2.2.4 Agricultural Collectivisation & its Impact

Collectivisation

Under collectivisation peasants were forced to work to government targets and share resources. Any profits after state demands were met were shared equally among members of the kolkhoz.

Initial problems with collectivisation

• Both richer and poorer peasants resented the government interference in their lives. It was not only kulaks who opposed the change.

• Peasants frequently destroyed their crops to avoid handing it over to the communists.

Collectivisation paused

• ecause of this, collectivisation was paused in 1930.

• Stalin accused party officials of being overzealous (too forceful) in their attempts to force peasants to give up their produce (even though they were just following orders). This slowed down the collectivisation campaign.

Starvation

• By 1933, at the end of the campaign, a famine led to 1.3 million deaths in Kazakhstan and 1 million in Russia.

  • 5.7 million died across the whole country during the collectivisation years.

• Yet the Communist Party now controlled the countryside.

Oppression

• Ukraine was a nation with rich farmland that was part of the Soviet Union. Lots of Ukrainians refused to join collective farms.

• The people who resisted were brutally oppressed. Stalin wanted to smash Ukrainian nationalism and culture.

Interpretations

Fitzpatrick 'Everyday Stalinism' (1999):

• Since [the Communist Party] believed that this revolutionary transformation was in the long-term interests of the people, they were willing to force it through, even when, as with collectivization, a majority of the relevant population clearly opposed it. They explained popular resistance as a result of the backwardness, prejudices, and fears of the unenlightened masses.

The Successes and Failures of Collectivisation

Though collectivisation led to widespread famine and oppression, Stalin saw some successes.

Successes

• Stalin saw the policy as a political success because it meant he was now in control of the countryside.

• Each Machine Tractor Station had a secret police officer to control the area.

• Grain which could be sold abroad was used to pay for the Five-Year Plans, which Stalin sold as an economic success.

Failures

• Overall yields saw no significant increases during collectivisation, and only small amounts of grain could be sold overseas.

• Russia’s agricultural technology did not improve, the policy was hugely unpopular, and resulted in a huge loss of life.

• Food supplies to the cities remained poor because of the chaos in the countryside

Holodomor

• The starvation which happened in the Ukraine was known as ‘Holodomor’. This means ‘extermination by hunger’.

• Stalin refused foreign assistance, and denied that the famine existed.

• Some historians have suggested that the death toll was as high as 3.3 million people. By June 1933, 28,000 people were dying each day.