Source A- M . Lewin

Source A- M . Lewin

Reasons for Collectivisation

·  Originated from crisis – 1928

·  Stalin’s ideology increased in the crisis

·  At this stage, Stalin was concerned with short term policy of moderate aims.

·  But, due to goring crisis, he was obliged to extent the objectives which he had set out at the beginning of the year.

·  He visited Siberia and urged party officials to get grain ruthlessly.

·  ‘’Strong points in the country side, similar to those the regime had built up in the towns.’’

·  Soviet regime walking on ‘’2 unequal legs’’

·  NEP was no longer viable to Stalin.

·  Secret Central Committee -à Peasants had to pay a tribute for the requirements of industrialisation à Preobroghensky’s theory.

OVERVIEW: Stalin started to shift his political policies into agricultural policies.

Source B – Article taken from Pravda, 1930

Stalin Encounters Problems.

·  By 20/2/1930, we had ‘’overfilled the 5 year plan of Collectivisation by more than 100%.’’

·  Turkestan were not ready to join in with collectivisation and therefore were deprived of irrigation of water and manufactured goods.

·  Such attempts for them to be ready are phrased as ‘’overleaping oneself.’’

Overview: Collectivisation worked at the beginning naturally, but because it worked Stalin tried to force it, and then it failed. He was ‘’intoxicated by such success.’’

Source C – letters from V. Serge: From Lenin to Stalin (1937)

The Peasants Give their Views on Collectivisation.

·  Kolkhoz* members, for 2 months, received no pay for their labour.

·  50% revenue was kept by the Kolkhoz treasury.

·  20 poor peasants were expelled and “their condition has grown worse.’’

·  Peasant’s started fighting back.

·  80 peasants made it public that they had been ‘’forced by violence’’ to join the kolkhoz.

·  To this, the peasants sold their possessions, sabotaged the work and revolted.

*a member, called kolkhoznik , was paid a share of the farm’s product and profit according to the number of workdays.

OVERVIEW: The peasants were not too happy with collectivisation and resulted in sabotage and going against the Soviet party.

Source D – Y.Kukushkin

A Soviet Version of the roblems.

·  Resistance from Kulaks.

·  They sabotaged the rain trade.

·  Kulaks launched a campaign of anti – collective farm propaganda – sabotage and wrecking occurred! – refused to sell their produce at state fixed prices.

·  By 1937, the country had 6000 operational machine and tractor stations – HOWEVER , much of agricultures demand for machinery

‘’remained unsatisfied.’’

·  The animal husbandry sector continued to lag behind and only some of the collective farms had succeeded in obtaining high crop – yields and stable harvest.

OVERVIEW: The crop yields and stable harvests and animal sectors continued to lag, due to aggressive opposition against collectivisation.

Source E - Soviet source.

·  Over all highlights the short comings of collectivisation in all areas of agriculture

·  Fall of 7.5 million tons of grain between 1930 and 1935

·  Cattle numbers falling from 70.5 million to 49.3 million.

·  Pigs – 26 to 22.6 million.

·  Sheep and goats - !46.7 to 61.1 million.

(All figures between 1928-1935 unless quoted)

Overview: These figures highlight the failures of collectivisation but also the resistance to the systems essentially in the live stock sector with mass slaughters by peasantry being highlighted.

What happened? / Evidence to support
Deaths of livestock
“enormous” (Hindus) / ·  Population of horses:
1928=5,300,000
1935=2,600,000
·  Population of cattle:
1928=8,600,000
1935=4,400,000
·  (the populations of sheep and hogs also decreased) [Ukrainian encyclopedia]
Despite poor harvests, there was an increase in exports…
“Harvest in hell” [Victor Kravchenko] / ·  1932 harvest = “medium quality” according to Official Soviet reports
·  1933=1.8 million tons of grain exported.
·  1934(first 8 months)=591,835 tons of grain exported. This was worth a value of 13.6 million roubles.
All from [Ammende(1936)]
Death of people
“famine that raged”[Victor Kravchenko] / Causes:
·  ‘the great famine’ brought about by poor harvests, increasing exports around the globe e.g. to London, Paris and Berlin:
“Three million died”[Allen and Crankshaw]
Migration
Escape from “intolerable” conditions[Allen] / ·  2 million migrated to Siberia [Allen]
·  people moved to Moscow industry due to the ‘abundance of food’[V.Kravchenko]
Resistance and punishment
Kulaks: “resist the movement”[Hindus] / ·  [S.V.Utechnin] the famine of 1932-33 “created artificially by the authorities as a means of breaking the resistance”
·  removal of grain by armed detachments e.g. troops and Komsomol members.[Utechnin]
·  Millions sent to Gulag camps ,deported to Siberia or starved to death.[Utechinin]
·  Death penalties:
·  1932=state decreed a death penalty for stealing a bit of coal of grain from a freight train.
·  Death penalty provided for collectivised farmer who may steal some products from his “collective labour”
·  Death penalty introduced for ‘slaughter of own livestock’
·  Death penalty introduced if livestock were to ‘die by neglect’
·  March 1933=officials of the ‘Commissariat of Agriculture’ executed after being “tried” for having “wilfully permitted noxious weeds to grow in the fields”
The last five points are from [‘Khruschchev and Stalin’s Ghost’ by Bertram.D.Wolfe]

