Why Did Stalin Decide to Collectivise and how did he go About Achieving It?
In November 1927, Joseph Stalin launched two extraordinary goals for Soviet domestic policy: rapid industrialization and collectivization of agriculture. He had many reasons for doing this. He wanted to bring strengthen communism and erase all traces of capitalism that had seeped in under the NEP, and to transform the Soviet Union as quickly as possible, without regard to cost, into an industrialized and completely socialist state. Soviet agriculture was backward and had been for a long time even before the NEP was introduced. It was old fashioned, inefficient, no machinery was used and peasants were subsistent and grew only enough food to feed themselves. If Stalin’s five year plans were to succeed, then more food would be needed for the increase in workers in the towns and cities. Lenin’s New Economic Policy was not working and by 1928 the USSR was 20 million tons of grain short to feed the cities and towns. If the USSR was to become modern and industrial, peasants would be needed to migrate to work in factories and other essential modern jobs in the towns and cities. To be able to get USSR a strong, modern and prosperous country, Stalin knew that peasants would need to increase the amount of crops and food grown (e.g. grain), which could then be exported to raise money to buy foreign machinery and expertise. Through collectivization, Stalin also wanted to destroy the Kulaks as a class. This was because they opposed Stalin and communism and liked their private wealth. They would also strongly oppose collectivization.
