Collectivisation Flashcards
Stalin’s aims
- Industrialisation
- Establish “socialism in one country”
- Control the peasantry and working class
- Become a totalitarian dictator
- Stabilise the economy (remove the NEP) and have it centralised
Treatment of Kulaks
- “Dekulakisation” sets to liquidate them as a class
- Denied agricultural credit and equipment
- Prosecuted for concealment of grain surpluses
Grain quotas
- Imposed upon all peasant homes
- To be filled in three to five days
Failure to fulfill grain quotas
- First penalty: five-fold penalty
- Second penalty: two years in prison or forced labour
Dec 15 1934
77.8% of all peasant households collectivised
77.8% of all peasant households collectivised
Dec 15 1934
Kulak reactions to collectivisation
- Sold grain off cheaply
- Slaughtered animals in the hundreds of thousands
- Destroyed tools and burned down their own houses
- Refused to move to kolkhozes
Impact of animal slaughtering
Livestock numbers didn’t recover to 1928 levels until 1953
Ukrainian Holomodor
Man-made famine in Ukraine due to the denial of food and supplies
2.5 - 7.5 million Ukrainian deaths
Watershed 1927
Soviet concerns of Western invasion result in grain hoarding and panic buying
Trotsky and Oppositionists blame foreign policy failures on Stalin, eg. the failure of the Chinese Communist Party
The loyalists view the Oppositionists’ statements as treason
The threat of invasion is used by Stalin to justify the demands and sacrifices made by the regime
“Scissors Crisis” Mk 2
Foreign currency (gained via grain exports) is used to fund industrial expansion
The short fall in grain procurement in this year exacerbates the need and threatens the first Five Year Plan
Watershed 1928
A confrontation between the peasantry and the government, as well as an attack on the old “bourgeois” experts
Results in a trial in the region of Shakhty
Bourgeois engineers are accused of sabotage and conspiracy with foreign powers
Urals-Siberian Method 1928
Forced requisitioning of grain in a manner similar to that of War Communism
Making the peasants join Kolkhozes (right-wing method)
Encourage peasants to enter a Kolkhoz, which shares tractors and other machinery that would be bought using currency earned through grain exports
Favoured by Bukharin
Making the peasants join Kolkhozes (left-wing method)
Make the peasants join the kolkhozes and take their grain
The kolkhoz would be controlled by the state to ensure maximum grain output
Favoured by Preobrazhensky
