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Collectivisation (Collectivisation Stage 1, 1929 - 30 (By the end of 1929…
Collectivisation
The Great Turn/ Great Break
Radical change in the economic policy of the SU in 1928/29. Primarily consisted of abandoning the NEP of 1921 onwards and acceleration of Collectivisation and Industrialisation.
Emphasis had been on voluntary collectivisation - persuading peasants the benefits of working communally through posters, leaflets and films.
'Ural Siberian method' of grain requisitioning involving the forcible seizure and the closing down of private markets had brought unrest in rural areas.
Was a policy of forced consolidation of individual peasant households into collective farms called 'Kolhozes'
The Five Year Plans
List of economic goals based on Stalin's policy of Socialism in One Country.
Referred to as a 'revolution from above
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By 1929, less than 5% of all farms had been collectivised and Stalin believed that some of the grain procurement problems has been caused by the richer kulaks holding back supplies.
Collectivisation Stage 1, 1929 - 30
By the end of 1929 the government has begun a programme of all out, forced collectivisation. ---> Peasants were driven into collectives by local party members (often students from cities filled with fervour to create a new socialist society) with support of the OGPU and Red Army when necessary.
The Red Army and OGPU used to identify, execute or deport kulaks who were said to represent 4% of peasant households.
Not always easy to distinguish between peasant types and in practice, 15% of peasant households were destroyed and 150,000 peasants forced to migrate North and East to poorer land. Some tried to avoid being labelled as kulaks, killed live stock and destroyed crops adding to rural problems.
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Brutal treatment meted out to kulaks was used to frighten poor peasants into joining the collectives and by 1931, 50% of peasant households had been collectivised** through a mixture of propaganda and force in the face of mounting peasant disquiet.
The speed in which this operation was carried out led even Stalin to say that local officials were being too vigorous and confrontational in their methods; Party members were, he wrote in an article becoming 'dizzy with success'. Consequently, a brief return to voluntary collectivisation was permitted until after the harvest had been collected that year and peasants were allowed to return to leave collectives and had their livestock returned to them providing that they weren't kulaks. Immediately reduced the collectives numbers in October 1930, only by 20% of households were still collectivised.
Stalin declared that kulaks must be 'liquidated as a class' and they were not permitted to join collectives.
Collectivisation Stage 2, 1930 - 41
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Kolkhoz
- Typical collective farm created by combining small individual farms together in a cooperative structure.
- Average Kolkhoz compromised of 75 families and their livestock.
- Had to deliver a set of quota of produce to the state. Quotas were as high as 40% of crops**. If Quota was not met, the farm was not paid by the government.
- From 1932 kolkhozes were able to sell any 'left over' produce in a collective farm market: the only free market permitted in the USSR.
- Was under the control of a Communist Party member who acted as the Chairman of the collective. This ensured Communist control of rural areas forbade peasants from leaving the kolkhoze through a system of internal passports from 1932
Sovkhoz
-A relatively small number of farms were run as state farms rather than Kolkhozes.
- Created as early as the 1920's as an example of Socialist agriculture of the highest order and seen by Communist Purists as the 'ideal' form of farming.
- Labourers were classed as 'workers' rather than 'peasants' and paid a wage directly by the state. Their movement was however, restricted as those of the Kolkhoze peasants.
- Created on land confiscated from former larger estates. Workers were recruited from landless rural residents and the farms organised according to industrial principles for specialised large scale production.
Official expectation was for all Kolkhozes to be turned into Sovkhozes in the longer term
Mechanisation
- Machine Tractor Stations were set up from 1931 to provide seed and to hire out tractors and machinery to collective and state farms ; 2500 were established
- Only 1 MTS for every 40 collective farms by 1940
- **By 1938, 95% of threshing, 72% of ploughing, 57% of spring sowing and 48% of harvesting carried out mechanically.