Complete collectivization. A manual on the history of the fatherland

20.10.2019

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The year 1929 marked the beginning of the complete collectivization of agriculture in the USSR. In the famous article by J.V. Stalin “The Year of the Great Turning Point,” forced collective farm construction was recognized main task, the solution of which in three years will make the country “one of the most grain-producing, if not the most grain-producing country in the world.” The choice was made in favor of the liquidation of individual farms, dispossession, destruction of the grain market, and the actual nationalization of the village economy. What was behind the decision to start collectivization?

On the one hand, there was a growing conviction that economics always follows politics, and political expediency is higher than economic laws. These are the conclusions that the leadership of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) made from the experience of resolving the grain procurement crises of 1926-1929. The essence of the grain procurement crisis was that individual peasants were reducing the supply of grain to the state and disrupting the planned indicators: fixed purchase prices were too low, and systematic attacks on the “village world-eaters” were not conducive to expanding the acreage and increasing productivity. The party and the state assessed the problems, which were economic in nature, as political. The proposed solutions were appropriate: a ban on free trade in grain, confiscation of grain reserves, incitement of the poor against the wealthy part of the village. The results convinced of the effectiveness of violent measures.

On the other hand, the accelerated industrialization that began required colossal investments. Their main source was recognized as the village, which, according to the plans of the developers of the new general line, was supposed to uninterruptedly supply industry with raw materials, and cities with practically free food.

The collectivization policy was carried out in two main directions: the unification of individual farms into collective farms and dispossession.

Collective farms were recognized as the main form of association of individual farms. They socialized land, cattle, and equipment. The resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of January 5, 1930 established a truly rapid pace of collectivization: in key grain-producing regions (Volga region, North Caucasus) it was to be completed within one year; in Ukraine, in the black earth regions of Russia, in Kazakhstan - for two years; in other areas - for three years. To speed up collectivization, “ideologically literate” urban workers were sent to the villages (first 25, and then another 35 thousand people). The hesitations, doubts, and spiritual tossings of individual peasants, for the most part tied to their own farm, to the land, to livestock (“I remain in the past with one foot, I slide and fall with the other,” Sergei Yesenin wrote on another occasion), were easily overcome - by force. Punitive authorities Those who persisted were deprived of their voting rights, their property was confiscated, they were intimidated, and they were put under arrest.

In parallel with collectivization, there was a campaign of dispossession, the elimination of the kulaks as a class. A secret directive was adopted on this score, according to which all the kulaks (who was meant by a kulak was not clearly defined) were divided into three categories: participants in anti-Soviet movements; wealthy owners who had influence on their neighbors; everyone else. The first were subject to arrest and transfer into the hands of the OGPU; the second - eviction to remote regions of the Urals, Kazakhstan, Siberia along with their families; still others - resettlement to poorer lands in the same area. Land, property, and monetary savings of the kulaks were subject to confiscation. The tragedy of the situation was aggravated by the fact that for all categories, firm targets were set for each region, which exceeded the actual number of wealthy peasants. There were also the so-called sub-kulak members, “accomplices of world-eating enemies” (“the most ragged farm laborer can easily be counted among the sub-kulak members,” testifies A.I. Solzhenitsyn). According to historians, on the eve of collectivization there were about 3% of wealthy households; In some areas, up to 10-15% of individual farms were subject to dispossession. Arrests, executions, relocation to remote areas - the entire range of repressive means was used during dispossession, which affected at least 1 million households (the average number of families is 7-8 people).

The response was mass unrest, livestock slaughter, hidden and overt resistance. The state had to temporarily retreat: Stalin’s article “Dizziness from Success” (spring 1930) placed responsibility for violence and coercion on local authorities. The reverse process began, millions of peasants left the collective farms. But already in the autumn of 1930 the pressure intensified again. In 1932-1933 Famine came to the most grain-producing regions of the country, primarily Ukraine, Stavropol, and the North Caucasus. According to the most conservative estimates, more than 3 million people died of starvation (according to other sources, up to 8 million). At the same time, both grain exports from the country and the volume of government supplies grew steadily. By 1933, more than 60% of peasants belonged to collective farms, by 1937 - about 93%. Collectivization was declared complete.

What are its results? Statistics show that it dealt an irreparable blow to the agricultural economy (reduction in grain production, livestock numbers, yields, sown areas, etc.). At the same time, state grain procurements increased by 2 times, taxes from collective farms - by 3.5 times. Behind this obvious contradiction lay the true tragedy of the Russian peasantry. Of course, large, technically equipped farms had certain advantages. But that was not the main thing. Collective farms, which formally remained voluntary cooperative associations, in fact turned into a type of state enterprises, which had strict planned targets and were subject to directive management. During the passport reform, collective farmers did not receive passports: in fact, they were attached to the collective farm and deprived of freedom of movement. Industry grew at the expense of agriculture. Collectivization turned collective farms into reliable and uncomplaining suppliers of raw materials, food, capital, and labor. Moreover, it destroyed an entire social layer of individual peasants with their culture, moral values, foundations. He was replaced by new class- collective farm peasantry.

