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The Target:
Collectivisation of Peasant Holdings

p The most difficult and at the same time the most important socialist reform was the transition of the Soviet peasantry from individual small-scale holdings to large-scale, collective, socialist farming. This transition lasted through the first and second fiveyear plans, but the ground for it had been prepared by the entire process of socialist construction in the country and by the policies followed by the Soviet Government in respect of the rural areas.

p By adopting the Decree on Land, on the strength of which land confiscated from the landed proprietors, monasteries and capitalists was distributed among the peasants on an equitable basis, in accordance with their wishes, the Soviet Government had satisfied the age-long aspirations of the Russian peasants. This resulted in greatly increasing the number of small peasant holdings, which reached, in the second half of the 1920s, some 24-25 millions. Millions of indigent peasants and farm labourers were allotted 84 land, implements and cattle confiscated from the landlords and to some extent from the kulaks, which promoted them to the rank of middle peasants and improved their conditions.

p On the whole, however, living standards among the working peasants remained low owing to the low productivity of smallscale farming, which employed mainly manual labour and animaldrawn farm implements. Tractors, so effective for raising the productivity of farming, were beyond the reach of the small holdings, and even horses did not always pay for themselves. Millions of small farmers could not pay for a good plough; over 5,000,000 wooden ploughs were still at work in the 1920s, while about onethird of the peasant holdings owned no implements for ploughing the land. In 1928 nearly 10 per cent of the spring ploughing was done with wooden ploughs, 75 per cent of the land was sown by hand, and roughly 50 per cent of the cereal crops were harvested with scythe or sickle, and threshed with a flail or by other primitive methods, such as were used all of a thousand years ago. Hence the low living standards of most of the working peasants. Millions left for the cities in search of work every year, only to swell the ranks of the unemployed.

p The Soviet Government ended completely the peasants’ bondage to the landlords, and mitigated their exploitation by the kulaks, though such exploitation did not entirely disappear and continued to be a source of suffering for the poorer peasantry, who were forced to rent horses and implements from the kulaks and lease to them that part of their land which they could not care for fully for lack of adequate implements or animal traction. Indigent peasants whose own holdings could not support them were further obliged to hire themselves out to the kulaks. Personal experience showed the peasants how right Lenin was when he wrote, back in 1917: "If we continue as before on our small isolated farms, albeit as free citizens on free soil, we are still faced with imminent ruin."  [84•1 

p These small peasant holdings were incapable of meeting the country’s growing requirements in respect of cereals and other farm produce or industry’s requirements in respect of agricultural raw materials. The marketable surplus of agriculture as a whole decreased by 50 per cent during the first decade after the Revolution owing both to the fragmentation of peasant holdings and to growing consumption by the peasants themselves. The shortage of farm produce compelled the Soviet Government to introduce rationing as from 1928.

p The way out was to increase the size of farms. Big farms would be in a position to buy and operate efficiently tractors and other 85 farm machinery, use mineral fertilisers, and introduce many-field crop rotation. The application of scientific discoveries would substantially increase productivity of farm labour and the marketable surplus of agriculture, help meet the country’s requirements, and raise living standards among the peasants. Large-scale farming, as a means of achieving higher productivity and marketability, had become essential in the interests of the peasantry and society as a whole. The question was, how to achieve-this? How was the transition to large-scale farming to be effected?

p It was out of the question for the Soviet Government to support and develop large private farm holdings of the kulak type, as suggested by N. Bukharin, A. Rykov and some others. That would have spelled the ruin of the main body of working peasants to the enrichment of the kulaks. Such a solution would have been unacceptable for the vast majority of peasants, as well as for the Working class, inasmuch as it would have strengthened the capitalist elements in the countryside and led to the failure of socialist construction. Lenin’s co-operation plan offered the working peasants another way to large-scale farming, namely, through voluntary membership in production co-operatives. That was the sole acceptable and advantageous way for the peasants, since it opened up prospects of high living standards instead of spelling their ruin.

