Collectivisation

Question 1

List 8 main dates for collectivisation.

Answer 1

• 1927: Stalin announces collectivisation as voluntary and is ignored.
• 1928: Food is confiscated and taken to towns as there are shortages.
• 1929: Collectivisation is compulsory and enforced by the army.
• 1930: FAMINE; collectivisation is paused and peasants can own small plots of land.
• 1931: collectivisation is brought back amongst more resistance (burning and killing) but grain was still taken by force to the towns.
• 1932-3: FAMINE; kulaks are blamed. Whole villages of them could have their land confiscated/ were sent to Siberia.
• 1934: 7 million kulaks perish.
• 1939: Government officials run farming and 99% of land is collectivised.

Question 2

List 5 reasons why Stalin wanted to introduce collectivisation.

Answer 2

• There was a fear of foreign invasion, so Stalin needed to improve industry and agriculture
• Under NEP not enough food was produced
• State control of farming fit in better with communist principles
• A grain scare in 1927 caused peasants to hoard grain, which Stain believed they did for financial gain, so he wanted to control them
• Stalin wanted to grow enough crops to sell to fund the 5 year plans

Question 3

What was a MTS?

Answer 3

• Machine Tractor Stations that provided machinery, tools and seeds
• There were usually 1:40 collective farms
• The earliest ones employed secret police, giving Stalin more political control

Question 4

What were the 2 types of collective farm?

Answer 4

• A kolkoz was made up of 80 peasant families farming their land togther
• A sovkhoz was the old site of a large estate that was owned by the government
• This meant that all of its produce was then theirs

Question 5

How did peasants demonstrate their opposition to collectivisation?

Answer 5

• They killed 30 million out of 60 million cows
• and 16 million out of 34 million horses

Question 6

What happened to kulaks?

Answer 6

• Their class was eradicated altogether
• De-kulakisation squads (party and NKVD members) deported 10 million of them

Question 7

How much land was collectivised by 1937?

Answer 7

93%

Question 8

List 3 successes of collectivisation.

Answer 8

• Eventually there was enough food for everyone
• The MTS were successful and tractors were used on a large scale
• Some collectives had a school and a hospital

Question 9

List 5 failures of collectivisation.

Answer 9

• The 1932-3 famine killed 6 to 10 million people
• Peasant opposition lead to a decline in production (sheep/goats 1929: 147 million, 1935: 61.1 million)
• Russian farming was still inefficient in comparison to the West
• It took up until 1940 for grain production to match the 1914 level
• Peasants were tied to their collectives just as serfs used to be as they needed passports to move around the country