Collectivization in the Soviet Union

After the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, peasants gained control of about half of the land they had previously cultivated and began to ask for the redistribution of all land.[4] The Stolypin agricultural reforms between 1905 and 1914 gave incentives for the creation of large farms, but these ended during World War I. The Russian Provisional Government accomplished little during the difficult World War I months, though Russian leaders continued to promise redistribution. Peasants began to turn against the Provisional Government and organized themselves into land committees, which together with the traditional peasant communes became a powerful force of opposition. When Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia on April 16, 1917, he promised the people "Peace, Land and Bread," the latter two appearing as a promise to the peasants for the redistribution of confiscated land and a fair share of food for every worker respectively.

During the period of war communism, however, the policy of Prodrazvyorstka meant that the peasantry was obligated to surrender the surpluses of agricultural produce for a fixed price. When the Russian Civil War ended, the economy changed with the New Economic Policy (NEP) and specifically, the policy of prodnalog or "food tax." This new policy was designed to re-build morale among embittered farmers and lead to increased production.

The pre-existing communes, which periodically redistributed land, did little to encourage improvement in technique and formed a source of power beyond the control of the Soviet government. Although the income gap between wealthy and poor farmers did grow under the NEP, it remained quite small, but the Bolsheviks began to take aim at the kulaks, peasants with enough land and money to own several animals and hire a few labourers. Kulaks were blamed for withholding surpluses of agricultural produce. Clearly identifying this group was difficult, though, since only about 1% of the peasantry employed labourers (the basic Marxist definition of a capitalist), and 82% of the country's population were peasants.[4] According to Robert Conquest, the definition of "kulak" also varied depending on who was using it; "peasants with a couple of cows or five or six acres [~2 ha] more than their neighbors" were labeled kulaks" in Stalin's first Five Year Plan.[5]

The small shares of most of the peasants resulted in food shortages in the cities. Although grain had nearly returned to pre-war production levels, the large estates which had produced it for urban markets had been divided up.[4] Not interested in acquiring money to purchase overpriced manufactured goods, the peasants chose to consume their produce rather than sell it. As a result, city dwellers only saw half the grain that had been available before the war.[4] Before the revolution, peasants controlled only 2,100,000 km² divided into 16 million holdings, producing 50% of the food grown in Russia and consuming 60% of total food production. After the revolution, the peasants controlled 3,140,000 km² divided into 25 million holdings, producing 85% of the food, but consuming 80% of what they grew (meaning that they ate 68% of the total).[6]

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union had never been happy with private agriculture and saw collectivization as the best remedy for the problem. Lenin claimed, "Small-scale production gives birth to capitalism and the bourgeoisie constantly, daily, hourly, with elemental force, and in vast proportions."[7] Apart from ideological goals, Joseph Stalin also wished to embark on a program of rapid heavy industrialization which required larger surpluses to be extracted from the agricultural sector in order to feed a growing industrial workforce and to pay for imports of machinery (by exporting grain).[8] Social and ideological goals would also be served through the mobilization of the peasants in a co-operative economic enterprise that would provide social services to the people and empower the state. Not only was collectivization meant to fund industrialization, but it was also a way for the Bolsheviks to systematically exterminate the Kulaks and peasants in general in a back-handed manner. Stalin was incredibly suspicious of the peasants, viewing them as a major threat to socialism. Stalin's use of the collectivization process served to not only address the grain shortages, but his greater concern over the peasants' willingness to conform to the collective farm system and state mandated grain acquisitions.[9] He viewed this as an opportunity to punish the Kulaks as a class by means of collectivization.

This demand for more grain resulted in the reintroduction of requisitioning which was resisted in rural areas. In 1928 there was a 2-million-ton shortfall in grains purchased by the Soviet Union from neighbouring markets. Stalin claimed the grain had been produced but was being hoarded by "kulaks." Stalin tried to appear as being on the side of the peasants, but it did not help, and the peasants as a whole resented the grain seizures. The peasants did everything they could to protest what they considered unfair seizures.[9] Instead of raising the price, the Politburo adopted an emergency measure to requisition 2.5 million tons of grain.

