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SECTION III Collectivization In a reversal of early Soviet policy during the 1920s, peasants had again been permitted to sell the surplus grain they had produced. Soon, however, a grain crisis developed. Due to the low prices mandated by the government relative to the high prices for manufactured goods, peasants preferred to hold on to their grain rather than providing it at fixed prices to supply the needs of urban areas. Rumors of war, an experience still fresh in people’s memories, contributed to overall unease and reluctance to part with valuable grain. Threatened with grain shortages and interference with its plans to export grain to fund industrialization, the government began requisitioning additional amounts of grain from the peasantry and imposing a tax of five times the value of the grain on those who could not meet their obligations . It ended the New Economic Policy and instituted instead a policy of collectivization, forcing small-scale individual farmers to contribute their property and join larger common areas known as collective farms, which they would work in exchange for a share of the goods produced after a certain quota had been supplied to the government. In theory, these larger farms would allow modern, efficient farming methods to be implemented, thus increasing quality and quantity of yield and resulting in an abundant supply of food to both the cities and the countryside. In practice, waste and inefficiency were legion, and the governmental quota was often so high that little or nothing was left over for the collective farm members to feed their families with. Peasants resisted grain requisitions and being forced into collective farms by burning crops, slaughtering their animals, and refusing to sow land to produce grain they knew would be taken from them, though refusal to deliver grain was punishable by imprisonment under Article 61 of the criminal code. In response, the government adopted the policy of “eliminating the kulak as a class,” also known as dekulakization. Kulak was a term which in Tsarist Russia had referred to a prosperous, tight-fisted peasant who exploited his fellow villagers for personal gain. Under the Soviets, the definition of kulak varied, but ownership of a motorized farm machine or selling the grain one grew qualified a farmer under a decree issued in 1929; often the term was simply applied to those who opposed the regime or who were unwilling or unable to provide the grain requisitioned by the government. THE LITTLEST ENEMIES 32 In early 1930 the government enacted the additional measure of forbidding those designated as kulaks to leave their villages or dispose of their property. Some were shot outright or placed in concentration camps. Approximately 2 million men, women, and children were banished to the Russian Far North and Siberia with little more than the clothes on their backs, where many would perish of hunger and disease. The survivors lived in what were called “special settlements” in previously uninhabited (and in some cases uninhabitable) areas under the jurisdiction of commandants appointed by the OGPU. Eventually the government granted the settlers the right to send their children to live with relatives, assuming they could afford the journey, but they were otherwise forbidden to leave the area. Escapes were frequent but became increasingly difficult after the introduction of internal passports, which carried their holders’ name, age, social position, residence, place of employment, and ethnicity. The policies of dekulakization and collectivization, combined with another bad harvest, led to a mass famine in the early 1930s, during which an estimated 4 to 6 million people starved to death in Ukraine, southern Russia, and Kazakhstan. News of the famine was kept out of the press and only a limited amount of governmental aid was provided. The government refused foreign aid, denied that the famine even existed, and sentenced individuals to camp terms for discussing it, accusing them of anti-Soviet agitation. Those who attempted to seek food elsewhere within the country were turned back, and those who stole grain to try to save themselves could be sentenced to death or to ten years of imprisonment in the Gulag under a law enacted on August 7, 1932. After all sources of nourishment had been exhausted, including shoe leather, dogs, cats, rats, grass, worms, corpses, and horse manure containing undigested grains, some people, including some parents, turned to murder and cannibalism in order to survive. In some cases a parent’s killing of a smaller or weaker child enabled other children in the family to survive. Other parents...

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