On the 12th anniversary of October in Pravda, Stalin published an article "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 the pressure on the individual farmer was sharply increased in the conditions of "emergency", and the collective farmers were granted privileges, 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 joined the collective farms, hoping to wait out the difficult time in them. Collectivization was carried out by simply adding up the peasant means of production. Collective farms of "manufactory 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 countryside "to organize" collective farms. The collectives of the factories that sent their workers to the village were obliged to take patronage over the created collective farms. To coordinate the work of state institutions created with the aim of restructuring agriculture (Zernotrest, Kolkhoztsentr, Traktorotsentr, etc.), the plenum decided to create a new union people's commissariat - the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, headed by Ya.A. Yakovlev, a Marxist agrarian and 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 initiator" 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, "Orgmers" would be applied to them.

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

In late January - early February 1930, the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR adopted two more resolutions and instructions on the elimination of the kulaks. It was divided into three categories: terrorists, resistance, and others. All were subject to arrest or exile with confiscation of property. “The dispossession has become an integral part of the collectivization process.

The course of collectivization

The first stage of total collectivization, which began in November 1929, continued until the spring of 1930. The forces of the local authorities and the "twenty-five-thousanders" began a universal forced unification of individual farmers into communes. They socialized not only the means of production, but also personal subsidiary plots and property. By the forces of the OGPU and the Red Army, the "dispossessed" peasants were evicted, including all the disaffected. 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 on 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 cattle, flight to cities, anti-collective farm uprisings. If in 1929 there were more than a thousand of them, in January-March 1930 there were more than two thousand. Army units and aviation took part in the suppression of the insurgent peasants. The country was on the brink of a civil war.

The massive indignation of the peasants at the forced collectivization forced the country's leadership to temporarily ease the pressure. Moreover, on the instructions of the Politburo of the Central Committee in Pravda on March 2, 1930, Stalin published an article "Dizzy with Success," in which he condemned the "excesses" and blamed them on the local authorities and workers sent to set up collective farms. Following the article, Pravda published the decree of the Central Committee of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (b) of 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 to the “dispossession” of the middle peasants and the poor, looting, universal collectivization, jumping from an artel to a commune, closing churches and markets. After the decree, the first echelon of local collective farm organizers was subjected to repression. At the same time, many of the established collective farms were disbanded, their number was reduced by the summer of 1930 by about half, they united a little more than 1/5 of peasant farms.

However, in the autumn of 1930 a new, more cautious stage of total 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 “total collectivization” cannot be understood primitively, as “universal”, that its criterion is the involvement of at least 70% of grain farms in collective farms and more than 50% in other regions. By that time, the collective farms had already united about 13 million peasant households (out of 25 million), i.e. more than 50% of their total. And in grain-growing 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 elimination of the kulaks.

In 1935 the II All-Union Congress of Collective Farmers took place. He adopted a new Model Charter of an Agricultural Artel (instead of the Charter of 1930). According to the Charter, the land was assigned to collective farms for "perpetual use", the basic forms of labor organization on collective farms (brigades), its accounting and payment (according to workdays), the size of personal subsidiary farms (LPH) were established. The charter of 1935 legalized new production relations in the countryside, which historians called "early socialist". With the transition of the collective farm to a new Charter (1935-1936), the collective farm system was finally formed in the USSR.

The results of collectivization

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

The creation of collective farms did not lead, contrary to expectations, 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, for many years, according to the figurative expression of NS Khrushchev, “virgin meat” was formed. At the same time, the collective farms made it possible to significantly increase the state procurement of agricultural products, especially grain. This led to the abolition of the rationing system in the cities in 1935 and an increasing export of grain.

The course for the maximum extraction of agricultural products from the village led in 1932-1933. to death to starvation in many agricultural areas of the country. There is no official data on victims of artificial hunger. Modern Russian historians estimate their number in different ways: from 3 to 10 million people.

The mass exodus from the countryside exacerbated the difficult social and political situation in the country. To stop this process, as well as to identify the fugitive "kulaks" at the turn of 1932-1933. a passport regime was introduced with registration in a certain place of residence. From now on, it was possible to move around the country only with a passport, or a document officially replacing it. Passports were issued to residents of cities, urban-type settlements, 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 a state-organized recruitment for construction projects of the five-year plan, study, service in the Red Army, work as machine operators in the MTS. The regulated process of the formation of workers 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 (historians cite the figure as 167.3 million), 33% of the population lived in cities (versus 18%, according to the 1926 census).

