economic and social changes, 1924-41

• the organisation of collectives

  Collective agriculture v different to peasant agriculture
• the organisation of collectives

  • state owned land, equipment + everything the land produced.
  • state told each collective farm (kolkhoz) what to farm + set a production target. The state paid a set (low) price when it took this.
  • All collective farm workers organised into brigades + worked set hours.
  • Collective farms were mechanised - tractors + combine harvesters were allocated from Machine Tractor Stations (MTS). Secret police kept an eye on each collective farm from the MTS.
  • Each collective farm was also set a quota of produce that it was allowed to keep in order to feed its workers.
• problems w nep

  • Many in CP hated the idea that kulaks were benefiting most from NEP, while workers were having to pay more for their food.
  • Socialism and communism were about collective efforts for the good of everyone. But NEP was encouraging the opposite: private peasant farms run for profit.
  • Peasant agriculture was not modernising, so yields were still low. Instead of using tractors, peasants still ploughed with horses and farmed using centuries-old traditions.
  • 1927-28 there was a grain procurement crisis: not enough grain was collected to feed the urban populations of the Soviet Union.
• problems w nep

  Many of the reasons for Communist Party support for the collectivisation reforms were reactions against the impacts of NEP in the countryside and on industrial development.
• attack on kulaks timeline

  1927-28: grain procurement crisis. peasants forced to join kolkozes. 

  1929: dekulakisation : liquidation of kulaks 

  1930: peasant resist collectivisation - stops 

  1931-32: famine in ussr - collectivisation again 
• attack on kulaks

  1927-28

  Grain was taken by force from peasants because of the grain crisis.

  Peasants were forced to join kolkhozes with Red Army pressure. Many refused and were labelled 'kulaks'.

  1929

  Stalin launched a campaign of dekulakisation:

  'liquidation of the kulaks'. Peasants were shot or exiled to Siberia.

  1930

  30 000 kulaks died between 1930 and

  1931. Peasants continued to resist collectivisation. Stalin halted the scheme and peasants returned to their farms.

  1931-32

  Stalin revitalised the collectivisation campaign. Famine struck USSR