1. SECTION 2 COLLECTIVISATION YOU NEED TO KNOW: HOW DID STALIN PLAN TO PAY FOR INDUSTRIALISATION? WHAT WAS STALIN’S MOTIVATION IN PERSECUTING THE KULAKS? WHAT WERE THE EFFECTS OF COLLECTIVIATION ON THE PEASANTRY? WHY COULD THE FAMINE OF THE EARLY 1930’S NOT BE DEALT WITH EFFECTIVELY? HOW FAR DID COLLECTIVISATION SATISFY THE SOVIET UNTION’S ECONOMIC NEEDS? EXAMPLE EXAM QUESTION: HOW FAR IS IT ACCURATE TO DESCRIBE STALIN’S POLICY OF COLLECTIVISATION AS A FAILURE? (30 MARKS)

2. VIDEO CLIP http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=uQZ9qWO63Skhttp://www.youtube.com/watch? v=uQZ9qWO63Sk Excellent film introducing the topic. Peasants celebrating on a collectivised farm – a propaganda painting from 1937.

3. BACKGROUND Stalin judged that the only way to raise the capital needed to develop Soviet industry was to use the land. The necessary first step towards this was the collectivisation of Russian agriculture. COLLECTIVISATION= Taking the land from the peasants and giving it all to the state. The peasants would no longer farm the land for their own individual profit. Instead they would pool their efforts and receive a wage. Stalin wanted to do this to finance his program of industrialisation. STALIN “the setting up of collective farms and state farms in order to squeeze out all the capitalist elements from the land”. COLLECTIVE FARMS = Farms run as cooperatives in which the peasants pooled their resources and shared the labour and their wages. STATE FARMS = Farms containing peasants working directly for the state, which paid them a wage. It was believed that large farms would be more efficient and use machinery. This would lead to surplus (extra) food supplies that could be sold abroad to raise capital (money) for Soviet industry. For Stalin the needs to the land were always subordinate (not as important as) the needs of industry.

4. THE KULAKS Stalin claimed that collectivisation (introduced in 1928) was voluntary. In truth it was forced on the reluctant peasants. Stalin identified a class of KULAKS who were holding back the workers revolution by monopolising (controlling) the best land and employing cheap peasant labour to farm it. They were hoarding (keeping for themselves) produce and prices were kept high. In 1928 2.5 million tons of grain was seized. Stalin claimed that they made themselves rich at the expense of workers and poorer peasants. Stalin believed they needed to be broken as a class. The existence of the Kulaks was a myth. In reality they were simply hard-working peasants who were better farmers than their neighbours. They were portrayed as exploiting landowners in propaganda. Stalin used starvation as a weapon –

5. "We will keep out the kulaks" - propaganda poster from 1930 the propaganda notion was a powerful one. It provided the grounds for coercion of the peasants.

6. DE-KULAKISATION SURPLUS PEASANTS AND GRAIN Stalin believed the future belonged to URBAN workers. October 1917 (The Russian Revolution) was the beginning of the triumph (rise) of the urban workers. The USSR needed industrial development and manpower. The land could provide both. The Russian countryside was overpopulated (had too many people) but the idea of a grain shortage was a myth. DE-KULAKISATION In some regions the poorer peasants undertook “de-Kulakisation” with enthusiasm. It was an opportunity to vent local jealousies. Land and property were seized from the minority of better-off peasants. They were often physically attacked. Arrest and deportation was carried out by anti-Kulak squads and the OGPU (state security force). This terror served as a warning to the peasants of the consequences of resisting the state reorganisation of agriculture.

7. The collectivisation campaign in the USSR, 1930s. The slogan reads: "We kolkhoz farmers, on the basis of complete collectivisation, will liquidate the kulaks as a class." (THINK: Who is likely to have organised such a demonstration?)

8. RESISTANCE TO COLLECTIVISATION In the period between December 1929 and March 1930, nearly half the peasant farms in the USSR were collectivised. Yet peasants in their millions resisted. 30,000 arson attacks. Organised rural mass disturbances increased by 1/3 from 177 to 229. Burial of grain (hiding the grain to prevent it being seized). Women played a prominent role in the disturbances. This was because women in their role as mothers and household organisers were the first to suffer. QUOTE: “My wife does not want to socialise our cow” (THINK: what is the meaning of this quote?) There were cases of mothers and their children lying down in front of the tractors and trucks sent to break up private farms and impose collectivisation. (NB: women would be less likely to suffer reprisals from the authorities). In 1929 there was widespread resistance to the grain seizures. Peasant resistance stood no chance of stopping collectivisation. At one point there was so much turmoil that collectivisation was stopped by Stalin for a brief period. Stalin blamed local officials for the problems. Collectivisation began again in a slow but determined manner. By the end of the 1930’s virtually the whole of the peasantry had been collectivised.