Collectivization(1929-1937 ) - replacement of the system of small-proprietary peasant farming by large socialized agricultural producers. It was conceived by Stalin as an extreme measure with which it is possible to solve the vast majority of problems that at that time became obvious to the leadership of the Union. Highlighting the main the reasons transition to a policy of mass collectivization, the following can be distinguished:

- Grain procurement crisis 1926-1929.: individual peasants reduced grain supplies to the state, as the purchase prices for grain were too low;

- The need for investment in the industry: the countryside has become the main source of income for the state for investment in industry;

- Liquidation of the kulaks: The young Soviet government still saw counterrevolution and supporters of the imperial regime at every step. That is why the policy of dispossession was continued en masse.

- Centralized Agriculture Management: The legacy of the Soviet regime went to a country where the vast majority of people were engaged in individual farming. This situation did not suit the new government, since the state sought to control everything in the country. And it is very difficult to control millions of independent farmers.

Objectives:

· Make the USSR "one of the most lucrative, if not the most lucrative country in the world";

· Provide a reliable channel for pumping money from village to city for the development of industry;

· Establish efficient agricultural production;

· Spread the influence of the state on the private sector in agriculture, that is, to carry out a complete nationalization of the economy.

January 5, 1930 year, the Central Committee of the VKPb issued a decree on the pace of collectivization. This decree spoke about the creation of special regions, where the reform of agriculture was to take place primarily in as soon as possible... Among the main regions that have been identified for reform, the following have been identified:

North Caucasus, Volga region: Here the deadline for the creation of collective farms was set by the spring of 1931. In fact, two regions were supposed to move to collectivization in one year.

Ukraine, Central Black Earth Region, Siberia, Ural, Kazakhstan: Regions where grain was grown in large quantities were also subject to collectivization, but until the spring of 1932.

Rest of the country: The remaining regions, which were less attractive in terms of agriculture, were planned to be attached to collective farms in 5 years (by 1933).

Stages:

1.1929:Dispossession... Measures to liquidate kulak farms included a ban on the lease of land and the hiring of labor, measures to confiscate the means of production, farm buildings, and seed stocks. Peasants who used hired labor and had 2 cows and 2 horses were considered fists. Repressions (from arrests to expulsion) were also subjected to the so-called podkulachniki from the middle peasants and the poor, who did not approve of collectivization.

From the end of 1929 to the middle of 1930, over 320 thousand peasant farms were dispossessed. For two years (1930-1931) 381 thousand families were evicted to special settlements. Former kulaks were sent to the North, to Kazakhstan, Siberia, the Urals, the Far East, the North Caucasus. In total, by 1932, there were 1.4 million (and according to some sources, about 5 million) former kulaks, podkulaks and their family members in special settlements (excluding those in camps and prisons). A smaller part of the evicted were engaged in agriculture, a large part worked in construction, in the forestry and mining industries in the GULAG system (Main Directorate of Camps and Prisons).

Many collective farms were created, but their material base was very weak. The violent methods aroused the discontent of the peasants. Anti-collective farm rebellions and uprisings took place in the North Caucasus, the Middle and Lower Volga and other regions.

According to the Decree "On measures to eliminate kulak farms in areas of complete collectivization", the kulaks were divided into three categories:

1) counter-revolutionary activists, organizers of terrorist acts and uprisings;

2) the rest of the counter-revolutionary asset from the richest kulaks and semi-landowners;

3) the rest of the fists.

The heads of the kulak families of the 1st category were arrested, and the cases of their actions were transferred to the special forces consisting of representatives of the OGPU, regional committees (regional committees) of the CPSU (b) and the prosecutor's office. Family members of 1st category kulaks and 2nd category kulaks were subject to eviction to remote areas of the USSR or remote areas of a given region (territory, republic) for special settlement. The kulaks, assigned to the third category, settled within the region on new lands specially allotted for them outside the collective farm massifs.

2.1930:Temporary retreat. In the article "Dizzy with Success" (March 2, 1930), Stalin was forced to admit excesses on the ground. As a result, it was allowed to leave the collective farms. By August, only a fifth of the farms remained socialized. But the respite was only temporary; in the fall, violence resumed.

3.1931 - 1940 -third stage of collectivization. The main goal during this period is to attract the remaining third of the village to collective farms. During the second five-year plan (1933-1937), the collectivization of agriculture was fully completed. The collective farm system was legally formed in basic terms, and the bulk of the peasants became collective farmers.