The seizures of grain discouraged the peasants and less grain was produced during 1928, and again the government resorted to requisitions, much of the grain being requisitioned from middle peasants as sufficient quantities were not in the hands of the "kulaks." The impact that this had on poorer peasants forced them to move to the cities. The peasants moved in search of jobs in the rapidly expanding industry. This, however, had a fairly negative impact upon their arrival as the peasants brought with them their habits from the farms. They struggled with punctuality and demonstrated a rather poor work ethic, which hindered their ability to perform in the workplace.[10] In 1929, especially after the introduction of the Ural-Siberian Method of grain procurement, resistance to grain seizures became widespread with some violent incidents of resistance. Also, massive hoarding (burial was the common method) and illegal transfers of grain took place. [11]

Faced with the refusal to hand grain over, a decision was made at a plenary session of the Central Committee in November 1929 to embark on a nationwide program of collectivization.

Several forms of collective farming were suggested by the People's Commissariat for Agriculture (Narkomzem), distinguished according to the extent to which property was held in common:[12]

• Association for Joint Cultivation of Land (Товарищество по совместной обработке земли, ТОЗ/TOZ), where only land was in common use;
• agricultural artel (initially in a loose meaning, later formalized to become an organizational basis of kolkhozes, via The Standard Statute of an Agricultural Artel adopted by Sovnarkom in March 1930);
• agricultural commune, with the highest level of common use of resources.

Also, various cooperatives for the processing of agricultural products were installed.

In November 1929, the Central Committee decided to implement accelerated collectivization in the form of kolkhozes and sovkhozes. This marked the end of the New Economic Policy (NEP), which had allowed peasants to sell their surpluses on the open market. Peasants that were willing to conform and join the kolkhozes were rewarded with higher quality land and tax breaks, whereas peasants were unwilling to join the kolkhozes were punished with being given lower quality land and increased taxes. The taxes imposed on the peasants was primarily to fund the industrial blitz that Stalin had made a priority.[10] If these lesser forms of social coercion proved to be ineffective then the central government would resort to harsher forms of state coercion.[13] Stalin had many kulaks transported to collective farms in distant places to work in agricultural labour camps. In response to this, many peasants began to resist, often began arming themselves against the activists sent from the towns. As a form of protest, many peasants preferred to slaughter their animals for food rather than give them over to collective farms, which produced a major reduction in livestock.[14]

Collectivization had been encouraged since the revolution, but in 1928, only about one per cent of farmland was collectivized, and despite efforts to encourage and coerce collectivization, the rather optimistic first five-year plan only forecast 15 per cent of farms to be run collectively.[4]

Yakov Yakovlev, People's Commissar for Agriculture appointed in 1929

The situation changed quickly in the autumn of 1929 and the winter of 1930. Between September and December 1929, collectivization increased from 7.4% to 15%, but in the first two months of 1930, 11 million households joined collectivized farms, pushing the total to nearly 60% almost overnight.

To assist collectivization, the Party decided to send 25,000 "socially conscious" industry workers to the countryside. This was accomplished from 1929–1933, and these workers have become known as twenty-five-thousanders ("dvadtsat'pyat'tysyachniki"). Soviet officials had hoped that by sending the twenty-five thousanders to the countryside that they would be able to produce grain more rapidly. Their hopes were that key areas in the North Caucasus and Volga regions would be collectivized by 1931, and then the other regions by 1932.[10] Shock brigades were used to force reluctant peasants into joining the collective farms and remove those who were declared kulaks and their "agents".

Collectivization sought to modernize Soviet agriculture, consolidating the land into parcels that could be farmed by modern equipment using the latest scientific methods of agriculture. It was often claimed that an American Fordson tractor (called "Фордзон" in Russian) was the best propaganda in favour of collectivization. The Communist Party, which adopted the plan in 1929, predicted an increase of 330% in industrial production, and an increase of 50% in agricultural production.

The means of production (land, equipment, livestock) were to be totally "socialized", i.e. removed from the control of individual peasant households. Not even private household garden plots were allowed.

