Stalin and collectivisation

• •The peasants control the land but farming is inefficient.

  •They aren’t making enough, they aren’t using modern farming techniques and they’re not using machinery to speed things up and make it more efficient.

  •This is having an impact on the rest of the country and your Five Year Plans.

  Farming
• •Industrialisation and the Five Year Plans needed agricultural changes to keep them going.

  •Surplus grain was needed for export, to get the money to buy industrial equipment and to feed the growing urban population.

  •But by 1927 the peasants were still not producing enough.


  Why was there a need for collectivisation
• •Ideologically, critics of the NEP believed that the system was just helping the kulaks and encouraging a petty-bourgeois mentality amongst the peasants – focussing on their own profits and self-interest at the expense of the workers.

  •To fuel the “Great Turn”, Stalin wanted collective farming where workers would group together on large “factory-farms”, delivering quotas of grain and other food to the State.

  •These farms would hopefully be more efficient, give more opportunity for mechanisation, make grain collection easier and “socialise” the peasantry.


  What did collectivisation do(or aim)
• Harvest was good but grain requisition only produced 50% of expected total. Suspicion that grain is being hoarded. High taxes for Kulaks and Nepmen.


  1926
• Grain collections low again, food crisis in the towns.

  1927
• 15th Party Congress-Stalin argues in favour of cooperative farms.


  December 1927
• Rationing introduced in the cities. Ural-Siberian method of grain collecting introduced-forcible seizures.


  1928
• Ural-Siberian method used across USSR, NEP ends and Stalin launches forced collectivisation.


  1929
• Stalin’s “Great Turn” moved towards collective farming – cooperative farming where agricultural workers were employed on large “factory-farms”, delivering quotas of grain and other food products to the State. He hoped it would produce more efficient farming, give more opportunity for mechanisation, make grain collection easier and “socialise” the peasantry.


  How did the Great Turn play a role in farming
• • Stalin blamed the grain procurement problems on the Kulaks and the richer peasants. In December 1929, Stalin announced that he would “annihilate the Kulaks as a class.” The Red Army and Cheka were used to identify, execute or deport Kulaks.
  • About 15% of peasant households were destroyed and about 150,000 richer peasants were forced to migrate north and east to poorer land. Some tried to avoid being labelled Kulaks but killing livestock or destroying crops which only added to the food problems.


  Why did Stalin initiate the first stage of collectivisation (1929-30)
• ·         January 1930, Stalin announced that 25% of grain-farming areas were to be collectivised that year. The treatment of the Kulaks was designed to frighten the poorer peasants into joining the “kolkhoz” collectives (a collective operated by a number of peasant families on state-owned land, where they lived rent free but had to fill state procurement quotas; any surplus was dicided between the families according to the amount of work put in and each family also had a small private plot).


  What did the first stage of collectivisation do
• ·         The secret police, army and Party work brigades from the cities, were used to force the peasants into the new arrangements.


  How did Stalin ensure that the first stage was put in place
• ·         By March 1930, 58% of peasant households had been collectivised through force and propaganda but the speed of collectivisation led to peasant hotility. Stalin deflected the blame to local officials who he said were “dizzy with success” and allowed a brief return to voluntary collectivisation but numbers immediately began to fall back and by October 1930, only around 20% of households were still collectivised.


  Outcome of first stage of collectivisation
• A new drive at a slower pace began in 1931 and was accompanied with the formation of 2,500 Machine Tractor Stations (MTS). These provided seed and maintained/hired machinery to the kolkhozes. The MTS also ensured quotas were collected and controlled the countryside by dealing with troublemakers.

  Changes in 1931 farming
• ·         “Dekulakisation” was inhumane and also removed about 10million of the most successful farmers.

  ·         Grain and livestock was destroyed by the peasants. Grain output did not exceed pre-collectivisation until after 1935.

  ·         The collectives were often poorly organised. Party activists who helped set them up knew nothing about farming. There were too few tractors, insufficient animals to pull ploughs (as the peasants had eaten them) and a lack of fertilisers.

  Problems with collectivisation
• • October 1931, a drought hit many agricultural areas. Combined with kulak deportations, this caused a severe drop in food production and famine appeared by the spring of 1932, spreading to the northern Caucasus. 1932-33 saw one of the worst famines in Russian history.
  • Despite the drop in grain production, the State continued to requisition. Robert Conquest believes this was a deliberate policy; taking unrealistic grain quotas in the areas that opposed collectivisation, particularly in the Ukraine, and therefore condemning millions of peasants to starvation.


  Turning point: collectivisation
• A law in August 1932 said anyone who stole from a collective could get 10 years in prison and this was later made a capital crime. Further decrees gave 10 year sentences for any attempt to sell meat or grain before quotas were filled. Internal passports were introduced to stop peasants leaving the collectives. The peasants referred to collectivisation as a “second serfdom”.


  2nd stage of collectivisation 1930-41
• Peasants were supposed to receive a share of the profits from their collective but these profits were non-existent and so they saw little incentive to work hard. Their main interest was in their private plots where they could grow goods to sell in the market place. Because food was desperately needed, the government allowed this to continue and it’s estimated that 52% of vegetables, 70% of meat and 71% of milk in the Soviet Union was produced this way.


  2nd stage of collectivisation