Collectivisation and Dekulakisation

Question 1

Process of collectivisation - 1917

Answer 1

Fifteenth Party Congress decided on policy of voluntary collectivisation - started almost immediately.

Question 2

Process of collectivisation - 1928

Answer 2

forced requisitioning of food - early success meant it became increasingly used.
Credits to collective farms and heavy fees on KULAK farms.

Question 3

Process of collectivisation - 1929

Answer 3

Stalin announced ‘liquidation of the kulaks as a class’

collectivisation began.

Question 4

Process of collectivisation - 1930

Answer 4

March, Stalin’s article dizzy with success
After planting of the harvest: ban on hiring labour, renting out tools
Stalin launched second wave of collectivisation - aimed to collectivise 80% peasant population (50% in first wave) and eliminate all kuklaks by the end of 1931.

Question 5

Process of collectivisation - 1932

Answer 5

62% of peasant households had been collectivised

Question 6

Process of collectivisation - 1937

Answer 6

93% of peasant households had been collectivised

Question 7

What were the main methods of carrying out collectivisation?

Answer 7

Terror, force and propaganda

Question 8

What was the process of setting up a collective?

Answer 8

Local party officials would go into a village and announce the organisation of a collective and lectured peasants until enough had signed up to be members of the collective. Once this’d happened, the local party officials would seize animals, grain, supplies and property.

Question 9

What happened to KULAKS?

Answer 9

Rounded up and deported to Siberia and the Urals as class enemies.
1929 - 1932 - at least 10 million KULAKS expelled from their homes and villages.
KULAK children banned from school.

Question 10

How did peasants react to collectivisation?

Answer 10

Resisted it, particularly those in agriculturally rich regions.
Peasants burnt crops and killed their livestock in protest
1930 - 60 million (25% total livestock) killed
Rioting spread across rural areas - one riot lasted for five days and had to be put down with armoured cars.
Originally peasants protested peacefully - speaking out at collectivisation meetings, writing letters to central authorities - didn’t work - started using more violet methods - arson, lynching and murdering local authorities, KOLKHOZ leaders and activists.
Often resistance and action by women was most effective - more carefully organised.

Question 11

How did the regime deal with peasants being resistant to collectivisation?

Answer 11

Sent in the ‘DEKULAKISATION BRIGADE’ 25,000 ‘socially conscious’ industry workers sent to countryside - the twenty-five-thousanders - would force reluctant peasants into joining collectives and remove kulaks.
the twenty-five-thousanders - ‘Constant struggle, struggle and more struggle! This was how we had been taught to think - that nothing was achieved without struggle, which was a norm of social life.’

Question 12

Three types of collective - TOZ

Answer 12

Peasants owned own land, but shared machinery

more common before 1930

Question 13

Three types of collective - SOVKHOV

Answer 13

Owned and run by state

Peasants given small wage

Question 14

Three types of collective - KOLKHOZ

Answer 14

Run by elected committee
About 50 - 100 households
All land, livestock and tools pooled together
Peasants farmed land as one unit
Peasants could keep a small area for themselves to grow vegetables and keep a cow
Most common in 1930s

Question 15

Why was collectivisation introduced? - technologically backwards

Answer 15

Make agriculture more efficient - technology could be supplied by the state e.g. machine and tractor station (MTS) - (however by 1940 there was only 1 MTS for every 40 collectives)
Require fewer peasants to work the land.

Question 16

What did the average collective farm contain?

Answer 16

76 families, 60 cattle, 94 sheep and goats and 26 pigs

Question 17

Collectives - quotas and what peasants received

Answer 17

quotas = up to 40% crops
Low purchase price set by govt.
Any profit shared out amongst the collective members according to work contribution

Question 18

Why was collectivisation introduced? - industrialisation needed surplus

Answer 18

agriculture needed to be effective and efficient for this to happen - to buy new technology, Soviet Union had to get money from food exports.

Question 19

why was collectivisation introduced? - Failure of the NEP

Answer 19

Agricultural production was poor - not producing enough grain - needed improvement.

Question 20

Why was collectivisation introduced? - Ideological

Answer 20

NEP led to emergence of NEPMEN and KULAKS.
Peasants could own their own land - ideologically opposed to communism.
party’s control = weakest in countryside - collectivisation would spread communism to the countryside.
Tambov rebellion (50,000 peasants formed army) - decline in socialist enthusiasm in countryside.

Question 21

Why was collectivisation introduced? - Stalin had personal reasons

Answer 21

Stalin distrusted the peasant class and wanted to break their resistance.

Question 22

What were the political positives of collectivisation?

Answer 22

Reinforced Stalin's power
Regime had exerted political control over countryside for first time.
Moved USSR closer to socialism - class differences in countryside abolished, private enterprise removed.
Peasants could no longer resist the regime or hold it to ransom.

Question 23

What were the economic positives of collectivisation?

Answer 23

Able to supply towns with food and export grain to pay for technology - enabled industrialisation to continue.
Collectives allowed to sell surplus grain in a collective market (only free market allowed in USSR) - incentive to work.

Question 24

What were the social positives of collectivisation?

Answer 24

benefits such as education brought to countryside.

Benefit for peasants - from 1935, could sell produce from private plots.

Question 25

What were the economic negatives of collectivisation?

Answer 25

Couldn’t have been producing huge amounts of grain from collectives - private plots produce 1/3 of all marketed food in USSR, even though they only made up 4% of cultivated land.
Not enough grain produced - widespread famine in Ukraine (1932-34).
Farming remained poor and inefficient - few incentives and lack of mechanisation.
Production fell and did not recover until late 1930s.

Question 26

What were the social negatives of collectivisation?

Answer 26

Countryside still seen as poor relation of new urban USSR
Peasants felt betrayed and were hostile to the regime - saw it as a ‘new serfdom’ and many welcomed Nazi invasion of 1941.
Despite internal passports being introduced 1932, millions of younger people left countryside - population imbalance.
Millions of peasants died and had their lives disrupted.

Question 27

Why was collectivisation introduced? - Marxist ideology

Answer 27

Marxist ideology taught the Bolsheviks to see peasants as ‘petty bourgeois’ - collectivisation would allow for govt to have greater control over the peasants.

Question 28

What were some of the methods used to get peasants to become members of collectives?

Answer 28

One village - when peasants had to vote, armed soldiers brought in by activists.
Another village - if refused to join, asked to give reasons for this.
Other villages - only small minority of inhabitants hand-picked by activists allowed to attend meeting and vote on whether entire village should be enrolled in collective farm.

Question 29

How were KULAKS described?

Answer 29

‘parasites’
‘enemies of the people’
‘bloodsuckers’
evidence that people actually believed that the KULAKS were evil vermin and enemies of the people - Collectiviser in the 1980s - ‘Without the KOLKHOZ the KULAKS would have grabbed us by the throat and skinned us all alive.’