Types of collective farm:
Toz (peasants own land, share machinery and work)
Sovkhoz (state-run farm, peasants waged)
A relatively small number of farms were run as state farms (sovkhozes) rather than kolkhozes. Some state farms had been created in the early 1920s as an example o socialist agriculture of the highest order’ and they were still seen by communist purists as the ‘ideal’ form of farming. In these, the labourers were classified as workers’ rather than peasants’ and they were paid a wage directly by the State. Their movement was, however, just as restricted as those of the kolkhoz peasants – sovkhozes were usually larger than the kolkhozes and were created on land confiscated from former large estates. The sovkhoz workers were recruited from landless rural residents and the farms were organised according to industrial principles for specialised large-scale production. This type of organisation was deemed particularly suited to the grain-growing areas of the Ukraine and southern Russia, but peasant opposition to becoming wage labourers forced Stalin to permit most farms to be of the kolkhoz type in the 1930s. Nevertheless, the official expectation was that all kolkhozes would be turned into sovkhozes in the longer term.
kolkhoz (50-100 household, peasants farm land together, private plot)
Merging many farms together – 50-100 families
The typical collective farm, known as a kolkhoz, was created by combining small individual farms together in a cooperative structure. Many comprised a single village, in which the peasants lived in the same houses as before and farming in fields. The average kolkhoz comprised c75 families, and their livestock. However, the creation of such a kolkhoz was not easy. Communal fields ha dig new ditched erect new fences and sometimes establish communal buildings. In some of the to be mapped out and work parties had to join the peasants to larger kolkhozes, schools and clinics were also established. Each kolkhoz: had to deliver a set quota of produce to the State. Quotas were 40 per cent of crops. A low purchase price was set by the government, but the farm was not paid if the quotas were not met shared any profit or goods left after procurement among the collective farm members, according to the number of labour days’ he or she had contributed to the farming year. (From 1932 kolkhozes were able to sell any left-over’ produce in a collective farm market: the only free market permitted in USSR.)
- was under the control of a Communist Party member who acted as the Chairman of the collective. This ensured communist control of rural forbade peasants from leaving the kolkhoz through a system of internal areas passports (from 1932).
- MTS stations – maintain and hire out machinery, peasants had to give 20% of produce to use it.
- Had a political department – control the peasantry, root out anti-soviets, establish party cells, ensure no grain was hoarded
Since the collectives were intended to provide more efficient farming, the establishment of the kolkhozes and sovkhozes was accompanied by a drive towards greater mechanisation and the use of more modern farming methods. The use of tractors and agricultural machinery also had the added bonus of reducing the number of peasants needed on the land (so releasing them to work in the industrial cities). Machine Tractor Stations (MTS) were set up from 1931, to provide seed and to hire out tractors and machinery to collective and state farms; 2500 were established (although there were still farms by 1940). only one MTS for every 40 state farms generally received more and better machinery. Agronomists, veterinary surgeons, surveyors and technicians were sent in the countryside to advise on how to use the machinery and improve farming methods; again, the state farms were offered the most support. By 1938, 95 per cent of threshing, 72 per cent of ploughing, 57 per cent of spring sowing and 48 per cent of harvesting were carried out mechanically but other farm operations were less mechanised and many of the machines that were used were still labour intensive. The type of harvesting reapers generally used in the collectives, for example, merely cut grain, which was then removed from the reaper and bound by hand.
- Collective farms – easier for government to collect grain and sell it
- Private plots – peasants kept own produce – main source of milk etc. for urban population
The impact of collectivisation on the kulaks and other peasants and the famine of 1932-1934:
Widespread & violent opposition to – process of amounting to civil war in the countryside. Although some, mainly poorer peasants, joined collectives voluntarily, most peasants did not. Peasants from more fertile agricultural areas like the Ukraine were particularly hostile. Peasants, fearing they would be labelled kulaks, burned their farms and crops and killed their livestock rather than hand them over Probably over 10 million peasants died as the result of resistance or the effects of deportation. Most peasants were only interested in their private plots, where they could keep some animals and grow vegetables not only to provide for their own families also, from 1935 in the marketplace. Since food was desperately needed, a government decree allowed this practice that had previously been happening illegally to of meat and 71 per cent of milk in the Soviet Union was produced this way the late 1930s.
Although some peasants benefitted from more education, rural Russia was the poor relation of the new urban USSR. In effect, the peasantry was sacrificed in the name of Soviet ideology, to meet the needs of industry.
Reasons for collectivisation:
- Industrialise the USSR quickly
- Increase military strength
- Manufacture armaments after war scare of 1920s
- Achieve self-sufficiency (Autarky)
- Less dependence on Western goods, increase independence
- Increase grain supplies
- End dependence on backward agriculture, didn’t want peasants to control USSR
- Move towards socialist society
- Marxism – only in industrial country, only 20% of USSR were workers
- Establish his credentials in power struggle
- Stalin wanted to prove himself as Lenin’s successor and to take the revolution forward
- Make farming more efficient
- MTSs = machinery, not backward anymore
- 100,000 tractors needed, only 27,000 available
- Create more workers in factories
- People go to town – machines need less people to farm
- Create a socialist society
- Instil socialist ideas in peasantry, communal and co-operative living
- Make procurement easier – prevent crises (1928-1929)
- Fewer collection points, Communist supporters ensure no grain is hoarded
- Crises – peasants resisted gov policies and didn’t advertise food
- Stalin blamed kulaks – large numbers arrested
- RW of party = Stalin is too harsh – War Comm returning
- 1928 – Stalin stopped grain seizures, raised price of grain
- BUT food shortages still present – RW leaders removed
- MTSs = machinery, not backward anymore
- Increase military strength
Stalin introduced forced mass collectivisation
- Break peasants’ stranglehold on economy
- Emergency decision – not enough tractors etc., lack of preparation/planning, no knowledge of running a farm
- Had support of urban workers – hungry and angry at peasants and saw socialisation of land as key part of revolution
How was collectivisation carried out?
