results

• Destruction of soviet farming : 

  • The peasants respond to requisitioning and collectivisation by destroying their crops, animals and machinery 
  • Many peasants would rather destroy their farms than hand them over to the government 
  • Between 1928 and 1934, stalin's policies led to the destruction of : 
  • 17 million horses 
  • 26 million cattle 
  • 11 million pigs
  • 60 million sheep and goats 
  • At the same time , grain production also decreased 
• Famine : 

  • Collectivisation also led to famine in ukraine 
  • Ukrainian farmers were unable to meet government targets for farm production 
  • Moreover, resistance to collectivisation had been at its fiercest in ukraine - therefore, stalin punished them by seizing their grain and livestock 
  • The result was a government created- famine between 1932-33 which resulted in 5 million deaths
  • Stalin refused to accept international offers of aid to help the starving farmers 
  • He wanted to use the famine to destroy the resistance of ukrainian farmers 
• Mechanisation: 

  • The government allowed farms to hire tractors from machine tractor stations, which were set up across the country 
  • The 75,000 tractors that they provided had a limited impact on soviet farming - at best, they made up for all the horses that were lost due to collectivisation 
• Grain procurement : 

  • Collectivisation allowed the government to procure much more grain than the NEP
  • In 1928, the government procured 10.8 million tonnes of grain from the peasants - this rose to 22.6 million tonnes in 1933
  • Grain exports also rose from less than 1 million tonnes in 1928 to 4.7 million tonnes in 1930 and 5 million tonnes in 1931
• Agriculture 1934-41: 

  • Soviet agriculture recovered slowly from the disruption of collectivisation
  • Grain harvests were regularly smaller than they had been in the best years of the NEP 
  • Although there was a record harvest in 1937,grain production declined again from 1938 to 1940.
  • Low grain harvests were a result of the fact that collective farms were less productive than private farms 
• agriculture 1934-41 pt 2

  • On average private farms produced around 410 kilos of grain per hectare , compared to collective farms 320 kilos per hectare
  • Private farming continued on a small scale until 1941 - around seven per cent of farmers stayed independent of the collective system 
  • However, they made a major contribution to soviet agriculture - the private farms produced double the amount of meat and milk produced by the state farms
• Agriculture during ww2: 

  • The failings of the collective system were obvious during the second world war - farming was consistently unable to meet the needs of the citizens and the army. During the war: 
  • The soviet government relied on us imports to provide almost ⅕ of the calories consumed by the red army
  • Harvests declined from a pre-war high of 95.5 million tonnes to 46.8 million tonnes in 1945
  • Bread ration fell by 40% 
  • Potato rations fell by 80%