9. UPHEAVAL AND STARVATION There was huge social upheaval. The peasants either would not or could not cooperate with the destruction of their traditional way of life. The majority of peasants are their own seed corn and slaughtered their livestock. There were then no crops or animals. Imprisonment, deportation and execution could not replenish (fill) the barns or restock the herds. Party workers were sent from the towns to restore food production but their lack of knowledge slowed food production further. Stalin had many “Kulaks” transported to collective farms in distant places. It is calculated that one in five of the deportees died. The little grain that was available was being sold as “surplus” (to raise money for industrialisation) and starvation set in. In the urban areas there was food available. The grain was sent to industrial regions.

10. NATIONAL FAMINE In 1932-1933 a national famine occurred. In many areas the peasants were in a state of despair and simply stopped producing. Hungry and bitter many moved to the towns. So great was the migration that a system of internal passports had to be introduced in an effort to control the flow. A CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNT: “Trainloads of peasants left…..the old folk starved to death in mid- journey, new born babies were buried on the banks of the roadside.”

11. RESULTS? Due to high government quotas peasants got, as a rule, less for their labour than that did before collectivisation. Collectivisation did not live up to expectations. The CPSU blamed this on the Kulaks who were organising resistance. The Soviet government responded to cutting off food rations to peasants and areas where there was opposition. In the Ukraine hundreds and thousands who opposed collectivisation were executed or sent to forced labour camps. The famine that followed has been called “a genocide of Ukrainian people”. OFFICIAL SILENCE The official Stalinist line was that there was no famine. This was to protect the image of Stalin as the great planner and prevented the introduction of measure to remedy the distress. Since the famine did not exist, Soviet Russia could not publicly take steps to relieve it. There was a rumour that Stalin’s second wife Nadezdha Alliluyeva had been driven to suicide by the knowledge that it was her husband’s brutal policies that had caused the famine. Between 1930 and 1932, Stalin drove two million peasants into internal exile as slave labourers, a quarter of that number dying of hunger and exposure.

12. WAS COLLECTIVISATION JUSTIFIABLE ON ECONOMIC GROUNDS? Even allowing for the occasional progressive aspect of collectivisation, such as the building and distributing of mechanised tractors, the overall picture was bleak. Despite coercion the peasants were unable to produce the surplus food that Stalin demanded. The most damning consideration still remains that the man-made famine killed between 10 and 15 million peasants. The hard fact is that Stalin’s policies did force a large number to leave the land. This was a process Russia needed. The nation needed to change from an agricultural and rural society to an urban and industrial one. Leaving aside human suffering enforced migration made economic sense. Stalin’s aims were understandable, but his methods were totally unacceptable.

13. Collectivisation Timeline 1927–1939 1927 Stalin announced collectivisation – peasants asked to take part voluntarily. Ignored. 1928 Food shortages. Police confiscated food and took it to the towns. 1929 Stalin announced compulsory collectivisation, enforced by the army. The peasants burned their crops and barns, and killed their animals. 1930 Famine. Stalin paused collectivisation. Peasants were allowed to own a small plot of land. 1931 Collectivisation re-started. By 1932 two-thirds of the villages had been collectivised. More resistance, burning/ killing. Meanwhile, the government took more food for the towns, so: 1932–3 Famine, esp. in Ukraine (where 5 million died). Stalin blamed, and declared war on, the Kulaks – their land was taken and they were shot/ sent to labour camps in Siberia/ whole villages surrounded and killed. 1934 All 7 million kulaks ‘eliminated’. 1939 99% of land collectivised; 90% peasants live on one of ¼ million kolkhoz; 4,000 state farms. Farming run by government officials.

14. STATISTICS Year Number of collective farms Percent of farmsteads in collective farms Percent of sown area in collective use 192714,8000.8– 192833,3001.72.3 192957,0003.94.9 193085,90023.633.6 1931211,10052.767.8 1932211,10061.577.7 1933224,50065.683.1 1934233,30071.487.4 1935249,40083.294.1 1936–90.598.2 1937243,70093.099.1 1938242,40093.599.8 1939235,30095.6– 1940236,90096.999.8

15. MORE STATISTICS! PRODUCTION: Grain 1928 = 73.3 million tons 1934 = 67.6 million tons Cattle 1929 = 70.5 million 1934 = 42.4 million Pigs 1928 = 26 million 1934 = 22.6 million Sheep and goats 1928 = 146.7 million 1934 = 51.9 million