Voluntary & forced collectivisation:
Stalin had committed the USSR to collective farming as result of his Great Turn of 1928. Initially, the emphasis had been on voluntary collectivisation – Persuading peasants of the benefits of working communally through posters, leaflets and films. Such an approach, however, had limited effect. Moreover. the Ural-Siberian method’ of grain requisitioning, involving the forcible seizure of grain and the closing down of private markets, had brought unrest in rural areas. By 1929, less than 5 per cent of all farms had been collectivised and Stalin believed that some of the grain procurement problems had been caused by the richer kulaks holding back supplies. Consequently, in December 1929, Stalin announced that he would ‘annihilate the kulaks as a class.
The government began the campaign with the issue of new procurement (delivery) quotas, with punishments for peasants who did not keep up with deliveries. At the same time, a deliberate propaganda campaign was waged against the kulaks, in an attempt to create a rift within the peasant class between poor and better-off farmers. end of 1929, the government had begun a programme of all-out, forced collectivisation. The Red Army and OGPU were used to identify, execute or deport kulaks, who were said to represent 4 per cent of peasant households.
Not surprisingly, some tried to avoid being labelled as kulaks, by killing their livestock and destroying their crops, but this only added to rural problems. In January 1930, Stalin announced that 25 per cent of grain-farming areas were to be collectivised that year. The brutal treatment meted out to kulaks was used to frighten poorer peasants into joining the collectives and, by March 1930, 58 per cent of peasant households had been collectivised through a mixture of propaganda and force, in the face of mounting peasant disquiet. The speed with which this operation was carried out led even Stalin to say that local officials were being too rigorous and confrontational in their methods Party members were, he wrote in an article, becoming dizzy with success. Consequently, a brief return to voluntary collectivisation was permitted until after the harvest had been collected that year, and peasants were allowed to leave collectives and had their livestock returned to them, provided they were not kulaks. This immediately reduced the collectives’ numbers; in October 1930, only c20 per cent of households were still collectivised. Collectivisation Stage 2, 1930-1941. Stalin’s climb down was only a temporary tactic. Once the peasants had sown the spring crop, in 1931, the process of collectivisation speeded up again and the rate of collectivisation gradually increased, to reach 100 per cent of households by 1941.
- Force, terror and propaganda
- Ideological weapon – kulaks = ‘class enemies’
- Scares kulaks and scares middle and poor peasants into joining farms
- Dec 1929 – liquidation of the kulaks as a class
- Villagers are unwilling to identify kulaks – relatives, friends, part of a community – closer to community than state
- Richer peasants sold animals and stopped hiring labourers to identify as middle
- Local party Communist officials – anti-collectivisation, unwilling to identify kulaks (part of community)
- 1929 – Stalin enlisted 25,000ers – revolutionise countryside, oversee collectivisation
- Backed by police, OGPU, military
- Violent coercion into collective farms
- Task = root out kulaks, persuade middle and poor peasants to collectivised
- Land for collectivisation = from kulaks
- 25,000ers – didn’t know how to run farm – but knew how to wage class warfare
- Dekulakisation – 25,000ers given set number of kulaks to fin in each region – found them even if they weren’t there
- Kulaks were shot, sent to labour camps, deported to Siberia, or expelled from land
- Whole families/villages deported
- Up to 10 million deported to Siberia at end
- Propaganda – promote advantages of collective farms, wage class warfare
- Effective in some places
- One 13-year-old denounced own mother
Resistance:
- Riots and armed resistance – despite risk of punishment
- One riot lasted 5 days
- Burned crops and slaughtered animals and sold/ate meat – rather than give to state
- Raids mounted to recapture animals for collective farms
- Women’s revolts were better – organised, goals = specific, troops unwilling to act against women
Impact:
- Resistance – peasants didn’t begin sowing season
- Stalin backtracks – 1930
- Says officials were ‘dizzy with success’
- Stalin called for collectivisation to return to voluntary, end coercion
- Many peasants left
- Peasants allowed to own small plot of land
- Harvest was bad after – restarted violent campaign
Success/failure:
ECONOMIC mix – overall disaster
- State procurement x2 – 10.8 to 22.6 million tons (28-33)
- Grain exports up – 0.03 to 1.69 million tons (28-33)
- Peasants flee to countryside – more cheap labour for factories
- Good peasants (kulaks) shot, production disturbed
- Tons of grain down – from 73.3 to 67.6 million tons (28-34)
- Cattle numbers halve – 70 to 35 million heads (28-33)
- Valuable resources e.g. OGPU, agronomists diverted to countryside – expensive
- 1929 – Great Depression – foreign exports gave less money
SOCIAL disaster
- 10 million dispossessed
- 2-3 million of these died
- 1932-33 – famine – 7 million died, 5 million in Ukraine
- Caused by chaos of collectivisation
- Exports and procurement remained high despite famine
- 1932 – law of 7/8ths – 10-year sentence/death for ‘stealing socialised property’
- Peasants fled to towns to escape famine
- Internal passports – control vast movement of people
POLITICAL success
- Control of 99% of countryside by WW2
- MTSs, commissars, soviets – instil Communism
- Agriculture served towns
- 1934 – 7 million kulaks eliminated – ‘class enemies’
- No incentives – nothing for peasants to work for
- Passive resistance
- Referred to as ‘second serfdom’
Private plots were very important – provided 50% of vegetables to town