Agricultural work was envisioned on a mass scale. Huge glamorous columns of machines were to work the fields, in total contrast to peasant small-scale work.

The peasants traditionally mostly held their land in the form of large numbers of strips scattered throughout the fields of the village community. By an order of 7 January 1930, "all boundary lines separating the land allotments of the members of the artel are to be eliminated and all fields are to be combined in a single land mass." The basic rule governing the rearrangement of the fields was that the process would have to be completed before the spring planting.[15] The new kolkhozes were initially envisioned as giant organizations unrelated to the preceding village communities. Kolkhozes of tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of hectares, were envisioned in schemes which were later to become known as gigantomania. They were planned to be "divided into 'economies (ekonomii)' of 5,000–10,000 hectares which were in turn divided into fields and sections (uchastki) without regard to the existing villages – the aim was to achieve a 'fully depersonalized optimum land area'..." Parallel with this were plans to transfer the peasants to centralized 'agrotowns' offering modern amenities.

The price of collectivization was so high that the March 2, 1930 issue of Pravda contained Stalin's article Dizzy with Success (Russian: Головокружение от успехов, lit. 'Dizziness from success'),[16] in which he called for a temporary halt to the process:

It is a fact that by February 20 of this year 50 percent of the peasant farms throughout the U.S.S.R. had been collectivized. That means that by February 20, 1930, we had overfulfilled the five-year plan of collectivization 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.

After the publication of the article, the pressure for collectivization temporarily abated and peasants started leaving collective farms. According to Martin Kitchen, the number of members of collective farms dropped by 50% in 1930. But soon collectivization was intensified again, and by 1936, about 90% of Soviet agriculture was collectivized.

YCLers seizing grain from "kulaks" which was hidden in the graveyard, Ukraine

Communist efforts to collectivize agriculture and eliminate independent property account for the biggest death toll under Stalin's rule.[17] Some peasants viewed collectivization as the end of the world.[18] By no means was joining the collective farm (also known as the kolkhoz) voluntary. The drive to collectivize understandably had little support from experienced farmers.[19]

The intent was to withhold grain from the market and increase the total crop and food supply via state collective farms.[20] The anticipated surplus would then pay for industrialization. The kulaks, (who were mostly experienced farmers), were coerced into giving up their land to make way for these collective farms or risk being killed, deported, or sent to labor camps. About one million kulak households (some five million people) were deported and never heard from again.[21] Inexperienced peasants from urban areas would then replace the missing workforce of the agriculture sector, which is now considered overstaffed, inefficient and import-dependent.[22] Under Stalin's grossly inefficient system, agricultural yields declined rather than increased. The situation persisted into the 1980s, when Soviet farmers averaged about 10 percent of the output of their counterparts in the United States.[23] To make matters worst, tractors promised to the peasants could not be produced due to the poor policies in the Industrial sector of the Soviet Union.[24]

Peasants tried to protest through peaceful means by speaking out at collectivization meetings and writing letters to the central authorities, to no avail. The kulaks argued to the collectors that starvation was inevitable, but they still started to seize everything edible from the kulaks to meet quotas, regardless if the kulaks had anything for themselves. Stalin falsely denied there even was a famine and prohibited journalists from visiting the collective farms. In order to cover up for the poor harvests, the Soviet government created a fierce propaganda campaign blaming the kulaks for the famine. The propaganda said they were creating an artificial food shortage by hiding crops only to sell them when prices were high. The false propaganda also claimed kulaks were committing crimes such as arson, lynching, and murder of local authorities, kolkhoz, and activists.[25]

Religious persecution

The removal of the bell from St Volodymyr's Cathedral Central Kiev USSR 1930

Collectivization did not just entail the acquisition of land from farmers but also the closing of churches, burning of icons, and the arrests of priests. [29] Associating the church with the tsarist regime,[37] the Soviet state continued to undermine the church through expropriations and repression.[38] They cut off state financial support to the church and secularized church schools.[37] Peasants began to associate Communists with atheists because the attack on the church was so devastating.[38] The Communist assault on religion and the church angered many peasants, giving them more reason to revolt. Riots exploded after the closing of churches as early as 1929.[39]