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The 15th Party Congress, meeting in December 1927, well aware of the fact that the country’s lagging agriculture had begun to retard industrialisation as well and become an obstacle to any improvement of living standards, decided to give top priority to collectivisation and technological reconstruction in agriculture. The Communist Party and the Soviet Government initiated a vast campaign to prepare the ground for mass collectivisation.

Preparing the Ground
for Mass Collectivisation

p More and more tractors and farm machinery were supplied to the rural areas by the government. Tractors were useless, however, under the open-field system (when the fields of one owner were separated from each other by strips belonging to other owners), being intended for use on extensive unbroken land areas, which, for the peasants, was an argument in favour of co-operation. Large grain state farms began to be set up in 1928. In addition to producing grain, these state farms provided training in the organisation of mechanised production and let the farmers see for themselves the advantages offered by large-scale farming. Thousands of peasants came to the state farms to learn; so that these farms, equipped as they were with modern machinery, made a very real contribution to the collectivisation movement. Here is but one example. The indigent peasants of several villages of the Berezovka district, Odessa region, lacked both horses and equipment and were thus unable to till the land that had been allotted to them, and were compelled to lease it to the kulaks. In 1927 a representative of the association of Ukrainian state farms offered to till their fields with tractors. At first his offer was regarded with suspicion. The kulaks, alarmed, tried to scare the poor peasants into refusing. "You’re putting yourselves under servitude, you fools,” they said. "This thing means the return of serfdom. Once the boundaries of your strips are gone, you’ll lose your lands.”

p These malicious insinuations did not work, however, and the peasants signed an agreement with one of the state farms. When their crop yield turned out to be 50 per cent better than that of the neighbouring peasants, while the tilling and sowing came 30-40 per cent cheaper than for horse-owning farms, the indigent peasants could appreciate the advantage of mechanised labour. "After seeing the job done by the tractors,” they wrote in to the hvestia, "we are through with our miserable farms, we have decided to organise a collectivised tractor farm which will do away with individually owned strips of sown land. The 87 Shevchenko State Farm has undertaken to organise such a farm for us, and we have already concluded an agreement with it.”

p With this experiment to go by, the government began setting up machine and tractor stations (MTSs), which were to service individual villages and collective farms on terms specified in agreements, in order to utilise tractors and other farm machinery with maximum efficiency. The first MTS was set up in November 1928, in association with the Shevchenko State Farm in the Ukraine. During the following year 159 MTSs were set up, and their number continued to grow yearly thereafter. They became points of support, so to speak, in the movement for collectivisation.

p Increasing aid was made available to collective farms by the government, which extended important credits, sold them machinery and mineral fertilisers on favourable terms, allowed substantial agricultural tax exemptions, and established a network of centres for training collective-farm organisers and managers. Generous support was given to the simplest forms of co-operation, which facilitated for the peasants the shift to collective farming. Thousands of worker teams were sent into the rural areas to help the peasants strengthen existing collective farms, set up new ones, and organise large-scale production. Industrial towns took upon themselves sponsorship over particular agricultural districts, 88 assigning workers to help them with the work of organisation on a permanent basis. Towards the close of 1929, in answer to an appeal launched by the Communist Party, over 25,000 leading workers went to the country to help the peasants with the transition to collective farming. These men made a valuable contribution to the development of collective farms.

p As the groundwork was being laid for the mass collectivisation campaign, fresh steps were being taken to eliminate the kulaks as a class. The Soviet Government increasingly restricted their chance to exploit farm labourers and the poor peasants, raised their tax rates, deprived them of voting rights in co-operatives of all kinds, stopped selling them tractors, and, in 1928, bought back whatever tractors they owned and turned them over to co- operatives and collective farms.

Class warfare in the countryside intensified. The kulaks started sabotaging government purchases of grain, hoping thereby to cause famine and so wreck the government’s economic policy. In an effort to disrupt the collectivisation movement they set fire to collective-farm buildings and the homes of members, killed collective-farm cattle, murdered collective-farm organisers, leading farm workers, representatives of the Soviet Government, and Communists. These criminal activities evoked determined retaliatory measures on the part of the Soviet Government, which dealt summarily with the incendiaries and terrorists. Those who concealed grain were brought to trial as profiteers. This government action was supported by the poor and middle peasants, as wrath against the kulaks grew in the countryside.

