Chapter 13 - Agricultural and social developments in the countryside 1929-1941

Question 1

What did the ‘Great Turn’ ‘do’?

Answer 1

It committed the USSR to a programme of rapid industrialisation and the mass mobilisation of workers

Question 2

What was necessary to facilitate the ‘Great Turn’?

Answer 2

An equally rapid agricultural revolution through forced collectivisation in the countryside

Question 3

Why was collectivisation not a new concept?

Answer 3

It was a key element in Marxist-Leninist theory

Question 4

Why was collectivisation slow and patchy in the 1920s?

Answer 4

The compromise of the NEP

Question 5

How much did the ‘Great Turn’ plan to increase grain production by?

Answer 5

50% over the course of the first 5YP

Question 6

What did the ‘Great Turn’ aim to do? (agriculture)

Answer 6

• Eradicate ‘class enemies in the countryside’ (kulaks)
• Make farming in the USSR socialist rather than capitalist
• Replace the NEP with true Marxist-Leninist theory

Question 7

When did Stalin give his ‘war against the kulaks’ speech to the Party Congress?

Answer 7

1929

Question 8

When was there a temporary return to voluntary collectivisation?

Answer 8

1930

Question 9

When was the launch of Machine Tractor Stations?

Answer 9

1931

Question 10

When was the resumption of all-out dekulakisation?

Answer 10

1931

Question 11

When was the start of the famine in Ukraine?

Answer 11

1932

Question 12

When was the mass famine in the Ukraine, Kazakhstan and North Caucus?

Answer 12

1933

Question 13

How were peasants forced into collective farms? When?

Answer 13

After December 1929
Through a campaign of intimidation

Question 14

What were some of the methods used to enforce collectivisation?

Answer 14

• Expansion of the Urals-Siberian method
• Help from the poorest peasants
• Help from the Party activists
• A mixture of propaganda and fear

Question 15

Expansion of the Urals-Siberian method

Answer 15

May 1929, ‘Urals-Siberian’ method of enforced grain requisitioning extended to almost all grain-producing regions of the USSR

Question 16

Why did Bukharin oppose the expansion of the Urals-Siberian method?

Answer 16

He said it risked making the peasants hostile to the state

Question 17

Help from the poorest peasants

Answer 17

• Local party officials called on the poorest peasants to help identify the kulaks
• Poor peasants had the most to gain from collective farms
• They’d get to use a richer peasants’ land, livestock and equipment and share in collective harvests

Question 18

Help from the Party activists

Answer 18

Nov 1929, 25,000 Party activists (industrial workers) sent into countryside to help dekulakisation

Question 19

What was the official job of the party activists?

Answer 19

To promote benefits of collective farms and provide technical help

Question 20

What did the Party activists actually do?

Answer 20

• Searched households for hidden grain
• Helped identify and round up kulaks
• Administered the exile process
• Enforced the collectivisation of the remaining peasants

They were assisted by the local police, the OGPU and the Red Army

Question 21

A mixture of propaganda and fear

Answer 21

• Party officials used propaganda and positive messages to convince villages to join collective farms
• The real motivation came from fear of what was happening to the kulaks
• People who resisted joining the collective farms were likely to be classed as kulaks too