Economy - Agriculture

• Collectivisation


  Process of bringing a number of small farm units together to form bigger farms. Peasants would collaborate to produce as much food as possible to feed the growing proletariat.
• Stalin claimed that collectivisation was voluntary but in reality it was forced on the peasantry
• De-kulakisation


  1. Decree allowed local party organisations to use 'necessary measures' against the kulaks

  2. Up to 10 million people had been deported to Siberia or labour camps by the end of the process
• Twenty-five Thousanders


  • Army of 25,000 enlisted by Stalin to help revolutionise the countryside
• Collectivisation success


  • Dec 1929- March 1931: half of the peasant farms in the USSR were collectivised
  • By end of 1934, 70% of peasant households were in collectives
  • 1936-90% and by 1941- 98%
• Resistance to collectivisation


  • Armed resistance
  • Riots
  • Peasants burned crops, tools, slaughtered animals
  • 30,000 arson attacks
• Resistance to collectivisation


  No crops left to harvest
• Imprisonment, execution of peasants


  Social upheaval and fall in food consumption
• The state continued to requisition grain- they had collected 22.8 million tons by the end of the 1931
• Internal passports were introduced to stop huge migration to the cities
• The official Stalinist line was that there was no famine which mean that Soviet Russia could not publicly take steps to relieve it
• The famine was man made and caused the death of millions (over 10 million)
• Most enterprising peasants had been shot or deported


  Grain harvest fell from 73.3 million tons in 1928 to 67.6 million tons in 1934
• Grain harvest did slowly recover and it did pass the pre-collectivisation levels after 1935