Agricultural and Social Developments in the Countryside

Question 1

When did collectivisation begin and what was its purpose?

Answer 1

-The Great Turn 1928
-Agricultural development
-Increase agricultural production

Question 2

What was voluntary collectivisation?

Answer 2

-Stalin’s initial form of collectivisation
-Optional
-Peasants persuaded through propaganda but there was little effect.

Question 3

What % of farms were collectivised in 1929?

Answer 3

5%

Question 4

What was collectivisation?

Answer 4

-2 stages
-Forced collectivisation most common
-Procurement quotas
-Punishment for not reaching quota
-Propaganda against kulaks (dekulakisation)
-Peasants driven into collectives

Question 5

Who assisted in enforcing collectivisation?

Answer 5

-OGPU and Red Army

Question 6

What % of peasants were kulaks?

Answer 6

4%

Question 7

What was the outcome of stage 1 of collectivisation?

Answer 7

-15% peasant households destroyed
-150,000 peasants forced to migrate north
-March 1930 58% collectivised
-Brief return to voluntary dropped it to 20%

Question 8

What % collectivised by 1941?

Answer 8

100%

Question 9

What is a Sovkhoz?

Answer 9

-State farm
-Labourers labelled ‘workers’ rather than ‘peasants’
-Larger
-Made from confiscated land
-Less common that Kolkhoz

Question 10

What is a Kolkhoz?

Answer 10

-Small individual farms combined together in a collective structure
-Average of 75 families
-Challenging to create (map, fence, etc)
-High quotas of up to 40%
-Communist Party members were chairmen
-Peasants forbidden from leaving

Question 11

What are Machine Tractor Stations?

Answer 11

-Set up 1931
-Provide seed
-Hire out machinery
-2500 established
-State farms generally received more/better
-Contributed to greater mechanisation
-Sent out agronomists, vetinary surgeons, surveyors and technicians.

Question 12

Mechanisation statistics

Answer 12

1938: 95% threshing, 72% ploughing, 57% sowing, 48% harvesting carried out mechanically.
1938: 196,000 lorries being used compared to over 1 million in USA.

Question 13

Failures of collectivisation

Answer 13

-Widespread and violent opposition amounting to civil war in the countryside.
-In times of opposition, production levels dramatically fell.
-Peasants burned crops/livestock fearing being labelled a kulak.
-Millions of peasants deported and herded into labour camps.
-Over 10 million died and by 1939 19 million had migrated to towns.
-Quotas so high that farms rarely made profits so there was little incentive.
-Insufficient animals, fertilisers and tractors.
-25-30% cattle slaughtered by peasants.
-Destroyed peasant way of life.
-One of the worst famines in Russian history 1932-34.

Question 14

Success of collectivisation

Answer 14

-Achieved
-Industrial workforce fed
-Grain exports increased
-Kulaks obliterated
-Class differences abolished