On the 12th anniversary of the October Revolution, Stalin published an article in Pravda, “The Year of the Great Turning Point,” in which he set the task of speeding up collective farm construction and carrying out “complete collectivization.” In 1928-1929, when under conditions of “emergency” the pressure on individual farmers sharply increased, and collective farmers were provided with benefits, the number of collective farms increased 4 times - from 14.8 thousand in 1927 to 70 thousand by the fall of 1929 The middle peasants went to collective farms, hoping to wait out the difficult times there. Collectivization was carried out through the simple addition of peasant means of production. Collective farms of the “manufacturing type” were created, not equipped with modern agricultural machinery. These were mainly TOZs - partnerships for joint cultivation of land, the simplest and temporary form of a collective farm. The November (1929) plenum of the Central Committee of the Party set the main task in the countryside - to carry out complete collectivization in a short time. The plenum planned to send 25 thousand workers (“twenty-five thousand workers”) to the villages “to organize” collective farms. Factory teams that sent their workers to the villages were obliged to take patronage over the created collective farms. To coordinate the work of government institutions created for the purpose of restructuring agriculture (Zernotrest, Kolkhoz Center, Tractor Center, etc.), the plenum decided to create a new Union People's Commissariat - the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, headed by Ya.A. Yakovlev, Marxist agrarian, journalist. Finally, the November plenum of the Central Committee ridiculed the “prophecies” of Bukharin and his supporters (Rykov, Tomsky, Ugarov, etc.) about the inevitable famine in the country, Bukharin, as the “leader and instigator” of the “right deviation”, was removed from the Politburo of the Central Committee, the rest were warned that at the slightest attempt to fight against the line of the Central Committee, “organization measures” will be used against them.

On January 5, 1930, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution “On collectivization and measures of state assistance to collective farm construction.” It planned to complete the complete collectivization of the grain regions in stages by the end of the five-year plan. In the main grain regions (North Caucasus, Middle and Lower Volga) it was planned to be completed in the fall of 1930, in other grain regions - a year later. The resolution outlined the creation of agricultural artels in areas of complete collectivization “as a form of collective farm transitional to the commune.” At the same time, the inadmissibility of admitting kulaks to collective farms was emphasized. The Central Committee called for organizing socialist competition to create collective farms and resolutely fight “all attempts” to restrain collective farm construction. As in November, the Central Committee did not say a word about observing the principle of voluntariness, encouraging arbitrariness by silence.

At the end of January - beginning of February 1930, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted two more resolutions and instructions on the liquidation of the kulaks. It was divided into three categories: terrorists, resisters and the rest. Everyone was subject to arrest or exile with confiscation of property. “Dekulakization has become integral part collectivization process.

Progress of collectivization

The first stage of complete collectivization, which began in November 1929, lasted until the spring of 1930. The forces of local authorities and the “twenty-five thousanders” began the forced unification of individual farmers into communes. Not only the means of production, but also personal subsidiary plots and property were socialized. The forces of the OGPU and the Red Army evicted “dispossessed” peasants, which included all the dissatisfied. By decision of the secret commissions of the Central Committee and the Council of People's Commissars, they were sent to special settlements of the OGPU to work according to economic plans, mainly in logging, construction, and mining. According to official data, more than 320 thousand farms (more than 1.5 million people) were dispossessed; According to modern historians, about 5 million people were dispossessed and exiled throughout the country. The discontent of the peasants resulted in mass slaughter of livestock, flight to the cities, and anti-collective farm uprisings. If in 1929 there were more than a thousand of them, then in January-March 1930 there were more than two thousand. Army units and aviation took part in suppressing the rebellious peasants. The country was on the brink civil war.

The mass indignation of peasants over forced collectivization forced the country's leadership to temporarily ease the pressure. Moreover, on behalf of the Politburo of the Central Committee, in Pravda on March 2, 1930, Stalin published the article “Dizziness from Success,” in which he condemned the “excesses” and blamed the local authorities and workers sent to create collective farms for them. Following the article, Pravda published a resolution of the Central Committee of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (b) dated March 14, 1930, “On the fight against distortions of the party line in the collective farm movement.” Among the “distortions”, the first place was given to the violation of the principle of voluntariness, then the “dekulakization” of the middle peasants and the poor, looting, wholesale collectivization, jumping from the artel to the commune, the closure of churches and markets. After the resolution, the first echelon of local collective farm organizers were subjected to repression. At the same time, many of the created collective farms were dissolved, their number was reduced by about half by the summer of 1930, they united a little more than 1/5 peasant farms.

However, in the autumn of 1930, a new, more cautious stage of complete collectivization began. From now on, only agricultural artels were created, allowing the existence of personal, subsidiary farms. In the summer of 1931, the Central Committee explained that “complete collectivization” cannot be understood primitively, as “universal”, that its criterion is the involvement of at least 70% of farms in grain farming and more than 50% in other areas into collective farms. By that time, collective farms already united about 13 million peasant households (out of 25 million), i.e. more than 50% of their total number. And in the grain regions, almost 80% of the peasants were on collective farms. In January 1933, the country's leadership announced the eradication of exploitation and the victory of socialism in the countryside as a result of the liquidation of the kulaks.

In 1935, the Second All-Union Congress of Collective Farmers took place. He adopted a new Model Charter of the agricultural artel (instead of the 1930 Charter). According to the Charter, land was assigned to collective farms for “eternal use”; the basic forms of labor organization on collective farms (teams), its accounting and payment (by workdays), and the size of personal subsidiary plots (LPH) were established. The Charter of 1935 legislated new production relations in the countryside, which historians called “early socialist”. With the transition of the collective farm to the new Charter (1935-1936), the collective farm system in the USSR finally took shape.

Results of collectivization

By the end of the 30s. collective farms united more than 90% of peasants. Collective farms were serviced by agricultural machinery, which was concentrated on state machine and tractor stations(MTS).

The creation of collective farms did not, contrary to expectations, lead to an increase in agricultural production. In the 1936-1940s gross agricultural output remained at the level of 1924-1928, i.e. pre-collective farm village. And at the end of the first five-year plan, it turned out to be lower than in 1928. The production of meat and dairy products sharply decreased, and for many years, in the figurative expression of N.S. Khrushchev, “virgin meat land” was formed. At the same time, collective farms made it possible to significantly increase state procurement of agricultural products, especially grain. This led to the abolition of the rationing system in cities in 1935 and the increasing export of bread.

