Collectivisation

Question 1

Reasons for collectivisation

Answer 1

• success of first FYP depended on the regular supplies of food to town workers
• control
• remove kulak class

Question 2

Collectivisation stage 1, 1929-30

Answer 2

• By end of 1929 the government had begun a programme of all-out, forced collectivisation- allowed aim of control
• Red army and OGPU were used to identify, execute or deport kulaks who were said to represent 4% of the population, yet 15% peasant households were destroyed
• 1930 Stalin announced that 25% of the grain-farming areas were to be collectivised that year, by 1930 58% of peasant households had been collectivised through a mixture of propaganda and force.
• Dizzy with success speech, brief return to voluntary collectivisation was permitted until after the harvest had been collected that year, and peasants were allowed toi leave collectives and had their livestock returned to them. By October 1930 only 20% of peasant households were collectivised.

Question 3

Collectivisation stage 2 1930-41

Answer 3

• in 1931 collectivisation sped up again 50% of peasant households were collectivsed, by 1941 100% were
• peasants from most fertile agricultural areas like Ukraine were particulary hostile and peasants, fearing they would be labelled kulaks burned their farm and crops rather then handing them over
• armed forces were brutal sometimes burning down whole villages, any peasant who resisted was called a kulak, millions of peasants deported to remote areas such as Siberia where they’d be hurded into labour camps
• Dekulakisation removed some of the most successful and skillful farmers from the countryside
• 10 million died as result of resistance of effects of deportation, by 1939 19 millions peasants had migrated to towns
• By a law of august 1932, anyone who stole from a collective could be gaoled for 10 year, further decrees gave ten-year sentences for any attempt to sell meat or grain before quotas were filled

Question 4

Kolkhoz

Answer 4

• typical collective farm created by combing small individual farms together in a cooperative structure
• the average kolkhoz comprised of 75 families and their livestock, in some of the larger kolkhoz schools and clinics were also established

Requirements
*had to deliver a set quota of produce to the state, up to 40% of crops a low purchase price was set but the farm would not be paid if the quotas were not met

• shared any profit or goods acording the number of labour days he/she had contributed to the farming year
• was under the control of a communist party member who acted as chairman of the collective
• forbade peasants from leaving the kolkhoz through a system of internal passports from 1932

Question 5

Sovkhoz

Answer 5

• state farms were the labourers were classed as ‘workers’ rather than ‘peasants’ and they were paid a wage directly from the state
• sovkhozes larger then the kolkhozes and were created on land confiscated from former large estates.
• -peasant opposition to becoming wage labourers forced Stalin to permit most farms to be of the kolkhoz type in the 1930s.

Question 6

Machine Tractor Stations

Answer 6

• establishment of kolkhozes and sovkhozes accompanied by a drive for greater mechanisation
• Machine Tractor Stations (MTS) set up from 1931
• 2500 established but that was still only 1 for every 40 farms
• the state farms generally received more and better machinery ( combine harvesters and chemical fertilizers)
• Agronomists, veterinary surgeons and technicans were sent to the countryside to advise on how to use the machinery and improve farming methods , state farms offered most support
• By 1938 95% of threshing, 72% of ploughing, 57% of spring sowing, 48% of harvesting carried out mechanically
• By 1938 196,000 lorries being used in the Soviet agriculture compared with over a million in the USA

Question 7

Famine of 1932-34

Answer 7

• In october 1931 drought hit many areas, combined with kulak deportisation this brought a severe drop in food production and by the spring of 1932, famine appeared in Ukraine.
• Regarded as one of the worst famines in Russian history
• despite the drop in grain procurement, the state demanded its requisitions, deliberate policy to take unrealistic grain quotas in areas that had opposed collectivisation such as Ukraine condeming millions to starve