Main results:

Positive:

· State procurement of grain has doubled, and taxes on collective farms - 3.5, which significantly increased the state budget.

· Collective farms became reliable suppliers of raw materials, foodstuffs, capital, labor, which led to the development of industry.

· By the end of the 1930s, more than 5,000 machine and tractor stations were built, which provided the collective farms with equipment that was served by workers from the cities.

· The main result of collectivization is an industrial leap, a sharp rise in the level of industrial development.

Negative:

· Decreased grain production, livestock, productivity, and the number of sown areas.

· The collective farmers did not have passports, which means they could not leave the village, they became hostages of the state, deprived of their freedom of movement.

· A whole layer of individual peasants with their culture, traditions, and management skills was destroyed. A new class came to replace it - the "collective farm peasantry".

· Large human losses: 7-8 million people died as a result of hunger, dispossession, resettlement.

· Formation of administrative command management of agriculture, its nationalization.

· Loss of incentives to work in the countryside.

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Subtitles

Agriculture in Russia before collectivization

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

In the last year of his life, V. I. Lenin called, in particular, to the development of the cooperative movement. It is known that before dictating the article "On cooperation", V. I. Lenin ordered literature on cooperation in the library, among others there was the book by A. V. Chayanov "Basic Ideas and Forms of Organization of Peasant Cooperation" (Moscow, 1919). And in the Leninist 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 actively recover. According to the memoirs of the former Chairman of the USSR Government AN Kosygin (he worked in the leadership of cooperative organizations in Siberia), “the main thing that forced him“ to leave the ranks of cooperators ”was that the collectivization that unfolded in Siberia in the early 1930s meant, paradoxically at first glance, disorganization and to a large extent powerful covering all corners of Siberia cooperative network. "

The restoration of the pre-war sown grain 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). We also managed to slightly exceed the pre-war level (1913) of yield: the average yield of grain crops in 1924-1928 reached 7.5 centners / ha. It was practically possible to restore the livestock population (with the exception of horses). By the end of the recovery period (1928), the gross grain production reached 733.2 million centners. 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 sown 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. The low level of agricultural technology of small-scale individual farming had no further growth prospects. In 1928, 9.8% of the sown area was plowed with a plow, sowing by three-quarters was manual, 44% of grain was harvested with a sickle and an oblique, threshing by 40.7% was done by non-mechanical (manual) methods (flail, etc.).

As a result of the transfer of landlord lands to the peasants, peasant farms were divided into small plots. By 1928, their number had grown by one and a half times compared to 1913 - from 16 to 25 million.

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

"Bread strike"

The course towards collectivizing agriculture was proclaimed at the 15th Congress of the CPSU (b) (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 the organizational forms of collective farms, associations for joint cultivation of land (TOZs) prevailed; there were also agricultural cartels and communes. To support collective farms, the state provided for various incentive measures - interest-free loans, the supply of agricultural machinery and tools, and the provision of tax incentives.

By November 1927, there was a problem with the provision of food to some industrial centers. The simultaneous rise 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 procurements 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 (Bolsheviks) of July 10, 1928 "The grain procurement policy 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 and state farms have more opportunities to overcome crises (natural, wars, etc.). According to Stalin's plan, it was the large industrial grain farms — the state farms that were set up on state lands — that could "solve the grain difficulties" and avoid the difficulties of supplying the country with the necessary amount of marketable grain. On July 11, 1928, the plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) adopted a resolution "On the organization of new (grain) state farms", which stated: "to approve the task for 1928 with a total plowing area sufficient to receive 5-7 million poods in 1929 marketable bread ".

The result of this resolution was the adoption of the Decree 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", clause 1 of which read: "To recognize the need to organize new large Soviet grain farms (grain factories) on free land funds with such 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 1933 harvest ”. The new Soviet farms being created were planned to be united into a trust of all-union significance "Zernotrest", directly subordinate to the Council of Labor and Defense.

The repeated crop failure in Ukraine in 1928 put the country on the brink of starvation, which, despite the measures taken (food aid, a decrease in the level of supply of cities, the introduction of a rationing supply system), took place in certain regions (in particular, in Ukraine).

Taking into account the lack of state grain reserves, a number of Soviet leaders (N.I.Bukharin, A.I. Rykov, M.P. Tomsky) proposed to reduce the rate of industrialization, to abandon the development of collective farm development and "the attack on the kulaks, to return to the free sale of grain, raising prices for it 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 suffered less from crop failures).