The course towards maximum extraction of agricultural products from the countryside led in 1932-1933. to mortal famine in many agricultural areas of the country. There is no official data on the victims of artificial famine. Modern Russian historians their numbers are estimated differently: from 3 to 10 million people.

The mass exodus from the village exacerbated the difficult socio-political situation in the country. To stop this process, as well as to identify fugitive “kulaks” at the turn of 1932-1933. A passport regime with registration in a specific place of residence was introduced. From now on, it was possible to move around the country only if you had a passport or a document officially replacing it. Passports were issued to residents of cities, urban-type settlements, and state farm workers. Collective farmers and individual peasants were not issued passports. This attached them to the land and collective farms. From that time on, it was possible to officially leave the village through state-organized recruitment for five-year construction projects, study, service in the Red Army, and work as machine operators in MTS. The regulated process of forming workers has led to a decrease in the growth rate of the urban population, the number of workers and employees. According to the 1939 census, with a total population of the USSR of 176.6 million people (historians put the figure at 167.3 million), 33% of the population lived in cities (versus 18%, according to the 1926 census).

Abstract on the history of Russia

Chronological framework: 1929 -1937 Definition: collectivization - replacement of the system of small-holder peasant farming with large socialized agricultural producers.

Two problems: to what extent do the national characteristics of Russia (peasant land community) and collectivization correlate, and to what extent the construction of socialism presupposes collectivization.

Economic prerequisites. Agriculture in 1925: the size of crops was almost equal to the level of 1913, and the gross grain harvest even exceeded the pre-war one. The purchase and sale of land is prohibited, but renting is permitted. The total number is 24 million peasant farms (the majority are middle peasants - 61%). 1926 -1927 - sown areas are 10% higher than before the war. The gross harvest exceeds the pre-war one by 18-20%. The total number of farms is 25 million (the bulk are still middle peasants 63%). Basically, manual labor predominates. The gross grain harvest is growing, but marketable grain is almost not increasing. Difficulties arise with grain procurements, which in 1927-28. develop into a crisis: disruption of the grain procurement plan, introduction of rationing cards in cities.

Causes of the crisis: low performance, low marketability, grain strikes are generated by unequal exchange between city and countryside. Low purchasing prices for bread push peasants to sabotage grain procurements, and the government in response resorts to emergency measures: increased taxes, strict discipline in terms of payments, confiscations, repressions, dispossession.

Political background. Associated with the strong-willed decision of the Soviet leadership. It concludes that the small peasantry is insolvent in the current situation and sets the task of ensuring state control over agriculture, and thereby tries to solve the problem of the uninterrupted flow of funds for industrialization. The collectivization course was based on the conclusions of the economist and statistician Nemchinov.

The course towards collectivization (adopted by the 15th Party Congress in 1927). The beginning of collectivization was preceded by preparations for it, which consisted of: technical assistance to the village, the creation of MTS, the development of cooperation, financial assistance collective and state farms, in the policy of limiting the kulaks, in helping the working class. The main forms of cooperation: TOZ (land cultivation partnerships), artels (collective farms), communes (socialization reaches an extreme degree).

A year of great change. In November 1929, Stalin’s article “The Year of the Great Turning Point” was published, which became the ideological justification for forced collectivization: “The middle peasants joined the collective farm, which means we can begin to force collectivization.” In 1929-1930 A number of resolutions of the Central Committee, Central Executive Committee and Council of People's Commissars were adopted, which concretized the course towards complete collectivization and the elimination of the kulaks as a class. When carrying out collectivization, the Bolshevik Party relied on part of the poor peasantry and the working class. 35 thousand workers were sent to the villages to organize collective farms.

Measures against kulaks. Punitive measures were used against active opponents of Soviet power (eviction to remote areas, acquisition of land outside the collective farm area). The criteria for dividing kulaks and subkulak members were very unclear (sometimes wealthy peasants were included). In total, about 1 million peasant farms were dispossessed.

Excesses in collectivization: coercion to join collective farms, unjustified dispossession, forced socialization residential buildings, small livestock, poultry, vegetable gardens. As a result: mass slaughter of livestock (1/2 of the livestock was destroyed), a massive exodus of peasants from the collective farm, a wave of uprisings (kulak revolts). March 2, 1930 - Stalin’s article “Dizziness from Success” is published. He laid the blame for excesses in collectivization and dispossession on the local leadership. March 14, 1930 - a resolution of the Central Committee on the fight against the distortion of the party line in the collective farm movement - the excesses began to be overcome and, as a result, the forcibly created collective farms were dissolved. By August 1930, just over 20% of farms remained in them.

A new rise in the collective farm movement occurred in the autumn of 1930 and 1931. The public sector in rural areas is expanding - state farms are being created. Machine and tractor stations (MTS), which previously operated as joint-stock enterprises, were nationalized. At the beginning of 1931, a new wave of dispossession began, which provided free labor for numerous construction projects of the Five-Year Plan. The result of repression was the growth of collective farms. By the end of 1932, more than 60% of farms belonged to collective and state farms. This year was declared “the year of complete collectivization.”

Famine 1932-1933 If 1930 gave high yield, then in 1932 an unexpected famine broke out. Reasons: unfavorable meteorological conditions (drought), drop in yield due to collectivization, backward technical base, growth in procurement (to cities and for export). The geography of the famine is Ukraine, the Southern Urals, the North Caucasus, Kazakhstan and the Volga region. Famine victims: 3-4 million people. On August 7, 1932, the USSR adopted the Law on the Protection of Socialist Property, popularly called the “law of three ears of corn,” which provided for a ten-year sentence or execution for theft of collective farm property. It was during this period that 18 million centners of grain were exported abroad to obtain foreign currency and pay foreign bills. Collectivization stopped. But already in the summer of 1934 the beginning of its final stage was announced.

