pravda entitled ‘Dizzy with success’ in March 1930 and for what
reason?

Accused local officials of excessive zeal  “Collective farms X set up by force!”

 6) When did the collectivisation campaign resume and what scale had it reached by the end of the 1930s?

Sept 1930: collectivisation began again

 End of 1930s: 90% households collectivised
o 25 million households  250,000 kolkhozy

7) At the end of 1929 Stalin publicly called for the liquidation of the kulak class. Using the information on pg
196, outline how kulaks were to be defined.

Kulaks: better-off peasants; higher incomes and had animals, hired labour sometimes
 De-kulakisation central to collectivisation
o Used to keep peasants in line; kulaks could really be whoever the authorities thought they were
 Anyone opposing collectivisation = ‘kulak’

8) What problems were there in trying to eliminate the kulaks?

There weren’t actually that many kulaks

9) Briefly outline what happened to the kulaks.

Dekulakisation: each region given set no. of kulaks to find

 Quotas often exceeded to demo strength of GPU
 Divided into 3 categories:
o Counter-revolutionaries  shot or to gulags
 390,000 arrested; 21,000 shot
o Active opponents of collectivisation  other areas of USSR; Siberia
 1930-31: 1.8mill peasants deported to Siberia, Kazakh etc
o Those expelled from farms + settled on poor land
 Deported kulaks  boosted development in remote places at minimal cost
o Gulag inmates: built canals, road, factories etc

10) How was the policy of de-kulakisation altered in May 1933?

May 1933: X mass deportation of kulaks
 Bc disruption of agriculture + difficulty in organising resettlement
o X mean stop dekulaksation  diff approach

11) In what ways did the peasants resist collectivisation? Where possible give some indication of the scale of
peasant opposition.
Peasants resented gov for attacking trad way of life
 1930: Mir abolished
 Thousands of churches closed; bells melted + priests arrested

Reactions
 1930: 13,000+ outbreaks of mass unrest
o Involved 2.5mill+ peasants
 Kulak terrorism: 3000+ victims claimed
Methods:
 Burned crops, tools + houses > hand over to state
 Slaughter own animals > give for Kolkhoz use
o No. of cattle dropped by 30mill
 Women's revolts  difficult for gov to deal with
o Carefully organised w specific goals (eg. Stop grain requisitioning)
o Politburo member Kaganovich: “played most advanced opposing role”

12) What did collectivisation cause in the Ukraine in 1932-3?

Collectivisation  famine bc Ukraine = major grain producing area
 Requisitioning + forced collectivisation  15% pop dead; 7 million
o Hunger  more theft of grain

13) Other than the disruption caused by collectivisation itself, what evidence is there of this having been caused
by Stalin’s communist government?

14) What does the ‘law of the five ears of corn’ suggest about the link between collectivisation and treatment of
opposition?
Kolkhoziks arrested for ‘hairdressing’  cutting of individual ears of corn
 1000 executed by 1933  minority of those arrested
 Peasants made up large proportion of camps

15) What important change was made to collective farms in 1935 and what contribution did this make to the
production of food?
Kolkhoz model statute
 Payment rules for peasants in Kolkhozy; rules for relationship between Kolkhoz/MTS
 Legalised private plots of land (up to 1 acre/household)
o Provided 52% veg + 70% meat/milk
 Livestock limited; pastured on collective land
o 1 cow, 4 sheep

16) Use the table on page 198 to draw out three pieces of evidence to show the effect of collectivisation on
agricultural production.
Worse on animals
 Grain harvest than harvest?
o 1928: 73.3 mill  Harvest decreased
o 1934: 67 mill BUT: 1935  75mill (increased to higher than 1928) initially then
 Cattle showed signs of
o 1928: 70mill increasing
o 1935: 50mill  State
procurement
increased x2
17) What happened to the levels of state procurement of grain?
Increased x2
 1928: 10mill  1934: 22mill
 18) Complete the following table:
Key points of success
Economic Kulaks developed remote areas
 Public works + industry in areas like W
Siberia
Increased gov procurement of grain
 Even though harvests fell in early 1930s
Political Successfully eliminated many kulaks:
 Sent to camps / deported
Squashed peasant opposition
 Ukraine punished w Holodomor
Key points of failure
Harvest rates fell in early 1930s
 Kolkhozy failed to improve efficiency
X achieve Sovkhoz aims
Still was opposition
 Slaughtered own animals
 Burnt own tools etc to avoid state
procurement
Peasants unwilling to be part of Kolkhoz
 Proven by 3-month halt