This crisis became the starting point for the "radical solution of 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 machines" (from I. Stalin's speech at the 16th Congress of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (b) ( 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 the poor and middle peasants, with a simultaneous decisive struggle against the kulaks. According to the initiators of collectivization, the main problem of agriculture was its fragmentation: most of the farms were in small private ownership with a high proportion of manual labor, which did not allow meeting 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 conditions of small individual farming and to form the necessary raw material base for the processing industry. It was also supposed to reduce the cost of agricultural products for the final 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 to have a marketable mass of agricultural products in an amount 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 clarifications were suppressed by disciplinary means. The signal for a radical change in policy towards the countryside was given in the speech of I.V. Stalin at the Communist Academy in December 1929, although no specific instructions on collectivization were made, except for the call to "eliminate the kulaks as a class."

Solid collectivization

The transition to complete collectivization was carried out against the background of an armed conflict on the Chinese Eastern Railway and the outbreak of the 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 have led to an inadequate assessment of the current situation in agriculture.

From the spring of 1929 in the countryside, measures were taken to increase the number of collective farms - in particular, the Komsomol campaigns "for collectivization". The institute of agricultural commissioners was created in the RSFSR, in Ukraine much attention was paid to the surviving from the civil war roommates (analogue of the Russian commander) Basically, the use of administrative measures was able to achieve a significant increase in collective farms (mainly in the form of TOZs).

In the countryside, forcible grain procurements, accompanied by mass arrests and the destruction of farms, led to riots, the number of which by the end of 1929 was already in the hundreds. Not wanting to give property and livestock to collective farms and fearing reprisals suffered by prosperous peasants, 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 development", in which he noted that the country had begun a large-scale socialist reorganization of the countryside and the construction of large-scale socialist agriculture. The decree 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 the collective farms for permanent work to "manage the created collective and state farms" (in fact, their number later almost tripled, reaching over 73 thousand).

This caused sharp resistance from the peasantry. According to data from various sources cited by O. V. Khlevnyuk, 346 mass demonstrations were registered in January 1930, 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 the riots covered 500 settlements. 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 demonstrations, in which at least 750-800 thousand people took part. In Ukraine, at this time, unrest had already covered over a thousand settlements. In the post-war period in Western Ukraine, the process of collectivization was opposed by the OUN underground.

XVI Congress of the CPSU (b)

Collectivization was carried out mainly by compulsory administrative methods. Overly centralized management and, at the same time, predominantly low qualifications of local administrators, leveling, and the race for "overfulfillment of 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 by the spring of next year, while in the fall some of the grain was not harvested to the end. Low wages on collective farm commodity farms (KTF), against the background of the general unpreparedness of collective farms to conduct large-scale commercial livestock farming (lack of necessary premises for farms, feed stock, regulatory documents and qualified personnel (veterinarians, livestock breeders, etc.)) led to mass death of livestock.

An attempt to improve the situation by the adoption on July 30, 1931 of the decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR "On the development of socialist animal husbandry" in practice led on the ground to the forced socialization of cows and small livestock. This practice was condemned by the Decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated March 26, 1932.

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

Famine in the USSR (1932-1933)

Despite the poor harvest, the local authorities tried to fulfill and overfulfill the planned norms for harvesting agricultural products - the same applied to the plan for the export of grain, 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 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 1932 sowing campaign without sowing material and draft animals (which fell or were not suitable for work due to poor care and lack of fodder, which were handed over to the plan for general grain procurement ), led to a significant deterioration in the prospects for the 1932 harvest. In the country, plans for export deliveries (by about three times), planned grain procurement (by 22%) and delivery of livestock (by 2 times) were reduced, but this did not save the general situation - repeated crop failure (death of winter crops, undersowing, partial drought, a decrease in yields 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 - in the spring of 1933.

Elimination of the kulaks as a class

By the beginning of complete collectivization, the opinion in the party leadership that the main obstacle to uniting the poor and middle peasants was the more prosperous stratum in the countryside formed during the NEP years - the kulaks, as well as the social group that supported them or depended on them - "Podkulachniki".

This obstacle had to be “removed” within the framework of a complete collectivization.

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 agrarian workers in the last days of December 1929. A number of historians note that the planning of the "liquidation" took place in early December 1929 - in the so-called. "Yakovlev's commission" since the number and "areas" of eviction of "kulaks of the 1st category" had already been approved by January 1, 1930.