Turning-Point in the Countryside

p Following the 15th Party Congress collective farms began to grow numerically at a rapidly increasing pace. Two years later there were four times as many collective farms in the country and five times as many associated peasant holdings as before. The figures for the second half of 1929 speak for themselves: in July, membership in collective farms stood at 1,000,000 peasant households, while by October 1 it had reached 2,000,000. Thus, in two or three months membership had grown as much as over the preceding twelve years; while in the last three months of 1929 2,700,000 more peasant households signed up.

p On January 5, 1930, the Central Committee of the Communist Party adopted a resolution "On Rate of Collectivisation and Government Aid to Collective-Farm Construction”. Mass collectivisation was to be completed in the main by the end of the First Five-Year Plan period, i.e., in 1933. The most important 89 grain-producing areas, such as the Northern Caucasus and Middle and Lower Volga, where there were already many collective and state farms and machine and tractor stations, were to complete it, in the main, by the spring of 1931, and the rest of the grain-producing areas by the spring of 1932. The Central Committee stressed in this connection the necessity of observing the principle of voluntary entrance to collective farms. A sum of 500,000,000 rubles was earmarked by the Soviet Government in 1930 for the needs of collective-farm construction.

p Peasants were recommended to create agricultural artels, or associations, that is, to pool their land plots, draft animals and basic equipment for the purpose of farming in common, under a board elected by the members. In addition to the common farm economy that constituted his main source of subsistence, each member of the artel was allotted an individual plot, and preserved suitable tools to work it, a cow, and some other livestock and poultry.

p In the areas of total collectivisation local Soviets were authorised to expropriate from the kulaks land, implements, cattle, and property acquired by exploitation, which meant the liquidation of the kulaks as a class.

p Peasants everywhere organised meetings to discuss the problem of vital importance: should they join together to form a collective farm or should they continue living as before? The kulaks slandered collective farms, well aware that the system would deprive them of a chance to exploit the peasants. Members of collective farms organised earlier came to the meetings to tell about their own experience and try to convince the peasants of the advantages offered by the collective-farm system.

p Early in 1930 the working class sent its representatives (these were the men who had answered the Communist Party’s appeal towards the close of 1929) to encourage the peasants to accept the new way of life. They succeeded in winning the peasants’ confidence, and new collective farms appeared every day.

p But while the country rejoiced over the success of the collectivisation movement disturbing reports began to come in from scattered localities, warning that the Leninist principle of voluntary membership in collective farms was not being observed. It appeared that leading government workers in the republics of Central Asia and Transcaucasia as well as in the central industrial regions of the RSFSR and certain other areas had decided to complete total collectivisation in the spring of 1930, that is to say, a year or two earlier than had been planned, though the ground had not been prepared for this. Instead of explaining and convincing, these authorities began forcing the peasants to join collective farms Under the threat of disciplinary measures, expropriations as in 90 respect of the kulaks, and disfranchisement. This transition of millions and millions of peasants to the new, collective methods of farming on a nation-wide scale, was something without precedent in the history of humanity, and, therefore, it was difficult to avoid mistakes here.

p In certain regions, for instance, strenuous efforts were made to organise communes and socialise not only the basic means of production but also living quarters, small cattle and poultry. Markets and churches were closed here and there, and so on. Well-to-do middle peasants and those middle peasants who refused to join collective farms were sometimes expropriated like the kulaks.

p This bred serious discontent among the peasants, which the kulaks lost no time in seizing upon and using for unbridled anticollectivisation and anti-Soviet propaganda. Lest their livestock went to the collective farms they began to kill off their horses, cows and pigs and urged any middle farmers who intended to join a collective farm to do the same. This caused agriculture a tremendous damage.

p Steps to correct such policy distortions in respect of collectivisation were taken both by the Communist Party and the Soviet Government. Instructions were issued to adhere unfailingly to the Leninist principles in regard to voluntary joining collective farms and free choice of the particular form thereof desired.

