Transcript Collectivisation

Stalin’s Five
Year Plan
Collectivisation
Stalin’s Great Turn – Why?








NEP not Communist enough for rank and file
communists (who Stalin depended upon)
Peasantry becoming too powerful vis-à-vis Urban
Proletariat
Conspicuous consumption by Nepmen
Unemployment rising in the Worker’s Paradise
Speculative Hoarding
1928 War Scare – Not enough strategic materials
Allows Stalin to isolate Rightist rivals
15th Party Congress - Stalin Declares
– Collectivisation
– First Five Year Plan
– The 5YP depended upon the success of Collectivisation
We are 50-100 years behind the
advanced countries. We must make up
this gap in ten years. Either we do it or
they crush us.
Stalin 1931
The Five Year Plans
Stalin believed that industry could only develop through state control. Under
GOSPLAN, three Five Year Plans set targets between 1928-1941 to increase
production.
Russian industry changed enormously. New towns such as Magnitogorsk
grew up and large projects such as the Dnieper hydroelectric dam were
developed. The USSR became a major industrial country.
The human cost was high. Forced labour killed millions, working conditions
were poor and hours of work were long.
Throughout history Russia has been beaten again and again because she
was backward… to slow down industrialisation would mean falling behind
and getting beaten. Russia was beaten by British and French capitalists
and the Japanese too. Lenin has said: ‘Either die or overtake and outstrip
the advanced capitalist countries’. We are 50 to 100 years behind them.
Either we make good the difference or they crush us.”
Stalin speaking in 1931
How does this source help you to understand why the Five-Year Plans were
introduced in 1928?
Question
Why agriculture?
Cash Crisis

For 5YP Money was required
– To invest in or purchase:
 Factories/Plant
 Machines
 Workers/Wages
 Raw
Materials
Possible sources of money

Tax Soviet citizens
– Not a rich society – hit by war, Civil war,
exile, confiscations, war communism, hiding
of assets from Communists

Borrow money from abroad
– Reneged on Tsarist loans
– Capitalists unlikely to lend to nationalising
communists

Encourage greater grain production
– How?
Grain converted into Hard Cash
– Encourage greater grain production

Sell grain on open market
– Collectives would allow:
Access to expensive new machinery to improve
efficiency
 Mechanisation would allow surplus workforce to
migrate to towns
 Update farming techniques by learning from experts
 Economies of Scale

– larger units of production brought efficiencies
– Easier for State to collect
Socialist answer to USSR’s problem
 Easier political control of hostile peasant classes

Collectivisation


In the late 1920s, Russia suffered a
food crisis. To feed starving workers,
Stalin ordered the seizure of grain from
the farmers.
The peasants hid food or produced less.
Stalin in 1928
Reasons for Collectivisation
Agriculture is developing slowly, comrades. This is
because we have about 25 million individually
owned farms. They are the most primitive and
undeveloped form of economy.
We must do our utmost to develop large farms and
to convert them into grain factories for the country
organised on a modem scientific basis.
Collectivisation


In 1929 Stalin announced the
collectivisation of farms.
The most common was the Kolkhoz in
which land was joined together and the
former owners worked together and
shared everything. Stalin persuaded
peasants to join by attacking the Kulaks,
peasants that had grown as a result of
the NEP.
The Kolkhoz

No wages
– Holidays, board and lodging in return for labour
– The collective’s profit would be shared out
equitably at the end of the year

Quotas Prices set by State
– State would sell in cities as slight profit

State Support
– Machine and Tractor Stations
– Had to pay 20% of produce to access machinery

Private Plots
– Once collective duties completed
Question
How is this close to the concept/idea of
communism?
Collectives Anyone?


Few Peasants willing to move into
collectives
Conservative Peasants:
–
–
–
–
The NEP seemed to be working fine for them
Unfamiliar working practices
Suspicious of new machinery and techniques
Memories of War Communism and forced
requisitioning
– Little sympathy for plight of urban poor
The Pressure Builds

1928/9 Grain Procurement Crisis
– Not enough grain to allow 5YP to proceed
– Food shortages in Cities
– Price rises – inflation

Stalin’s Pressures
–
–
–
–
–
–

Credibility attached to success of 5YP
Urban workers support base for Stalin
Power struggle not yet complete
Urals –Siberian experiment
Long term goal of Industrialisation of Agriculture
Ideological distrust of peasant class
Stalin’s Solution
– Requisitioning
– Forced Collectivisation
Forced Collectivisation

Rural Communist parties resisted collectivisation quotas
– Too unpopular

Special Urban party activist task force created
– 25,000 attended special Two Week courses
– Tactics