Completion of collectivization. In 1932, equalization was overcome on collective farms - workdays, piecework, and brigade organization of labor were introduced. In 1933, political departments and MTS were created (1934 - 280 thousand tractors). In 1935 - the card system was abolished. 1937 - collective farms were given state acts for eternal ownership of land. The collective farm system finally won. 90% of farms were members of collective and state farms. By 1937, at the cost of colossal sacrifices (human and material), collectivization was completed.

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Agriculture in Russia before collectivization

The country's agriculture was undermined by the First World War and the Civil War. According to the All-Russian Agricultural Census of 1917, the working-age male population in the village decreased by 47.4% compared to 1914; the number of horses - the main draft force - from 17.9 million to 12.8 million. The number of livestock and sown areas decreased, and agricultural yields decreased. A food crisis has begun in the country. Even two years after the end of the civil war, grain crops amounted to only 63.9 million hectares (1923).

IN Last year In his life, V.I. Lenin called, in particular, for the development of the cooperative movement. It is known that before dictating the article “On Cooperation,” V.I. Lenin ordered literature on cooperation from the library, among others there was a book by A. V. Chayanov “Basic ideas and forms of organization of peasant cooperation” (Moscow, 1919). And in the Lenin library in the Kremlin there were seven works by A.V. Chayanov. A. V. Chayanov highly appreciated V. I. Lenin’s article “On Cooperation.” He believed that after this Leninist work, “cooperation is becoming one of the foundations of our economic policy. . During the NEP years, cooperation began to be actively restored. According to memoirs former Chairman government of the USSR A.N. Kosygin (he worked in the leadership of cooperative organizations in Siberia until the early 1930s), “the main thing that forced him to “leave the ranks of cooperators” was that the collectivization that unfolded in Siberia in the early 30s 's, meant, paradoxically at first glance, the disorganization of a largely powerful cooperative network covering all corners of Siberia."

The restoration of pre-war grain sown areas - 94.7 million hectares - was achieved only by 1927 (the total sown area in 1927 was 112.4 million hectares against 105 million hectares in 1913). It was also possible to slightly exceed the pre-war level (1913) of productivity: the average yield of grain crops for 1924-1928 reached 7.5 c/ha. It was practically possible to restore the livestock population (with the exception of horses). Gross grain production by the end of the recovery period (1928) reached 733.2 million quintals. The marketability of grain farming remained extremely low - in 1926/27, the average marketability of grain farming was 13.3% (47.2% - collective and state farms, 20.0% - kulaks, 11.2% - poor and middle peasants). In the gross grain production, collective and state farms accounted for 1.7%, kulaks - 13%, middle peasants and poor peasants - 85.3%. The number of private peasant farms by 1926 reached 24.6 million, the average crop area was less than 4.5 hectares (1928), more than 30% of farms did not have the means (tools, draft animals) to cultivate the land. Low level agricultural technology of small individual farms had no further growth prospects. In 1928, 9.8% of the sown areas were plowed with a plow, three-quarters of the sowing was done by hand, 44% of grain harvesting was done with a sickle and scythe, and 40.7% of threshing was done by non-mechanical (manual) methods (flail, etc.).

As a result of the transfer of landowners' lands to the peasants, peasant farms were fragmented into small plots. By 1928, their number increased one and a half times compared to 1913 - from 16 to 25 million

By 1928-29 share of poor people in rural population The USSR accounted for 35%, middle peasants - 60%, kulaks - 5%. At the same time, it was the kulak farms that had a significant part (15-20%) of the means of production, including about a third of agricultural machines.

"Bread Strike"

The course towards collectivization of agriculture was proclaimed at the XV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (December 1927). As of July 1, 1927, there were 14.88 thousand collective farms in the country; for the same period 1928 - 33.2 thousand, 1929 - St. 57 thousand. They united 194.7 thousand, 416.7 thousand and 1,007.7 thousand individual farms, respectively. Among organizational forms collective farms were dominated by partnerships for joint cultivation of the land (TOZ); There were also agricultural cooperatives and communes. To support collective farms, the state provided various incentive measures - interest-free loans, the supply of agricultural machinery and implements, and the provision of tax benefits.

Already by November 1927, a problem arose with providing food to some industrial centers. The simultaneous increase in prices in cooperative and private shops for food products with a decrease in planned supplies led to an increase in discontent in the working environment.

To ensure grain procurements, the authorities in many regions of the USSR returned to procurement on the principles of surplus appropriation. Such actions, however, were condemned in the Resolution of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of July 10, 1928, “The Policy of Grain Procurement in Connection with the General Economic Situation.”

At the same time, the practice of collective farming in 1928 in Ukraine and the North Caucasus showed that collective farms and state farms have more possibilities to overcome crises (natural, wars, etc.). According to Stalin’s plan, it was large industrial grain farms - state farms created on state lands - that could “solve grain difficulties” and avoid difficulties in providing for the country required quantity commercial grain. On July 11, 1928, the plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution “On the organization of new (grain) state farms,” which stated: “to approve the task for 1928 with with total area plowing sufficient to produce 5-7 million poods of marketable grain in 1929.”

The result of this resolution was the adoption of the Resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated August 1, 1928 “On the organization of large grain farms”, paragraph 1 of which read: “It is recognized as necessary to organize new large grain Soviet farms (grain factories) on free land funds with such consideration in order to ensure the receipt of marketable grain from these farms in an amount of at least 100,000,000 poods (1,638,000 tons) by the harvest of 1933.” It was planned to unite the new Soviet farms being created into a trust of all-Union significance “Zernotrest”, directly subordinate to the Council of Labor and Defense.

