Collectivisation Flashcards
Why did Stalin want to reduce the number of farm labourers through collectivisation?
They could become factory workers
Why did Stalin want peasants to produce more food?
It could be sold abroad to raise capital
What percentage of Russians were workers by 1928?
20%
How much grain did Russia export in the best years of NEP?
Was this more or less than in 1913?
3 million tons
1/4 of 1913 levels (12 million tons)
NEP: What impact did the replacement of the tax in kind with a money tax have on the peasants?
Peasants had to sell at lower prices to the state, and they had to sell more than before to pay their money taxes
Outline the differences between the sovkhoz and the kolkhoz
Sovkhoz: farm owned and run by the state; peasants paid a regular wage (like factory workers)
Kolkhoz: land, tools and livestock held in common; run by an elected committee; 50-100 households farmed the land as a single unit; each household kept a private plot of up to one acre, with their own vegetables, a cow, pig and fowl
Give two ways in which collectivisation was meant to embrace mechanisation
Use of tractors, supplied by Machine and Tractor Stations (MTS), to farm land more efficiently
Use of metal ploughs and fertilisers, with peasants trained by experts, to lead to higher production
What impact did the kolkhoz have on the efficiency of grain procurement?
More efficient - common land meant fewer collection points
Give three ways in which peasants would live communally under collectivisation
Peasants lived in “socialist agrotowns”
Children left in creches
Peasants lived in apartment blocks with fellow labourers
Ate in canteens
What percentage of peasants worked on a collective farm before Stalin emerged as leader?
Just 3%
According to Stalin, who were the “kulaks”?
Who were the “kulaks” in reality?
Stalin: thought kulaks monopolised the best land, exploited poorer peasants to farm it, kept prices high and made themselves rich
Reality: kulaks were simply more efficient farmers
How did Stalin justify the slaughter of the kulaks?
They were condemned as enemies of the Soviet Union in its struggle to modernise itself
How was collectivisation explained initially to the peasants?
By plenipotentiaries (local party officials) at special meetings, with incentives offered (like a new tractor or combine harvester)
Who had the job of seeking out the “kulaks”? What impact did this have on the peasant communities?
Poorer peasants, Komsomols, ‘politically aware’ workers
Created a sense of fear and meant more support for collectivisation
What would happen to kulaks as part of dekulakisation?
Land and property was seized, physically attacked, arrested, imprisoned and deported to inhospitable regions by OGPU
What proportion of peasant farms in the USSR were collectivised by March 1931?
Roughly half
In what year was the mir abolished in Russia?
1930