Root out Kulaks?
– Confiscate goods
 Would become basis of new commune

‘Persuade’ remaining peasants to volunteer to join a collective
– Tools used

Propaganda
– Controlled all sources of information

Force
– OGPU, Police, Military

Terror
– Denunciations, Executions of Kulaks, ‘Necessary Measures’
– 10 Million deported Siberia and Labour camps
– Quotas
Collectivisation - Propaganda
Collectivisation - Propaganda
De-Kulakisation


Class warfare declared on Kulaks
Communist classification of peasants:
– Kulaks – better off Peasants –hired help
– Middle Peasants – moderate incomes
– Poor Peasants - landless


“We will hit the Kulaks so hard that the middle
peasants will snap to attention before us”
Ukraine targeted for being less reliable than
Russian areas
– Ukrainian nationalism
Anti Kulak Poster
Kulak Dispersal
Stalin’s agricultural collectivisation
“Look at the Kulak farms: their barns and sheds are
crammed with grain. They are waiting for prices to rise. So
long as there are Kulaks there will be sabotage of our grain
needs. The effect will be that our towns and industrial
centres, as well as the Red Army, will be threatened with
hunger. We cannot allow that. We must break the
resistance of this class and deprive it of its existence.”
Stalin speaking to Siberian party officials after the grain
crisis of 1927
How does this source help you to understand why
collectivisation was introduced in 1928?
Peasant Resistance



Riots
Armed Resistance
Peasants destroyed own goods rather
than hand them over to the State
– Mass slaughter of livestock


Raids on Collectives to liberate goods
and livestock
All women raids made troops reluctant to
shoot to kill
Results of Collectivisation

23 Million tonnes of grain seized in 1931
– Enough to feed urban areas
– 5 million tonnes of grain sold overseas

However
– Desolated rural areas
– Famine 1932 – 1934

Millions died of starvation in rural areas
– 7 Million according to Robert Conquest

Ukraine particularly hard hit
Results of Collectivisation
– Fall in production 1930 - 1934
Not enough livestock to do work
 Best farmers annihilated as Kulaks
 Russia was producing the same amount of food
as it had in 1928
 Pre-collective era grain production not reached
until 1937

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
Results of
Collectivisation

But
– Stalin content to see the end of the ‘accursed
problem’ of the peasant class
– Demonstrates power of Communist Party
– Confirms Stalin’s control of Communist Party
– Gulag Labour increased massively
– Migration of peasants to cities

By 1939, Collectivisation was clearly a disaster
and the problem was even worse as its population
had increased by 20 million - all of whom needed
feeding.
At the same time, he carefully cultivated a fatherly
image, to assure the people he was there to protect
them.
Results of
Collectivisation

“Dizzy with Success” temporary climb
down by Stalin 1930
– Claims over eager officials getting carried
away
‘Sacking Grain’, an oil painting by the
Soviet artist Tatyana Yablonskaya
At roughly what date, and for what purpose
would this picture have been painted?
Say Something Significant
Choose a sentence-starter and make the most
complex statement you can about collectivisation.

Cause and effect:
– “The main reason …..”

Pattern:
– “Throughout Stalin’s rule in Russia, people kept ….”

Turning point:
– “Everything changed when …..”

Simple judgement:
– “The smartest choice was ……..”
Activity
Use the sources and information to complete
the table.
Ways in which
collectivisation was
economically
successful for the
government?
Ways in which
collectivisation was
politically successful
for the government
Ways in which
collectivisation was an
economic failure
The human cost of
collectivisation
Question




Collectivisation was a political success but an
economic failure and a human disaster.
Discuss.
How convincing is the argument that
collectivisation was an ‘ideological triumph
but an economic disaster’?
In what ways did the living conditions of the
peasants change as a result of
collectivisation?
Collectivisation was ‘all very bad and difficult
– but necessary.’ Is this a fair assessment?
Say Something Significant
Choose a sentence-starter and make the most complex
statement you can about collectivisation.

Cause and effect:
– “The main reason …..”

Pattern:
– “Throughout Stalin’s rule in Russia, people kept ….”

Turning point:
– “Everything changed when …..”

Simple judgement:
– “The smartest choice was ……..”
Industrialisation

Collectivisation was only a means to
an end
– The food grown could be sold on the
world market to allow investment in
industry
– Soviet Industry was designed to provide
for the State (not the consumer)

Hence, very little produced that would be
wanted by world market
What’s the significance here?
Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, 1936
The Great Patriotic War 1941-1945
When Germany attacked the USSR in
1941, Stalin used the same
ruthlessness to defend his country.
The defence of the USSR was the
bloodiest war in history and cost the
lives of millions of people and the
destruction of thousands of villages,
towns and cities.
The final victory in 1945 was, like
everything else, put down to the
personal leadership of Stalin by the
Soviet propaganda machine.
After the war, Stalin built up the USSR
as a superpower, in opposition to the
USA. This conflict was known as the
Cold War. Stalin died in 1953.