The fists have been divided into three categories:

• 1st — counterrevolutionary activists: kulaks actively opposing collective farm organizations, fleeing from their permanent place of residence and becoming illegal;

The heads of the kulak families of the first category were arrested, and cases of their actions were referred to the "troikas" consisting of representatives of the OGPU, regional committees (regional committees) of the CPSU (b) and the prosecutor's office.

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

The dispossessed peasants of the second category, as well as families of kulaks of the first category, were evicted to remote areas of the country for special settlement, or labor settlement (otherwise it was called "kulak exile" or "labor exile"). The certificate of the Department for Special Settlers of the GULAG OGPU indicated that in 1930-1931. 381,026 families with a total number of 1,803,392 people were evicted (with sending to 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, to Eastern Siberia - 5056, to Yakutia - 97, Far Eastern Territory - 323.

• 3rd - the rest of the fists.

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

In practice, not only kulaks, but also the so-called podkulaks were subjected to eviction with confiscation of property, that is, middle peasants, poor peasants and even farm laborers caught in prokulak and anti-kolkhoz actions (cases of settling accounts with neighbors and deja vu "rob the loot" were not isolated - which clearly contradicted the clause clearly indicated in the resolution on the inadmissibility of “infringing” on the middle peasant.

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

Collective farm construction in the overwhelming majority of German villages in the Siberian Territory was carried out in the manner of administrative pressure, without sufficient consideration of the degree of organizational and political preparation for it. Dekulakization measures in very many cases were used as a measure of influence against middle peasants who did not want to join collective farms. Thus, measures directed exclusively against the kulaks affected a significant number of middle peasants in German villages. These methods not only did not help, but repelled the German peasantry from the collective farms. Suffice it to point out that out of the total number of administratively expelled kulaks in the Omsk district, half were returned by the OGPU bodies from collection points and from the road.

Resettlement management (timing, number and selection of resettlement places) was carried out by the Sector of Land Resources and Resettlement of the USSR People's Commissariat for Land (1930-1933), the Resettlement Department of the USSR People's Commissariat for Land (1930-1931), the Sector of Land Resources and Resettlement of the USSR People's Commissariat for Land (Reorganized) (1931-1933) , ensured the resettlement of the OGPU.

The settlers, in violation of the existing instructions, were little or in no way provided with the necessary food and equipment at the new places of settlement (especially in the first years of mass expulsion), which often did not have prospects for agricultural use.

The collectivization of agriculture in the western regions of Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, in 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 machinery during collectivization

Since the late 1980s, the history of collectivization brought the opinion of certain Western historians that “Stalin organized collectivization to obtain money for industrialization through extensive export of agricultural products (mainly grain)” [ ] .

• Imports of agricultural machines and tractors (thousand rubles): 1926/27 - 25 971, 1927/28 - 23 033, 1928/29 - 45 595, 1929/30 - 113 443, 1931 - 97 534, 1932-420.
• Export of grain 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 pedigree cattle worth about 100 million rubles. The import of fertilizers and equipment for the production of tools and mechanisms for agriculture was also very significant.

Consequences of collectivization

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

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

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

There is also an opinion that collectivization led to the disappearance of Russian civilization (in the terminology of A. Toynbee).

Collectivization in art

Fiction:

• M.A. Sholokhov. " Virgin Soil Upturned»(1937) - shows the process of forming collective farms, collectivization in the Don.
• IN AND. Belov. " Eves "," The Year of the Great Change ".
• AND I. Egorov. " Wild herbs»(1940) - about collectivization in the Kuban.

Music and cinema:

• Give us a ride, Petrusha, on a tractor (song) - music: Vladimir Zakharov; lyrics: Ivan Molchanov, 1929
• Virgin Soil Upturned (film, 1959-1961) - screen version of the novel of the same name by M.A. Sholokhov.

Statistical data

The beginning of the complete collectivization of agriculture in the USSR was 1929. In the famous article by J. V. Stalin "The Year of the Great Turning Point" forced collective farm constructionwas recognized as the main task, the solution of which in three years will make the country "one of the most lucrative, if not the most lucrative country in the world." The choice was made in favor of the liquidation of individual farms, dispossession of kulaks, the destruction of the grain market, and the de facto nationalization of the rural economy. What was behind the decision to start collectivization?

