critically examine stalins collectivisation program? (5 marks)
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The Soviet Union implemented the collectivization (Russian: Коллективизация) of its agricultural sector between 1928 and 1940 during the ascension of Joseph Stalin. It began during and was part of the first five-year plan. The policy aimed to integrate individual landholdings and labour into collectively-controlled and state-controlled farms: Kolkhozy and Sovkhozy accordingly. The Soviet leadership confidently expected that the replacement of individual peasant farms by collective ones would immediately increase the food supply for the urban population, the supply of raw materials for the processing industry, and agricultural exports via state-imposed quotas on individuals working on collective farms. Planners regarded collectivization as the solution to the crisis of agricultural distribution (mainly in grain deliveries) that had developed from 1927. This problem became more acute as the Soviet Union pressed ahead with its ambitious industrialization program, meaning that more food needed to be produced to keep up with urban demand.
In the early 1930s, over 91% of agricultural land became collectivized as rural households entered collective farms with their land, livestock, and other assets. The collectivization era saw several famines, many due to both the shortage of modern technology in USSR at the time and deliberate action on the government's part.The death toll cited by experts has ranged from 7 million to 14 million.
·Stalin headed the party after Lenin’s death. He was a Soviet revolutionary and political leader. He governed the Soviet Union as dictator from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953.
• Soviet Russia was facing an acute problem of grain supplies. The government fixed prices for the grain was rejected by the peasants.
• Stalin thought that rich peasants and traders in the countryside were holding stocks in the hope of higher prices. This created a shortage. Therefore, Stalin introduced a programme of collectivization in 1929. (uniformity)
• He believed that collectivization of agriculture would help in improving grains supplies in Russia.
• Peasants worked on the lands of the owners of collective farms (Kolkhoz) and the profit was shared.
• Those who resisted collectivization were severely punished or deported and exiled.
• Stalin treated independent cultivation unsympathetically. Collectivization did not bring the desired results in the food supply situation turned even worse in subsequent years.
• Bad harvests leading to devastating famines with 4 million deaths.
• Accusations (criticism) were made in the entire country, and by 1939, over 2 million were in prisons or labour camps.