Identification of Soviet power with the Antichrist also decreased peasant support for the Soviet regime. Rumors about religious persecution spread mostly by word of mouth, but also through leaflets and proclamations.[40] Priests preached that the Antichrist had come to place "the Devil's mark" on the peasants.[41] and that the Soviet state was promising the peasants a better life but was actually signing them up for Hell. Peasants feared that if they joined the collective farm they would be marked with the stamp of the Antichrist.[42] They faced a choice between God and the Soviet collective farm. Choosing between salvation and damnation, peasants had no choice but to resist the policies of the state.[43] These rumours of the Soviet state as the Antichrist functioned to keep peasants from succumbing to the government. The attacks on religion and the Church affected women the most because they were upholders of religion within the villages.[44]

Dovzhenko's film Earth gives example of peasants' skepticism with collectivization on the basis that it was an attack on the church.[45] Coiner of the term genocide; Raphael Lemkin considered the repression of the Orthodox Church to be a prong of genocide against Ukrainians when seen in correlation to the Holodomor famine.[46]

Sources: Sotsialisticheskoe sel'skoe khoziaistvo SSSR, Gosplanizdat, Moscow-Leningrad, 1939 (pp. 42, 43); supplementary numbers for 1927–1935 from Sel'skoe khoziaistvo SSSR 1935, Narkomzem SSSR, Moscow, 1936 (pp. 630, 634, 1347, 1369); 1937 from Great Soviet Encyclopedia, vol. 22, Moscow, 1953 (p. 81); 1939 from Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR 1917–1987, Moscow, 1987 (pp. 35); 1940 from Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR 1922–1972, Moscow, 1972 (pp. 215, 240).

The official numbers for the collectivized areas (the column with per cent of sown area in collective use in the table above) are biased upward by two technical factors. First, these official numbers are calculated as a per cent of sown area in peasant farmsteads, excluding the area cultivated by sovkhozes and other agricultural users. Estimates based on the total sown area (including state farms) reduce the share of collective farms between 1935–1940 to about 80%. Second, the household plots of kolkhoz members (i.e., collectivized farmsteads) are included in the land base of collective farms. Without the household plots, arable land in collective cultivation in 1940 was 96.4% of land in collective farms, and not 99.8% as shown by official statistics. Although there is no arguing with the fact that collectivization was sweeping and total between 1928 and 1940, the table below provides different (more realistic) numbers on the extent of collectivization of sown areas.

Distribution of sown area by land users, 1928 and 1940

Source: Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR 1922–1972, Moscow, 1972 (p. 240).

During World War II, Alfred Rosenberg, in his capacity as the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, issued a series of posters announcing the end of the Soviet collective farms in areas of the USSR under German occupation. He also issued an Agrarian Law in February 1942, annulling all Soviet legislation on farming, restoring family farms for those willing to collaborate with the occupiers. But decollectivization conflicted with the wider demands of wartime food production, and Hermann Göring demanded that the kolkhoz be retained, save for a change of name. Hitler himself denounced the redistribution of land as 'stupid.'[80][81] In the end, the German occupation authorities retained most of the kolkhozes and simply renamed them "community farms" (Russian: Общинные хозяйства, a throwback to the traditional Russian commune). German propaganda described this as a preparatory step toward the ultimate dissolution of the kolkhozes into private farms, which would be granted to peasants who had loyally delivered compulsory quotas of farm produce to the Germans. By 1943, the German occupation authorities had converted 30% of the kolkhozes into German-sponsored "agricultural cooperatives", but as yet had made no conversions to private farms.[82][83]

• Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union § Agriculture and the peasantry
• Collectivization in Hungary
• Collectivization in Poland
• Collectivization in Romania
• Collectivization in Yugoslavia
• Decree on Land
• Dekulakization
• History of the Soviet Union (1927–53)
• Holodomor
• Society for Settling Toiling Jews on the Land
• Soviet famine of 1932–33
• Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization (book)