On the one hand, there is a growing conviction that economics always follows politics and that political expediency is above economic laws. It was these conclusions that the leadership of the CPSU (b) made from the experience of resolving the grain procurement crises of 1926-1929. The essence of the crisis

grain procurement consisted in the fact that the individual peasants reduced grain supplies to the state and thwarted the targets: firm purchase prices were too low, and systematic attacks on the "village world-eaters" did not dispose to expand the sown areas and increase yields. The problems of economic nature were assessed by the party and the state as political. The proposed solutions were appropriate: prohibition of free trade in grain, confiscation of grain reserves, incitement of the poor against the well-to-do part of the village. The results were convincing of the effectiveness of violent measures.

On the other hand, the newly launched forced industrialization required colossal investments. The village was recognized as their main source, which, according to the developers of the new general line, was supposed to uninterruptedly supply the industry with raw materials, and the cities - practically free food.

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

The main form of unification of individual farms was recognized collective farms.They socialized land, cattle, inventory. In the decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of January 5, 1930, a truly rapid pace of collectivization was established: in the key grain-producing regions (the Volga region, the 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 districts - within three years. To speed up collectivization, urban workers (first 25, and then another 35 thousand people) were sent to the countryside "ideologically literate". Oscillations, doubts, emotional throwbacks of individual peasants, for the most part tied to their own farming, to the land, to livestock (“I stayed in the past with one foot, I slide and fall with the other,” Sergei Yesenin wrote on another occasion), were overcome simply - by force. The punitive authorities deprived persistent electoral rights, confiscated property, intimidated, and imprisoned.

Parallel to collectivization, there was a campaign dispossession, liquidation of the kulaks as a class.On this score, a secret directive was adopted, according to which all the kulaks (who was understood by the kulak, it was not clearly defined) was divided into three categories: participants in anti-Soviet movements; wealthy owners who had influence over their neighbors; everyone else. The former were subject to arrest and handover to the OGPU; the second - eviction to the remote regions of the Urals, Kazakhstan, Siberia with their families; still others - relocation to poorer lands in the same area. The land, property, money accumulations 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 real number of the well-to-do peasantry. There were also the so-called podkulachniki, “accomplices of the enemies-the world-eaters” (“the most tattered farmhand can be enrolled in the podkulachniki,” says A.I. Solzhenitsyn). According to historians, wealthy farms on the eve of collectivization were about 3%; dekulakization was subject in some areas to 10-15% of individual farms. Arrests, executions, resettlement to remote areas - the entire set of repressive means was used in the dispossession of kulaks, which affected at least 1 million households (the average number of families is 7-8 people).

The response was mass riots, slaughter of cattle, hidden and obvious resistance. The state had to temporarily retreat: Stalin's article "Dizzy with Success" (spring 1930) blamed local authorities for violence and coercion. The reverse process began, millions of peasants left the collective farms. But already in the autumn of 1930, the pressure increased again. In 1932-1933. famine came to the most lucrative regions of the country, first of all to the Ukraine, Stavropol Territory, 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, the export of grain from the country and the volume of state supplies grew steadily. By 1933, more than 60% of the peasants were in collective farms, by 1937 - about 93%. The collectivization was declared complete.

What are her the results?Statistics show that it has dealt an irreparable blow to the agrarian economy (reduction in grain production, livestock, crop yields, acreage, etc.). At the same time, state grain procurements have doubled, and taxes on collective farms have grown 3.5 times. Behind this obvious contradiction was the real 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 kind of state-owned enterprises that had strict planning targets and were subject to directive management. During the passport reform, the collective farmers did not receive passports: in fact, they were attached to the collective farm and deprived of freedom of movement. The industry grew at the expense of agriculture. Collectivization turned collective farms into reliable and uncomplaining suppliers of raw materials, foodstuffs, capital, and labor. Moreover, it destroyed a whole social stratum of individual peasants with their culture, moral values, and foundations. It was replaced by a new class - the collective farm peasantry.

rural commune collectivization artel

The course towards collectivization, as was traditionally believed in Russian historiography, was proclaimed at the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in December 1927. At it, a special resolution was adopted on the issue of work in the countryside. The decisions of the congress spoke about the development of all forms of cooperation, which by this time united almost a third of peasant farms, and not one (which became dominant later), production, i.e. collective farms. The question of an "offensive" on the kulaks was also raised, but there was no talk of liquidating it as a class. It was supposed to oust the kulaks by economic methods (using taxes, changing the terms of land lease and hiring workers, etc.). A gradual transition to collective cultivation of the land was planned as a promising task. The resolution "On work in the countryside" called for "widespread propaganda of the necessity and profitability for the peasantry of a gradual transition to large-scale public agriculture."

