STALIN’S REVOLUTION FROM ABOVE

The War Against the Peasantry - Collectivization

THE PEASANTRY IN THE USSR

•The problem of the peasantry•Massive, backward peasant population in the 1920s.•Problems caused by backwardness, coupled with necessity to industrialize.•How to industrialize?

HOW TO INDUSTRIALIZE

THE USSR

•New industry, factories, railways, power stations, and mines?

• Agricultural Production necessary

Results of the New Economic Policy (NEP) on the Peasantry

• Successes of the NEP– Increases in food

production– Generated some wealth

for the peasantry– Strengthened control of

the Communists– Famine of Civil War

period solved

• Failures of the NEP– Split the Politburo – Betrayal of Communist

principles?– Created a rich

landowning class…the Kulak

– Never addressed the USSR’s main problem…economic backwardness

STALIN’S SOLUTIONCan we advance our socialized industry at an accelerated rate as long as we have an agricultural base, such as is provided by small-peasant farming, which is incapable of expanded reproduction, and which, in addition, is the predominant force in our national economy? No, we cannot. Can Soviet power and the work of socialist construction rest for any length of time on two different foundations: on the most large-scale and concentrated socialist industry, and the most scattered and backward, small-commodity peasant farming? No, they cannot. Can Soviet power and the work of socialist construction rest for any length of time on two different foundations: on the most large-scale and concentrated socialist industry, and the most scattered and backward, small-commodity peasant farming? No, they cannot. Sooner or later this would be bound to end in the complete collapse of the whole national economy.

What, then, is the solution? The solution lies in enlarging the agricultural units, in making agriculture capable of accumulation, of expanded reproduction, and in thus transforming the agricultural bases of our national economy.

- Stalin at a Marxist student conference, 12/27/1929

STALIN’S SOLUTION

• Early attempts – police squad raids

• The solution - collectivization

COLLECTIVIZATION

• Revolutionary changes in agriculture.

• The end of profits

• Reorganization of social settlement

LIQUIDATION OF THE KULAKS

• Opposition to join collective farms – the kulaks

• Natural opposition from kulaks

• Creation of the enemy. Class warfare against the kulaks

• Fate of the kulak

LIQUIDATION OF THE KULAKNow we are able to carry on a determined offensive against the kulaks, to break their resistance, to eliminate them as a class and substitute for their output the output of the collective farms and state farms. Now, the kulaks are being expropriated by the masses of poor and middle peasants themselves, by the masses who are putting solid collectivization into practice. Now, the expropriation of the kulaks in the regions of solid collectivization is no longer just an administrative measure. Now, the expropriation of the kulaks is an integral part of the formation and development of the collective farms. Consequently it is now ridiculous and foolish to discourse on the expropriation of the kulaks. You do not lament the loss of the hair of one who has been beheaded.

There is another question which seems no less ridiculous: whether the kulaks should be permitted to join the collective farms. Of course not, for they are sworn enemies of the collective-farm movement.

- Stalin, 12/1929

PROPAGANDA AGAINST THE

KULAK

We will smite the kulak who

agitates for reducing

cultivated acreage.

PROPAGANDA AGAINST THE

KULAK

Throw the kulaks out of the kolkhozes!

PROPAGANDA AGAINST THE

KULAK

Let’s annihilate the kulak class!!!

COLLECTIVE FARM PROPOGANDA

COLLECTIVE FARM PROPAGANDAThis poster promotes mechanization of agriculture on large collective farms. Peasants were urged to work in brigades, as in industry, to increase productivity. The poster visualizes an ideal of disciplined workers in ordered fertile fields. The robust figures give no hint of the actual crop failures and famine in 1931-32 that resulted from forced collectivization.

FAMINE: 1930-1933

• Persistence of grain shortages

• Resistance to collectivization

• Drop in food production

• Widespread Death

FAMINE: 1930-1933

• Heaviest human toll in the Ukraine.

• No relief for peasantry

• Virtual Prison Camp

• Ethnic Genocide?

FAMINE: 1930-1933

Before they died, people often lost their senses and ceased to be human beings.

- Soviet author

The famine was a great success as it showed the peasants “who is the master here. It costs millions of lives, but the collective farm system is here to stay.”

- Lieutenant of Stalin in Ukraine, 1933

FAMINE 1930-1933

A little market town in the North Caucasus suggested military occupation; worse, active war. There were soldiers everywhere, all differing notably from the civilian population in one respect. They were well fed, and the civilian population was obviously starving. I mean starving in its absolute sense;…having had for weeks next to nothing to eat. Later I found out that there had been no bread…

FAMINE: 1930-1933

at all in the place for 3 months, and such food as there was I saw for myself in the market. There was sausage for 15 roubles a kilo; there was black cooked meat which worked out, I calculated, at a rouble for 3 bites. A crowd wandered backwards and forwards eyeing these things wistfully, too poor to buy. The few who bought gobbled their purchases then and there…

FAMINE 1930-1933

“How are things with you?” I asked one man. He looked round anxiously to see that no soldiers were about. “We have nothing, absolutely nothing.” They have taken everything away,” he said, and hurried on.

- British Journalist, Malcolm Muggeridge working in the USSR in 1933.

COLLECTIVIZATION: IMPACT ON AGRICULTURE

FOOD PRODUCTION IN THE USSR, 1928-

19321928 1929 1930 1931 1932

Grain (million tons)

73.3 71.7 83.5 69.5 69.6

Cattle (millions) 70.5 67.1 52.5 47.9 40.7

Pigs (millions) 26.0 20.4 13.6 14.4 11.6

Sheep & Goats (millions)

146.7 147 108.8 77.7 52.1