• Ammende, Ewald. "Human life in Russia", (Cleveland: J.T. Zubal, 1984), Reprint, Originally published: London, England: Allen & Unwin, 1936, ISBN 0-939738-54-6
• Conquest, Robert. The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine, Oxford University Press, 1986.
• Davies, R. W. The Socialist Offensive (Volume 1 of The Industrialization of Soviet Russia), Harvard University Press (1980), hardcover, ISBN 0-674-81480-0
• Davies, R. W. The Soviet Collective Farm, 1929–1930 (Volume 2 of the Industrialization of Soviet Russia), Harvard University Press (1980), hardcover, ISBN 0-674-82600-0
• Davies, R. W., Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 1929–1930 (volume 3 of The Industrialization of Soviet Russia), Harvard University Press (1989), ISBN 0-674-82655-8
• Davies, R.W. and Stephen G. Wheatcroft. Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933, (volume 4 of The Industrialization of Soviet Russia), Palgrave Macmillan (April, 2004), hardcover, ISBN 0-333-31107-8
• Davies, R. W. and S. G. Wheatcroft. Materials for a Balance of the Soviet National Economy, 1928–1930, Cambridge University Press (1985), hardcover, 467 pages, ISBN 0-521-26125-2
• Dolot, Miron. Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust, W. W. Norton (1987), trade paperback, 231 pages, ISBN 0-393-30416-7; hardcover (1985), ISBN 0-393-01886-5
• Kokaisl, Petr. Soviet Collectivisation and Its Specific Focus on Central Asia Agris Volume V, Number 4, 2013, pp. 121–133, ISSN 1804-1930.
• Hindus, Maurice. Red Bread: Collectivization in a Russian Village [1931]. Bllomingtonm, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988.
• Laird, Roy D. "Collective Farming in Russia: A Political Study of the Soviet Kolkhozy", University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS (1958), 176 pp.
• Lewin, Moshe. Russian Peasants and Soviet Power: A Study of Collectivization, W.W. Norton (1975), trade paperback, ISBN 0-393-00752-9
• Library of Congress Revelations from the Russian Archives: Collectivization and Industrialization (primary documents from the period)
• Martens, Ludo. Un autre regard sur Staline, Éditions EPO, 1994, 347 pages, ISBN 2-87262-081-8. See the section "External links" for an English translation.
• McCauley, Martin (2008). Stalin and Stalinism (Revised, third ed.). Harlow, England: Pearson Longman. ISBN 978-1405874366. OCLC 191898287.
• Nimitz, Nancy. "Farm Development 1928–62", in Soviet and East European Agricultures, Jerry F. Karcz, ed. Berkeley, California: University of California, 1967.
• Satter, David. Age of Delirium : The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union, Yale University Press, 1996.
• Taylor, Sally J. Stalin's Apologist: Walter Duranty : The New York Times's Man in Moscow, Oxford University Press (1990), hardcover, ISBN 0-19-505700-7
• Tottle, Douglas. Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian genocide myth from Hitler to Harvard. Toronto: Progress Books, 1987
• Wesson, Robert G. "Soviet Communes." Rutgers University Press, 1963
• Zaslavskaya, Tatyana. The Second Socialist Revolution, ISBN 0-253-20614-6

• Media related to Collectivization in the Soviet Union at Wikimedia Commons
• "The Collectivization 'Genocide'", in Another View of Stalin, by Ludo Martens. Translated from the French book Un autre regard sur Staline, listed above under "References and further reading".
• "Reply to Collective Farm Comrades" by Stalin
• Ukrainian Famine: Excerpts from the Original Electronic Text at the web site of Revelations from the Russian Archives
• "Soviet Agriculture: A critique of the myths constructed by Western critics", by Joseph E. Medley, Department of Economics, University of Southern Maine (US).
• "The Ninth Circle", by Olexa Woropay
• Prize-winning essay on FamineGenocide.com
• 1932–34 Great Famine: documented view by Dr. Dana Dalrymple
• COLLECTIVIZATION AND INDUSTRIALIZATION Revelations from the Russian Archives at the Library of Congress
• Russia's Necropolis of Terror and the Gulag. This select directory of burial grounds and commemorative sites includes 138 abandoned deportees graveyards left behind by dekulakized peasants and later forced settlers.