A repeated grain crop failure in Ukraine in 1928 brought the country to the brink of famine, which, despite the measures taken (food aid, a decrease in the level of supply to cities, the introduction of a supply rationing system), took place in individual regions(in particular in Ukraine).

Considering the lack of state reserves of grain, a number of Soviet leaders (N.I. Bukharin, A.I. Rykov, M.P. Tomsky) proposed slowing down the pace of industrialization, abandoning the development of collective farm construction and the “attack on the kulaks, returning to the free sale of grain, raising prices by 2-3 times, and buying the missing bread abroad.”

This proposal was rejected by Stalin, and the practice of “pressure” was continued (mainly at the expense of the grain-producing regions of Siberia, which were less affected by crop failures).

This crisis became the starting point for a “radical solution to the grain problem,” expressed in “the development of socialist construction in the countryside, planting state and collective farms capable of using tractors and other modern cars"(from I. Stalin’s speech at the XVI Congress of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (1930)).

Goals and objectives of collectivization

The party leadership saw a way out of the “grain difficulties” in the reorganization of agriculture, providing for the creation of state farms and the collectivization of poor and middle peasant farms while simultaneously resolutely fighting the kulaks. According to the initiators of collectivization, the main problem of agriculture was its fragmentation: most farms were in small private ownership with a high share of manual labor, which did not make it possible to satisfy the growing demand of the urban population for food products, and industry for agricultural raw materials. Collectivization was supposed to solve the problem of the limited spread of industrial crops in the conditions of small individual farming and create the necessary raw material base for the processing industry. It was also intended to reduce the cost of agricultural products for the end consumer by eliminating the chain of intermediaries, as well as through mechanization to increase the productivity and efficiency of labor in agriculture, which was supposed to free up additional labor resources for industry. The result of collectivization was supposed to be the availability of a marketable mass of agricultural products in quantities sufficient to form food reserves and supply the rapidly growing urban population with food. [ ]

Unlike previous major agrarian reforms in Russia, such as the abolition of serfdom in 1861 or the Stolypin agrarian reform of 1906, collectivization was not accompanied by any clearly formulated program and detailed instructions for its implementation, while attempts by local leaders to obtain clarification were stopped by disciplinary means. The signal for a radical change in policy towards the village was given in the speech of I.V. Stalin at the Communist Academy in December 1929, although no specific instructions were given for collectivization, except for the call to “liquidate the kulaks as a class.”

Complete collectivization

The transition to complete collectivization was carried out against the backdrop of an armed conflict on the CER and the outbreak of a global economic crisis, which caused serious concerns among the party leadership about the possibility of a new military intervention against the USSR.

At the same time, some positive examples of collective farming, as well as successes in the development of consumer and agricultural cooperation, led to a not entirely adequate assessment of the current situation in agriculture.

In the countryside, forced grain procurements, accompanied by mass arrests and destruction of farms, led to riots, the number of which by the end of 1929 numbered in the hundreds. Not wanting to give property and livestock to collective farms and fearing the repression that wealthy peasants were subjected to, people slaughtered livestock and reduced crops.

Meanwhile, the November (1929) plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution “On the results and further tasks of collective farm construction,” in which it noted that the country had begun a large-scale socialist reorganization of the countryside and the construction of large-scale socialist agriculture. The resolution indicated the need for a transition to complete collectivization in certain regions. At the plenum it was decided to send to collective farms permanent job 25 thousand urban workers (twenty-five thousand people) for “the management of the created collective and state farms” (in fact, their number subsequently almost tripled, amounting to over 73 thousand).

This caused sharp resistance from the peasantry. According to data from various sources, cited by O. V. Khlevnyuk, in January 1930, 346 mass protests were registered, in which 125 thousand people took part, in February - 736 (220 thousand), in the first two weeks of March - 595 (about 230 thousand) , not counting Ukraine, where 500 settlements were affected by unrest. In March 1930, in general, in Belarus, the Central Black Earth Region, in the Lower and Middle Volga region, in the North Caucasus, in Siberia, in the Urals, in the Leningrad, Moscow, Western, Ivanovo-Voznesensk regions, in the Crimea and Central Asia, 1642 mass peasant uprisings, in which at least 750-800 thousand people took part. In Ukraine at this time, more than a thousand settlements were already engulfed in unrest. In the post-war period in Western Ukraine, the collectivization process was opposed by the OUN underground.

XVI Congress of the CPSU(b)

Collectivization was carried out primarily through forced administrative methods. Overly centralized management and at the same time predominantly low qualification level local managers, leveling, and the race to “exceed plans” had a negative impact on the collective farm system as a whole. Despite the excellent harvest of 1930, a number of collective farms were left without seed material by the spring of the following year, while in the fall some of the grain was not fully harvested. Low standards wages on Kolkhoz Commodity Farms (KTF), against the backdrop of the general unpreparedness of collective farms for large-scale commercial livestock farming (lack of necessary premises for farms, stock of feed, regulatory documents and qualified personnel (veterinarians, livestock breeders, etc.)) led to mass death livestock

An attempt to improve the situation by adopting on July 30, 1931 the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR “On the development of socialist livestock farming” in practice led locally to the forced socialization of cows and small livestock. This practice was condemned by the Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of March 26, 1932.

The severe drought that struck the country in 1931 and mismanagement of the harvest led to a significant decrease in the gross grain harvest (694.8 million quintals in 1931 versus 835.4 million quintals in 1930).