Was collectivisation a success?

This is a summary of the article “A self-inflicted Catastrophe?” by Roderick Gordon, Modern History Review, April 1998

INTRODUCTION

The drive towards Collectivisation took place largely between 1928-33. It was represented as a second revolution and in connection with the Five-Year Plan for industry, was seen as Stalin’s “October.” However, this so-called revolution was different to 1917 in that it was certainly from above and had much widener reaching implications for the lives of ordinary Russians.

BACKGROUND

. 1921-7 – agricultural policy followed Lenin’s N.E.P – which included private peasant enterprise and was strictly speaking non – Marxist.

. The leaderships struggle through the 1920s diverted much attention away from the economic problems.

. When Stalin rose to prominence he armed himself with his “henchmen” of Molotov, Kaganovich and Ordzhonokidze.

. Collectivisation seen as “a repudiation of the unheroic compromise of the N.E.P” and was a truly Marxist system.

. First priority was industrialisation. Stalin realised a successful agriculture policy was needed to achieve this goal.

. Need large-scale grain export to pay for foreign machinery and remove the enemy class of Kulaks by reviving peasant coercion.

. In 1931, Stalin admitted that Russia was 50 years behind other countries and that they either improved or “they crush us.”

GATHERING STORM

. Stalin planned the revival of grain-requisitioning in response to food shortages, therefore, he could conceal how far he was going to go with this policy – as Bullock states, he was the “master of dosage”

. To grain-requisitioning was added collectivisation of private farms (97% of total) and eliminate Kulaks.

. Stalin likened the Kulaks to the exploiter, as Jews were to the Nazi regime.

. Collectivisation affected 120m peasants living in 600,000 villages which were to be converted into 240,000 collective farms (KOLKHOZY) and small numbers of State farms (SOVKHOZY).

INTRODUCTION OF COLLECTIVISATION

. In 1929, a deadline of 2 years was set for the completion of collectivisation.

. A Commissariat for Agriculture was established as well as a new Commission for Collectivisation to administer it.

. To tackle the Kulaks, local level activity was set up. Bolsheviks would enter a village and gather a small group of bedniak (poor peasants) and use them to drive them out. 1.5m deported to Siberia and Central Asia.

. Mass slaughter of livestock by dispossessed peasants. 1928, 70m cattle in Soviet Union, by 1933, cut to 38m.

. by March 1930, 62% of rural total had been collectivised.

“DIZZY WITH SUCCESS”

. It seems clear Stalin it is not accurate to blame Stalin entirely.

. He claims that his instructions were exceeded and he was worried that over zealous people would interfere with crop planting.

. 2nd March 1930, Stalin writes article in Pravda called “Dizzy with Success.” He claimed that local level party workers were at fault – from the mass slaughter of animals to the removal of bells from village churches.

. However, Stalin’s instructions were imprecise and inconsistent.

. Real reason Stalin delayed Collectivisation in March 1930 was to fight off economic disaster.

COLLECTIVISATION

·  Grain production by 1938 equalled 40,800,000 tons and 83% of farms were collectivised by 1935 and 98% by 1941.

·  Stalin’s wife Nadezda is thought to have committed suicide as a result of a dispute with her husband over collectivisation

·  Between 1929 and 1935 17.7 million peasants went to the towns in search of factory work. They inevitably constituted the more vigorous section of peasant society and this provides further explanation for the weakness and inefficiency of Russian collectivised agriculture.