The beginning industrialization opened up the opportunity to prepare the material and technical base for the transformation of agriculture, expanding the supply of tractors, trailed machines and implements. The preparation of mass collectivization was facilitated by the simplest forms of cooperation. By the fall of 1927, about a third of peasant farms had been united in cooperatives (sales and supply, TOZs - partnerships for joint cultivation of land, etc.), and in 1929 - more than 55%. However, only 3.9% of peasant farms were involved in collective farms (the highest form of cooperation) by June 1929.

But already in March 1928, the Central Committee of the Party, in a circular letter to local Party organizations, demanded the strengthening of the existing and the creation of new collective and state farms. The Bolsheviks were determined to achieve mass collectivization in the shortest possible time.

In 1928-1929. the course was taken to curtail NEP and complete collectivization (Fig. 1), so the decisions of the 15th Congress, in essence, were revised. I.V. Stalin called this process a "revolution from above".

Stages of collectivization

Collectivization of the peasantry (80% of the country's population) was intended not only to intensify labor and raise the standard of living in the countryside. It facilitated the redistribution of funds and labor from village to city. It was assumed that it would be much easier to get grain from a relatively small number of collective farms (collective farms) and state farms (state agricultural enterprises) working according to the plan than from 25 million scattered private producers. It was this organization of production that made it possible to maximize the concentration of labor at the decisive moments of the agricultural cycle of work. For Russia, this was always topical and made the peasant community "immortal". Mass collectivization also promised to release from the countryside the labor needed for construction and industry.

Collectivization was carried out in two stages.

First: 1928-1929 - confiscation and socialization of livestock, the creation of collective farms on local initiative.

In the spring of 1928, the forced creation of collective farms began.

Table 1 Chronicle of collectivization

In the spring of 1928, a campaign began to confiscate food from the peasants. The role of the performers was played by the local poor and the workers and communists who came from the city, who by the number of the first recruitment began to be called "twenty-five thousand. In total, 250 thousand volunteers went from the cities to carry out collectivization from 1928 to 1930.

By the fall of 1929, the measures taken to prepare the village's transition to complete collectivization, which had been undertaken since the 15th Party Congress (December 1925), began to bear fruit. If in the summer of 1928 there were 33.3 thousand collective farms in the country, which united 1.7% of all peasant farms, then by the summer of 1929 there were 57 thousand of them. More than a million, or 3.9%, of farms were united in them. In some areas of the North Caucasus, the Lower and Middle Volga, and the Central Black Earth Region, up to 30-50% of farms have become collective farms. In three months (July - September), about a million peasant households joined the collective farms, almost as many as in the 12 post-October years. This meant that the main strata of the countryside — the middle peasants — began to switch to the collective farm path. Based on this tendency, Stalin and his supporters, contrary to previously adopted plans, demanded that collectivization be completed in the main grain regions of the country within a year. The theoretical justification for forcing the restructuring of the countryside was Stalin's article "The Year of the Great Turning Point" (November 7, 1929). It said that the peasants went to collective farms "in whole villages, volosts, districts" and that "decisive successes in grain procurement" had already been achieved this year; In fact, at that time only 7% of peasant farms were united in collective farms.

The plenum of the Central Committee (November 1929), which discussed the results and further tasks of collective farm development, emphasized in the resolution that the turning point in the attitude of the peasantry towards collectivization "in the upcoming sowing campaign should become the starting point of a new movement forward in the development of the poor-middle peasant economy and in the socialist rebuilding the village. " It was a call for immediate, complete collectivization.

In November 1929, the Central Committee gave instructions to local party and Soviet bodies to develop a complete collectivization of not only villages and districts, but also regions. To encourage peasants to join collective farms, on December 10, 1929, a directive was adopted, according to which local leaders in collectivization areas were to achieve almost universal socialization of livestock. The response of the peasantry was the mass slaughter of animals. From 1928 to 1933, only 25 million heads of cattle were slaughtered by peasants (during the Great Patriotic War, the USSR lost 2.4 million).

In a speech at a conference of Marxist agrarian workers in December 1929, Stalin formulated the task of eliminating the kulak class as a necessary condition for the development of collective and state farms. A "great leap forward" in development, a new "revolution from above" was supposed to put an end to all socio-economic problems at once, to radically break and rebuild the existing economic structure and national economic proportions.

The revolutionary impatience, the enthusiasm of the masses, the mood of storming, to a certain extent inherent in the Russian national character, were skillfully exploited by the country's leadership. Administrative levers prevailed in economic management, material incentives began to be replaced by work on people's enthusiasm. The end of 1929 was essentially the end of the NEP period.