Famine in the USSR (1932-1933)

Despite the poor harvest, local efforts were made to meet and exceed the planned standards for the collection of agricultural products - the same applied to the plan for grain exports, despite a significant drop in prices on the world market. This, like a number of other factors, ultimately led to difficult situation with food and hunger in villages and small towns in the east of the country in the winter of 1931-1932. The freezing of winter crops in 1932 and the fact that a significant number of collective farms approached the sowing campaign of 1932 without seed and draft animals (which died or were unsuitable for work due to poor care and the lack of feed, which were included in the general grain procurement plan), led to a significant deterioration in the prospects for the 1932 harvest. Across the country, plans for export supplies were reduced (by about three times), planned grain procurements (by 22%) and delivery of livestock (by 2 times), but this did not save the general situation - repeated crop failure (death of winter crops, lack of sowing, partial drought, a decrease in yield caused by a violation of basic agronomic principles, large losses during harvesting and a number of other reasons) led to severe famine in the winter of 1932 - spring of 1933.

Elimination of the kulaks as a class

By the beginning of complete collectivization, the view prevailed in the party leadership that the main obstacle to the unification of poor and middle peasants was the more prosperous stratum in the countryside that had formed during the years of the NEP - the kulaks, as well as those who supported them or were dependent on them social group - "subkulak".

As part of the implementation of complete collectivization, this obstacle had to be “removed.”

On January 30, 1930, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution “On measures to eliminate kulak farms in areas of complete collectivization.” At the same time, it was noted that the starting point for the “liquidation of the kulak as a class” was the publication in newspapers of all levels of Stalin’s speech at the congress of Marxist agrarians in late December 1929. A number of historians note that planning for “liquidation” took place in early December 1929 - in the so-called. “Yakovlev commission” since the number and “areas” of eviction of “1st category kulaks” had already been approved by January 1, 1930.

"Fists" were divided into three categories:

1st - counter-revolutionary activists: kulaks actively opposing the organization of collective farms, fleeing with permanent place residence and becoming illegal;

The heads of kulak families of the first category were arrested, and cases about their actions were transferred to the “troikas” consisting of representatives of the OGPU, regional committees (territorial committees) of the CPSU (b) and the prosecutor’s office.

2nd - the richest local kulak authorities, who are the stronghold of the anti-Soviet activists;

Dispossessed peasants of the second category, as well as families of kulaks of the first category, were evicted to remote areas of the country in a special settlement, or labor settlement (otherwise it was called “kulak exile” or “labor exile”). The certificate from the Department of Special Resettlers of the Gulag OGPU indicated that in 1930-1931. 381,026 families with a total number of 1,803,392 people were evicted (and sent to a special settlement), including 63,720 families from Ukraine, of which: to the Northern Territory - 19,658, to the Urals - 32,127, to Western Siberia- 6556, in Eastern Siberia- 5056, to Yakutia - 97, Far Eastern Territory - 323.

3rd - the remaining fists.

Kulaks classified in the third category, as a rule, were resettled within the region or region, that is, they were not sent to a special settlement.

In practice, not only kulaks were subjected to eviction with confiscation of property, but also the so-called sub-kulaks, that is, middle peasants, poor peasants and even farm laborers convicted of pro-kulak and anti-collective farm actions (there were also many cases of settling scores with neighbors and déjà vu “rob the loot”). - which clearly contradicted the point clearly stated in the resolution about the inadmissibility of “infringement” of the middle peasant.

To oust the kulaks as a class, the policy of limiting and ousting its individual detachments is not enough. In order to oust the kulaks as a class, it is necessary to break the resistance of this class in open battle and deprive it production sources existence and development (free use of land, tools of production, rent, right to hire labor, etc.).

Collective farm construction in the vast majority of German villages Siberian region was carried out as a result of administrative pressure, without sufficient consideration of the degree of organizational and political preparation for it. Dispossession measures were used in many cases as a measure of influence against middle peasants who did not want to join collective farms. Thus, measures aimed exclusively against kulaks affected a significant number of middle peasants in German villages. These methods not only did not contribute, but repelled the German peasantry from collective farms. It is enough to point out that of the total number of kulaks expelled administratively in the Omsk district, half were returned by the OGPU authorities from assembly points and from the road.

Management of the resettlement (timing, number and choice of resettlement sites) was carried out by the Sector of Land Funds and Resettlement of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture of the USSR (1930-1933), the Resettlement Directorate of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture of the USSR (1930-1931), the Sector of Land Funds and Resettlement of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture of the USSR (Reorganized) (1931-1933) , ensured the resettlement of the OGPU.

The deportees, in violation of existing instructions, were provided with little or no necessary food and equipment in the new places of resettlement (especially in the first years of mass expulsion), which often had no prospects for agricultural use.

The collectivization of agriculture in the western regions of Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which became part of the USSR in the pre-war years, was completed in 1949-1950.

Export of grain and import of agricultural equipment during collectivization

Since the late 80s, the history of collectivization has included the opinion of some Western historians that “Stalin organized collectivization to obtain money for industrialization through the extensive export of agricultural products (mainly grain)” [ ] .

Import of agricultural machinery and tractors (thousands of red rubles): 1926/27 - 25,971, 1927/28 - 23,033, 1928/29 - 45,595, 1929/30 - 113,443, 1931 - 97,534, 1932-420.
Export of bakery products (million rubles): 1926/27 - 202.6, 1927/28 - 32.8, 1928/29 - 15.9, 1930-207.1, 1931-157.6, 1932 - 56.8.

Total, for the period 1926 - 33. grain was exported for 672.8 million rubles, and equipment was imported for 306 million rubles.

In addition, during the period 1927-32, the state imported breeding cattle worth about 100 million rubles. Imports of fertilizers and equipment intended for the production of implements and mechanisms for agriculture were also very significant.

Consequences of collectivization

As a result of Stalin's collectivization policy: more than 2 million peasants were deported, of which 1,800,000 were deported in 1930-1931 alone; 6 million died of hunger, hundreds of thousands were in exile.

This policy caused a lot of uprisings among the population. In March 1930 alone, the OGPU counted 6,500 mass protests, of which 800 were suppressed using weapons. Overall, during 1930, some 2.5 million peasants took part in 14,000 uprisings against the Soviet collectivization policy.