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p Moreover, in order to help the new collective farms get on their feet as soon as possible the government made extensive aid available to them, including greater financial facilities and such measures as a two-year suspension of taxes on livestock, and seed loans to needy collective farms. Greater effort was also put into the construction of machine and tractor stations. These measures produced a favourable reaction among the peasants and served to assuage their feelings.

p The trend towards the new way of life continued to develop among the peasants. The turning-point had been reached. Millions of peasants had voted for a new way of life, the socialist way. As foreseen by Lenin, the time had come when a majority of the peasants decided in favour of collective farming.

Fifteen million peasant households (or 61.5 per cent of the total number of such households) had joined to form 210,000 collective farms during the First Five-Year Plan. Total collectivisation had been completed, in the main, in all the grain-producing areas as well as in those producing industrial crops.

Strengthening Collective Farms

p So rapid a development of the collectivisation movement entailed certain difficulties. Newly formed collective farms patently lagged in respect of organisation and management.

p There were serious defects in the organisation of work, utilisation of equipment and distribution of revenues. In many instances labour discipline was low. Organisers still lacked the experience essential to the management of large collective economies. Former kulaks and other hostile elements had made their way into many collective farms here and there, especially in the Northern Caucasus and the Ukraine, and proceeded to undermine these economies from within by pilfering property, killing cattle, damaging implements, impairing labour discipline, delaying the discharge of commitments to the state, etc.

It became necessary to strengthen the collective farms in matters of organisation and management, without which they would never be able to make use of the vast possibilities of large-scale collective socialist economies. The best patterns of labour organisation and income distribution were discovered through actual practice by the collective farms themselves. Production brigades with permanent personnel were organised in all collective farms. Each brigade was allotted its land, implements and livestock. A system of income distribution based on labour performed in terms of work-day units was adopted by all collective farms. This was an incentive to increased production.

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p In August 1932, the Soviet Government passed a law declaring socialist property sacred and inviolable and pilfering thereof a criminal offence involving severe punishment.

p In the winter of 1933 political departments were organised in state farms and machine and tractor stations by the Communist Party in its drive to strengthen the state and collective farms and organise them into highly efficient economies. Twenty-five thousand picked Party workers were selected by the Central Committee of the Communist Party to work in these political departments, which launched a vast campaign of political propaganda among collective farmers to foster a conscientious attitude towards work and public property, and also promoted socialist emulation among them. The political departments of the machine and tractor stations made a very real contribution to the strengthening of collective and state farms during the two years of their existence.

p In the rural areas, following the example set by the socialist city, production pioneers, or innovators, began a drive for more efficient utilisation of tractors, harvesting-combines and other machinery and higher yields of cereals, sugar-beet, cotton, etc. This movement was facilitated by such factors as the growing strength of collective farms, increasing number of modern machinery and specialists equipped to use it, and greater socialist 93 consciousness among collective farmers, and so on. Prominent among such pioneers was Praskovya Angelina, the first woman to drive a tractor, who later took charge of a tractor brigade. In 1935 her brigade ploughed 1,230 hectares per tractor, instead of the established quota of 300. Her example was followed by others. Konstantin Borin, operating a combine, harvested 780 hectares instead of the quota of 160. His record was matched by many other combine operators.

High sugar-beet yields were obtained in the Kiev Region by Maria Demchenko and her brigade of the Comintern Collective Farm. In 1935 they got a yield of 52,400 kilogrammes per hectare. Similar high yields were obtained by M. Gnatenko, A. Shvydko, A. Koshevaya and others.

Collective-Farm
System Victorious Throughout the USSR

p By the end of the Second Five-Year Plan period the collectivefarm system had been victorious throughout the Soviet Union. By 1937, the collective farms accounted for 18,500,000 peasant households, or 93 per cent of their total number. Ninety-nine per cent of all arable land belonged to collective farms. That meant that the process of collectivisation had been to all intents and purposes completed.

p By the end of the first decade covered by two five-year plans the agricultural sector had been practically re-equipped technologically. In 1937 the collective farms were serviced by 5,818 machine and tractor stations; 456,000 tractors, nearly 129,000 harvestingcombines, 146,000 lorries and numerous other machines worked in the fields.

The USSR had become a land of large-scale farming.