collectivization

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Joseph Stalin.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USW33- 019081-C)

collectivization, policy adopted by the Soviet government, pursued most intensively between 1929 and 1933, to transform traditional agriculture in the Soviet Union and to reduce the economic power of the kulaks (prosperous peasants). Under collectivization the peasantry were forced to give up their individual farms and join large collective farms (kolkhozy). The process was ultimately undertaken in conjunction with the campaign to industrialize the Soviet Union rapidly. But before the drive began, long and bitter debates over the nature and pace of collectivization went on among the Soviet leaders—especially between Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky in 1925–27 and between Stalin and Nikolay Bukharin in 1927–29.

(Read Leon Trotsky’s 1926 Britannica essay on Lenin.)

Some Soviet leaders considered collective farms a socialist form of land tenure and therefore desirable; but they advocated a gradual transition to them in order to avoid disrupting the agricultural productivity necessary to stimulate industrial growth. Other leaders favoured rapid industrialization and, consequently, wanted immediate, forced collectivization; they argued not only that the large kolkhozy could use heavy machinery more efficiently and produce larger crops than could numerous small, individual farms but that they could be controlled more effectively by the state. As a result, they could be forced to sell a large proportion of their output to the state at low government prices, thereby enabling the state to acquire the capital necessary for the development of heavy industry.

A decision was made by the 15th Congress of the Communist Party (December 1927) to undertake collectivization at a gradual pace, allowing the peasantry to join kolkhozy voluntarily. But in November 1928 the Central Committee (and in April 1929 the 16th Party Conference) approved plans that increased the goals and called for 20 percent of the nation’s farmland to be collectivized by 1933. Between October 1929 and January 1930 the proportion of peasant households forced into kolkhozy rose from about 4 percent to 21 percent, although the government’s main efforts in the countryside were concentrated on extracting grain from the kulaks.

Intensive collectivization began during the winter of 1929–30. Stalin called upon the party to “liquidate the kulaks as a class” (December 27, 1929), and the Central Committee resolved that an “enormous majority” of the peasant households should be collectivized by 1933. Harsh measures—including land confiscations, arrests, and deportations to prison camps—were inflicted upon all peasants who resisted collectivization. By March 1930 more than one-half of the peasantry (a larger proportion in the agriculturally rich southwestern region of the Soviet Union) had been forced to join collective farms.

But the peasants objected violently to abandoning their private farms. In many cases, before joining the kolkhozy they slaughtered their livestock and destroyed their equipment. The losses, as well as the animosity toward the Soviet regime, became so great that Stalin decided to slow down the collectivization process. On March 2, 1930, he published an article, “Dizzy from Success,” in which he shifted the blame to local officials, whom he characterized as overzealous in their duties. Immediately, many peasants left the kolkhozy. In March 1930 approximately 58 percent of the peasant households had been enrolled in kolkhozy; by June only about 24 percent remained. In the southwestern “black earth” region the figure dropped from 82 percent in March to 18 percent in May.

In the fall of 1930 the drive was renewed at a slower pace, but with equal determination. The application of various administrative pressures—including punitive measures—resulted in the recollectivization of one-half of the peasants by 1931. By 1936 the government had collectivized almost all the peasantry. But in the process millions of those who had offered resistance had been deported to prison camps and removed from productive activity in agriculture. Furthermore, the absence of heavy agricultural machinery and of the horses and cattle that the peasants had killed seriously handicapped the new collective farms.

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Hungry Ukrainian peasants in search of food during the Holodomor, photo by Alexander Wienerberger.

Diocesan Archive of Vienna (Diözesanarchiv Wien)/BA Innitzer

Output fell, but the government, nevertheless, extracted the large amounts of agricultural products it needed to acquire the capital for industrial investment. This caused a major famine in the countryside (1932–33) and the deaths of millions of peasants. Despite these great costs, the forced collectivization achieved the final establishment of Soviet power in the countryside. Through collectivization agriculture was integrated with the rest of the state-controlled economy, and the state was supplied with the capital it required to transform the Soviet Union into a major industrial power. See also kolkhoz.