In one interview, professor of political science at Moscow State University and Ph.D. Alexey Kara-Murza expressed the opinion that collectivization was direct genocide Soviet people. But this issue remains debatable.

Theme of collectivization in art

Take us for a ride, Petrusha, on a tractor (song) - music: Vladimir Zakharov; words: Ivan Molchanov, 1929

Collectivization- the process of uniting individual peasant farms into collective farms (collective farms in the USSR). The decision on collectivization was made at the XV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1927. It was carried out in the USSR in the late 1920s - early 1930s (1928-1933); in the western regions of Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, collectivization was completed in 1949-1950.

Goal of collectivization- establishment of socialist production relations in the countryside, transformation of small-scale individual farms into large, highly productive public cooperative industries. As a result of complete collectivization, an integral system of massive transfer of financial, material and labor resources from the agricultural sector to the industrial sector was created. This served as the basis for subsequent rapid industrial growth, which made it possible to overcome the qualitative gap between the USSR industry and the leading world powers.

Objectives of collectivization.

The party leadership saw a way out of the “grain difficulties” in the reorganization of agriculture, providing for the creation of state farms and the collectivization of poor and middle peasant farms while simultaneously resolutely fighting the kulaks. According to the initiators of collectivization, the main problem of agriculture was its fragmentation: most farms were in small private ownership with a high share of manual labor, which did not allow satisfying the growing demand of the urban population for food products, and industry for agricultural raw materials. Collectivization was supposed to solve the problem of the limited distribution of industrial crops in small-scale individual farming and create the necessary raw material base for the processing industry. It was also intended to reduce the cost of agricultural products for the end consumer by eliminating the chain of intermediaries, as well as through mechanization to increase productivity and labor efficiency in agriculture, which was supposed to free up additional labor resources for industry. The result of collectivization was supposed to be the availability of a marketable mass of agricultural products in quantities sufficient to form food reserves and supply the rapidly growing urban population with food.

Complete collectivization.

Since the spring of 1929, events aimed at increasing the number of collective farms were carried out in the countryside - in particular, Komsomol campaigns “for collectivization.” In the RSFSR, an institute of agricultural plenipotentiaries was created; in Ukraine, much attention was paid to the komnesams (analogous to the Russian kombeda) preserved from the civil war. Mainly through the use of administrative measures, it was possible to achieve a significant increase in collective farms. On November 7, 1929, the newspaper Pravda No. 259 published Stalin’s article “The Year of the Great Turning Point,” in which 1929 was declared the year of “a radical turning point in the development of our agriculture”: “The presence of a material base to replace kulak production served the basis of the turn in our policy in the countryside... We have recently moved from a policy of limiting the exploitative tendencies of the kulaks to a policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class.” This article is recognized by most historians as the starting point of “complete collectivization.” According to Stalin, in 1929, the party and the country managed to achieve a decisive turning point, in particular, in the transition of agriculture “from small and backward individual farming to large and advanced collective farming, to joint cultivation of the land, to machine and tractor stations, to artels, collective farms , based on new technology, finally, to the giant state farms, armed with hundreds of tractors and combines.”

The real situation in the country, however, was far from so optimistic. As Russian researcher O.V. Khlevnyuk believes, the course towards accelerated industrialization and forced collectivization “actually plunged the country into a state of civil war.”

Meanwhile, the November (1929) plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution “On the results and further tasks of collective farm construction,” in which it noted that the country had begun a large-scale socialist reorganization of the countryside and the construction of large-scale socialist agriculture. The resolution indicated the need for a transition to complete collectivization in certain regions. At the plenum, it was decided to send 25 thousand urban workers (twenty-five thousand people) to collective farms for permanent work to “manage the established collective and state farms” (in fact, their number subsequently almost tripled, amounting to over 73 thousand).

Created on December 7, 1929, the People's Commissariat of Agriculture of the USSR under the leadership of Ya. A. Yakovlev was entrusted with “practically leading the work on the socialist reconstruction of agriculture, directing the construction of state farms, collective farms and MTS and uniting the work of the republican commissariats of agriculture.”

The main active actions to carry out collectivization took place in January - early March 1930, after the release of the Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of January 5, 1930 “On the pace of collectivization and measures of state assistance to collective farm construction.” The resolution set the task of basically completing collectivization by the end of the five-year plan (1932), while in such important grain-growing regions as the Lower and Middle Volga and the North Caucasus - by the fall of 1930 or spring of 1931.

“Collectivization brought to the localities” took place, however, in accordance with how one or another local official saw it - for example, in Siberia, peasants were massively “organized into communes” with the socialization of all property. The districts competed with each other to see who would quickly receive a larger percentage of collectivization, etc. Various repressive measures were widely used, which Stalin later (in March 1930) criticized in his famous article “Dizziness from Success” and which were later called “ left wings" (subsequently the overwhelming majority of such leaders were condemned as "Trotskyist spies").

This caused sharp resistance from the peasantry. According to data from various sources cited by O. V. Khlevnyuk, in January 1930, 346 mass protests were registered, in which 125 thousand people took part, in February - 736 (220 thousand), in the first two weeks of March - 595 ( about 230 thousand), not counting Ukraine, where 500 settlements were affected by unrest. In March 1930, in general, in Belarus, the Central Black Earth Region, in the Lower and Middle Volga region, in the North Caucasus, in Siberia, in the Urals, in the Leningrad, Moscow, Western, Ivanovo-Voznesensk regions, in the Crimea and Central Asia, 1642 mass peasant uprisings, in which at least 750-800 thousand people took part. In Ukraine at this time, more than a thousand settlements were already engulfed in unrest.

