In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

CHAPTER 5 The collectivization of Soviet agriculture (1929–1940) In contrast with the previous decade, this period saw a very centralized, autocratic development of the economy. During the 1930s, a Socialist economic system was being constructed, the first in the world. This new system was characterized by the priority it gave to the development of heavy industry, its extremely centralized management, the drafting of detailed five-year plans for all industrial and agricultural branches, strong administrative control over the realization of these plans, and the rapid mobilization of massive human and material resources when needed for the most important Soviet projects. Simultaneously, the actual performance of the Soviet economy became more difficult for outsiders to interpret as Soviet statistics were increasingly distorted. On the eve of World War II the country became richer due to its accelerated industrialization , but the majority of the Soviet people still lived in villages and found themselves poorer and consuming less than in the 1920s. 5.1. Major developments in agriculture There were two major stages in the development of Soviet agriculture in the 1930s: a very short stage during which the NEP was demolished; and a longer stage which saw the accelerated construction of the Soviet system of collectivized agriculture. During two years, 1928 and 1929, the use of coercion by the state replaced the market mechanism of the NEP. The “emergency measures” of the state grain procurement plan at the beginning of 1928 became a permanent feature of the new system. From the beginning of 1930, the forcible collectivization of agriculture strengthened state control over agricultural output. The “emergency measures” for grain collection were first put in place by the Soviet authorities in 1927–1928 in the face of the failure of the state procurement campaign. The grain procurement crisis of the Climate Dependence and Food Problems in Russia, 1900–1990 winter of 1927–1928 was not the result of kulak sabotage or a desire on the part of the peasants to combat Soviet power: the peasants simply found the grain price too low and expected it to be raised. In the winter of 1928 the official price of wheat was 1.2 rubles per pud (16.5 kg) and the price of rye 0.7 rubles per pud, while the market price of wheat reached 2.2 rubles and that of rye 1 ruble (Belerovich and Danilov, 2000b: 657). The KGB materials confirm that peasants waited for higher prices for their grain in the winter of 1928 before selling. They said that if the authorities raised the price of wheat by 1.4 rubles and that of rye by 1 ruble, they would sell their grain surplus to the state (ibid.: 711). Instead, a political campaign against “speculators” began in the USSR in the February of 1928. A criminal law was adopted to force peasants to sell their grain reserves to the state and to take their grain to market. The law stated that a peasant who kept back a large portion of grain or other agricultural produce “in order to produce a price increase on the market” was to be sentenced to prison for one year and his property confiscated. The problem was that any peasant could become a victim of this law if he kept any grain reserve at all. The campaign of 1928 was accompanied by numerous cases of the expropriation of the peasants ’ grain reserves. It produced some results in the following months as peasants were afraid to keep any reserves (ibid.: 689). However, the methods employed could not fail to remind the peasants of War Communism , and as one party activist wrote in a private letter, this similarity was kept quiet by the party (ibid.: 840). Meanwhile, Stalin described the emergency measures as “absolutely exceptional” (Conquest, 2002). One of the results of this campaign was the reduction in the sown area in the spring of 1928. Prosperous peasants reduced their sowing area and stopped renting any land from poor peasants, which had previously been common practice (Berelovich and Danilov, 2000b: 732). The grain shortage started to return in urban areas in the late autumn of 1928 but in November Stalin denounced the idea that the “extraordinary measures ” should be a permanent policy. The winter of 1929, in fact, found the grain problem still unsolved. Bread rationing had been introduced in the towns, and in the autumn of 1929 meat rationing followed. Some experts argue that food rationing was caused rather by the destruction of the market mechanism...

Share