Collectivization in the Soviet Union
In the Soviet Union, collectivization was introduced in the late 1920s as a scheme to boost agricultural production through the organization of land and labor into cooperatives called collective farms (Russian: колхоз, kolkhoz). The theory behind collectivisation was that it would replace the small-scale un-mechanised and inefficient farms, that were then commonplace in the Soviet Union, with large-scale mechanised farms that would produce food far more efficiently.
At the same time, it was argued that collectivization would free poor peasants from economic servitude under the kulaks. It was hoped that the goals of collectivization could be achieved voluntarily, but when the new farms failed to attract the number of peasants hoped, the government blamed the oppression of the kulaks and resorted to forceful implementation of the plan.
Given the goals of the First Five Year Plan, the state sought increased political control of agriculture, hoping to feed the rapidly growing urban areas and to export grain, a source of foreign currency needed to import technologies necessary for heavy-industrialization.
Theoretically, landless peasants were to be the biggest beneficiaries from collectivisation, because it promised them an opportunity to take an equal share in the labour and its rewards. For those with property, however, collectivisation meant giving it up to the collective farms and selling most of the food that they produced to the state at low prices set by the state itself, leaving the farmers with a bare minimum.
However collectivisation meant the destruction of a centuries-old way of life, and alienation from control of the land and its produce. Collectivisation also meant a drastic drop in living standards for many peasants, and it faced widespread and often violent resistance among the peasantry.
Therefore in November 1928 the Central Committee decided to implement forced collectivization. This marked the end of the New Economic Policy (NEP), which had allowed peasants to sell their surpluses on the open market. Grain requisitioning intensified and peasants were forced to give up their private plots of land and property, to work for collective farms, and to sell their produce to the state for a low price set by the state itself.
In an attempt to overcome this resistance shock brigades were used to coerce reluctant peasants into joining the collective farms between 1929 and 1933. In response to this many peasants preferred to slaughter their animals rather than give them over to collective farms, which produced a major drop in food production. The price was so high that the March 2, 1930 issue of Pravda contained Stalin's article Dizzy with success, in which he discouraged brutal overzealousness:
- "It is a fact that by February 20 of this year 50 per cent of the peasant farms throughout the U.S.S.R. had been collectivised. That means that by February 20, 1930, we had overfulfilled the five-year plan of collectivisation by more than 100 per cent... some of our comrades have become dizzy with success and for the moment have lost clearness of mind and sobriety of vision."
By 1936 about 90% of Soviet agriculture was collectivized.
Due to unreasonably high government quotas, farmers often got far less for their labor than they did before collectivization, and some refused to work. In many cases, the immediate effect of collectivization was to reduce grain output and almost halve livestock. Despite the expectations, collectivization led to a catastrophic drop in farming productivity, which did not regain the NEP level until 1940.
Stalin blamed this drop in food production on kulaks (Russian: fist; prosperous peasants), who he believed were capitalistic parasites who were organising resistance to collectivisation. Kulaks were forcibly resettled to Siberia (a large portion of the kulaks served at forced labor camps). In reality however, the term "kulak" was a loose term to describe anyone who opposed collectivisation, which included many peasants who were anything but rich. The policy of "раскулачивание", liquidation of kulaks as a class, formulated by Stalin at the end of 1929, meant executions, and deportation to forced labor camps.
On August 7, 1932, the so-called Law of spikelets ("Закон о колосках") proclaimed that the punishment for "any sabotage (вредительство) or theft of communal property" ranges from ten years of incarceration up to death sentence. The peasants (including children) who attempted to hand-collect the leftovers of grains in the collective fields after the harvest were arrested for "damaging the state grain production". The number of sentenced only for this particular offence in period from August 1932 to December 1933 was 125,000. (Martin Amis, Koba the Dread)
Casualties
Most historians agree that the disruption caused by forced collectivization worsened famine conditions during a time of drought, especially in the Ukraine, a region famous for its rich soil, and also in Northern Caucasus, Kazakhstan, and Volga region. The number of people who died of starvation in these famines is estimated at between two and five million, at a time when the Soviet Union continued to export millions of tonnes of grain on world markets.
The actual number of casualties is bitterly disputed to this day. In 1975, Abramov and Kocharli estimated that 265,800 "kulak" families were sent to the Gulag in 1930. In 1979, Roy Medvedev used Abramov's and Kocharli's estimate to calculate that 2.5 million peasants were exiled between 1930 and 1931, but he suspected that he underestimated the total number. Robert Conquest is regarded as a national hero in Ukraine for his documentation of the terrible effects of the famine on the Ukrainian people.
Reference
Robert Conquest The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine, 1986