Famine in the USSR (1932-1933)

Despite this, local efforts were made to fulfill and exceed the planned norms for the collection of agricultural products - the same applied to the plan for grain exports, despite a significant drop in prices on the world market. This, like a number of other factors, ultimately led to a difficult food situation and famine in villages and small towns in the east of the country in the winter of 1931-1932. The freezing of winter crops in 1932 and the fact that a significant number of collective farms approached the sowing campaign of 1932 without seed material and draft animals (which died or were unsuitable for work due to poor care and lack of feed, which were paid towards the general grain procurement plan ), led to a significant deterioration in the prospects for the 1932 harvest. Across the country, plans for export supplies were reduced (by about three times), planned grain procurements (by 22%) and delivery of livestock (by 2 times), but this did not save the general situation - repeated crop failure (death of winter crops, lack of sowing, partial drought, a decrease in yield caused by a violation of basic agronomic principles, large losses during harvesting and a number of other reasons) led to severe famine in the winter of 1932 - spring of 1933.

As advisor to former British Prime Minister Lloyd George Gareth Jones, who visited the USSR three times between 1930 and 1933, wrote in the Financial Times on April 13, 1933, the main reason for the mass famine in the spring of 1933, in his opinion, was was the collectivization of agriculture, which led to the following consequences:

the confiscation of land from more than two-thirds of the Russian peasantry deprived them of incentives to work; in addition, in the previous year (1932) almost the entire harvest was forcibly confiscated from the peasants;

the mass slaughter of livestock by peasants due to their reluctance to give it to collective farms, the mass death of horses due to lack of fodder, the mass death of livestock due to epizootics, cold and lack of food on collective farms catastrophically reduced the number of livestock throughout the country;

the fight against the kulaks, during which “6-7 million of the best workers” were expelled from their lands, dealt a blow to the labor potential of the state;

an increase in food exports due to a decrease in world prices for major export goods (timber, grain, oil, butter, etc.).

Realizing the critical situation, the leadership of the CPSU (b) by the end of 1932 - beginning of 1933. adopted a number of decisive changes in the management of the agricultural sector - a purge of both the party as a whole was begun (Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of December 10, 1932 on the purge of party members and candidates in 1933), and institutions and organizations of the USSR People's Commissariat of Agriculture system. The contracting system (with its disastrous “counter plans”) was replaced by mandatory deliveries to the state, commissions were created to determine yields, the system of procurement, supply and distribution of agricultural products was reorganized, and a number of other measures were taken. The most effective measures in the conditions of a catastrophic crisis were measures for direct party leadership of collective farms and MTS - the creation of political departments of MTS.

This made it possible, despite the critical situation in agriculture in the spring of 1933, to sow and harvest a good harvest.

Already in January 1933, at the Joint Plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the liquidation of the kulaks and the victory of socialist relations in the countryside were stated.

On March 14, 1930, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution “On the fight against distortions of the party line in the collective farm movement.” A government directive was sent to the localities to soften the course due to the threat of a “wide wave of rebel peasant uprisings” and the destruction of “half of the grassroots workers.” After Stalin’s harsh article and the bringing of individual leaders to justice, the pace of collectivization decreased, and the artificially created collective farms and communes began to collapse.

Elimination of the kulaks as a class.

By the beginning of complete collectivization, the view prevailed in the party leadership that the main obstacle to the unification of poor and middle peasants was the more prosperous stratum in the countryside formed during the years of the NEP - the kulaks, as well as the social group that supported them or depended on them - the “podkulakniks”.

As part of the implementation of complete collectivization, this obstacle had to be “removed.” On January 30, 1930, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution “On measures to eliminate kulak farms in areas of complete collectivization.” At the same time, it was noted that the starting point for the “liquidation of the kulak as a class” was the publication in newspapers of all levels of Stalin’s speech at the Congress of Marxist Agrarians in late December 1929. A number of historians note that planning for the “liquidation” took place in early December 1929 - in so-called “Yakovlev commission” since the number and “areas” of eviction of “1st category kulaks” had already been approved by January 1, 1930. « Fists» were divided into three categories: 1st - counter-revolutionary activists: kulaks who actively oppose the organization of collective farms, fleeing from their permanent place of residence and moving to an illegal position; 2nd - the richest local kulak authorities, who are the stronghold of the anti-Soviet activists; 3rd - the remaining fists. In practice, not only kulaks were subjected to eviction with confiscation of property, but also the so-called sub-kulaks, that is, middle peasants, poor peasants and even farm laborers convicted of pro-kulak and anti-collective farm actions (there were also many cases of settling scores with neighbors and deja vu “rob the loot”) - which clearly contradicted the point clearly stated in the resolution about the inadmissibility of “infringement” of the middle peasant. The heads of kulak families of the first category were arrested, and cases about their actions were transferred to the “troikas” consisting of representatives of the OGPU, regional committees (territorial committees) of the CPSU (b) and the prosecutor’s office. Kulaks classified in the third category, as a rule, were resettled within the region or region, that is, they were not sent to a special settlement. Dispossessed peasants of the second category, as well as families of kulaks of the first category, were evicted to remote areas of the country in a special settlement, or labor settlement (otherwise it was called “kulak exile” or “labor exile”). The certificate from the Department of Special Resettlers of the Gulag OGPU indicated that in 1930-1931. 381,026 families with a total number of 1,803,392 people were evicted (and sent to special settlements), including 63,720 families from Ukraine, of which: to the Northern Territory - 19,658, to the Urals - 32,127, to Western Siberia - 6556, to Eastern Siberia - 5056, to Yakutia - 97, Far Eastern Territory - 323.

Results of collectivization.

In one interview, professor of political science at Moscow State University and Ph.D. Alexey Kara-Murza expressed the opinion that collectivization was a direct genocide of the Soviet people.