·  Inevitably peasants would have more incentive to work harder on land they owned opposed to collectivised land as they would not receive the benefits

·  Set amounts of grain had to be delivered to the state with about 40% of collective produce was brought by the state at a knockdown price

THE ONSET OF FAMINE

·  In 1931, 1932 and 1933 there was a series of consecutive bad harvests. At the same time the level of state grain procurements rose from 18 million tonnes to 27 million tonne. This particularly effected the Ukraine which had to provide 42% of grain procurements while producing only 27% of the harvest

·  Under a decree of 7th August 1932 the death penalty was proclaimed to anyone stealing property of the Kolkhoz including grain 55’000 were convicted of this with most sentenced to hard labour

·  Stalin also blamed Ukrainian nationalism for the regions inability to meet its shortfall of grain procurements which amounted to 2.1 million tons out of 6.6 million tons

·  A serious famine occurred as a result in the Ukraine in 1932/1933 which eventually spread to the Central Volga region, Kazakhstan and the Northern Caucasus, in which 3 or 4 million people died.

·  Through the introduction of machinery such as the tractor the Soviet countryside was, above all things symbolic of the modernisation of Soviet agriculture.

CONCLUSION

o  THE Soviet collectivisation of agriculture of 1928/1933 was the greatest self inflicted catastrophe in Russian history, as a result 5 million died. This figure is larger than those produced by the famine of 1921/1922, the Great Purge of 1936/1938, the rule of Khmer Rouge in Cambodia of 1975/1979 or any of the famines in the Tsarist period.

o  The Soviet countryside lost its best workers through the elimination of the Kulak and the mass migrations into the towns. The most staggering was upon Soviet livestock; the largest destruction of animals by man that has ever been recorded

o  Consequently, the results of Collectivisation potentially could have been fatal to the Soviet state as in 1941 many peasants welcomed the Nazi invaders as Liberators.

The Tragedy of Collectivisation- Simon Hartfree (Modern History Review Apr 98)

Leninist ideals

From 1921 Agricultural policy Stalin inherited the NEP, which delivered modest economic growth whilst retaining a calm countryside, although the communist party clearly saw industrialisation as crucial it was aloud to grow slowly .At the time Bukharin described those who believed in forced collectivisation as ‘Cranks.

This meant that by 1928 only 2.7% of Russia’s countryside was collectivised, Lenin believed the country was not ready and that in order to begin collectivisation there would need to be, over 100,000 tractors (only 26,000 in 1927) and a higher level of cultural development.

Grain collection crisis

The beginning of collectivisation led to the grain procurement crisis of 1927-28, the state was clearly to blame as its prices constantly fell behind the market prices peasants has no incentives to part with there grain. In order to get the greatly needed grain, Stalin initiated a process of forced seizure for ‘emergency measures’ this later became normal policy, this clearly would not produce more grain, and it simply led to collectivisation and a war in the countryside

The beginning of collectivisation

Stalin had not planned the use of collectivisation as a solution for grain procurement; prior to its mandatory installation it was massively neglected. As 80% of Russia was peasantry and Stalin believed that he had a weak grip on the countryside, collectivisation meant that as well as rises in grain procurement it would bring peasants closer to socialism. Collectivising was also designed to mechanise the Russian agricultural sector, in 1928 only 26% of Russia grain was sown mechanically relatively low when compared to other European countries such as Germany.

In theory collectivisation was a valid solution for long term gains of economic growth in the countryside and in the short term to support the promises of the revolutionaries. However as collectivisation continued many of these goals were lost and voluntary collectivisation was lost.

The Breakthrough

By 1929 Stalin claimed collectivisation was already a ‘fact of life’ and that this year was a ‘great breakthrough’. Through propaganda the victories of collectivism were described as ‘a move of the broadest mass of poor and middle peasant house holds towards collective forms of agriculture’, however truthfully only the poorest peasants has joined as they had little to lose. Incentives for middle class peasants to join were described as ‘chicken feed’, in order to remove this class on 27th of December 1929 Stalin announced that this class was being held back by the ‘kulaks’ and that from now on there would be a policy of ‘liquidating the kulak as a class’ supported by stains earlier claim that kulaks where ‘blood suckers, vampires and robbers’

The kulaks were slowly removed from society

Crash collectivisation

Crash collectivisation created an atmosphere of a military campaign; Stalin announcements included ‘the 50,000 tractors you are going to give the country each year are 50,000 shells blowing up the old bourgeois world’ and the use of words such as ‘offensive and ‘front line’ became common. Many workers were trained and sent to countryside widening the reach of Collectivisation . Through these uses , in two months those involved in collectivisation increased from 4.4 million to 14.2 million , these methods achieved there goals but at massive human cost.