The second stage: 1930-1932 - after the decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated January 5, 1930 "On the rate of collectivization and measures of state assistance to collective farm construction", a campaign of "total collectivization" planned in Moscow began. The whole country was divided into three districts, each with specific dates for the completion of collectivization.

This decree outlined tough terms for its implementation. In the main grain regions of the country (the Middle and Lower Volga regions, the North Caucasus), it was supposed to be completed by the spring of 1931, in the Central Black Earth region, in the Ukraine, the Urals, Siberia and Kazakhstan by the spring of 1932 By the end of the first five-year plan, collectivization was planned to be carried out nationwide.

Despite the decision, both the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the grassroots party organizations intended to carry out collectivization into more compressed juices. The "competition" of local authorities for the record-breaking rapid creation of "areas of complete collectivization" began.

The five-year plan for collectivization was completed in January 1930, when collective farms accounted for over 20% of all peasant farms. But already in February, Pravda guided its readers: "The outline of collectivization - 75% of the poor and middle peasants during 1930/31 is not the maximum." The threat to be accused of the right deviation due to insufficiently decisive actions pushed local workers to various forms of pressure against peasants who did not want to join collective farms (deprivation of voting rights, expulsion from the Soviets, boards and other elected organizations). Resistance was most often provided by wealthy peasants. In response to the brutal actions of the authorities in the country, mass peasant discontent grew. In the first months of 1930, the organs of the OGPU registered more than 2 thousand peasant uprisings, in the suppression of which not only the troops of the OGPU - NKVD, but also the regular army took part. In the Red Army units, which consisted mainly of peasants, dissatisfaction with the policy of the Soviet leadership was ripening. Fearing this, on March 2, 1930 in the Pravda newspaper I.V. Stalin published an article "Dizzy with Success," in which he condemned the "excesses" in collective farm construction and blamed the local leadership for them. But in essence the policy towards the countryside and the peasantry remained the same.

After a short break for agricultural production and harvesting, the campaign to socialize peasant farms was continued with renewed vigor and completed on time in 1932-1933.

In parallel with the socialization of peasant farms, in accordance with the Central Committee resolution of January 30, 1930 "On measures to liquidate kulak farms in areas of complete collectivization," a policy of "liquidating the kulaks as a class" was pursued. Peasants who refused to join the collective farm were deported with their families to remote areas of the country. The number of "kulak" families was determined in Moscow and reported to local leaders. During dispossession, about 6 million people died. The total number of liquidated "kulak farms" only in 1929-1931. amounted to 381 thousand (1.8 million people), and in total during the years of collectivization reached 1.1 million farms.

Dekulakization became a powerful catalyst for collectivization and made it possible by March 1930 to raise its level in the country to 56%, and in the RSFSR to 57.6%. By the end of the five-year plan, more than 200,000 rather large (on average 75 households) collective farms had been created in the country, uniting about 15 million peasant farms, 62% of their total. Along with the collective farms, 4.5 thousand state farms were formed. According to the plan, they were to become a school for running a large socialist economy. Their property was state property; the peasants who worked in them were state workers. Unlike collective farmers, they received a fixed wage for their work. At the beginning of 1933, it was announced that the first five-year plan (1928-1932) had been completed in 4 years and 3 months. All reports cited figures that did not reflect the actual situation in the Soviet economy. According to statistics, from 1928 to 1932, the production of consumer goods fell by 5%, the total agricultural production by 15%, and the personal income of the urban and rural population by 50%. In 1934 collectivization was resumed. At this stage, they launched a broad "offensive" against the individual peasants. An unbearable administrative tax was imposed on them. Thus, their farms were brought to ruin. The peasant had two ways left: either to go to the collective farm, or to go to the city for the construction of the first five-year plans. In February 1935, at the II All-Russian Congress of Collective Farmers, a new approximate charter of an agricultural artel (collective farm) was adopted, which became a borderline in collectivization and consolidated collective farms as the main form of agricultural producer in the country. Collective farms, as well as industrial enterprises throughout the country, had production plans that had to be strictly followed. However, unlike urban enterprises, collective farmers had practically no rights, such as social security, etc., since collective farms did not have the status of state enterprises, but were considered a form of cooperative economy. Gradually, the village came to terms with the collective farm system. By 1937, individual farming had virtually disappeared (93% of all households were merged into collective farms).