Collectivisation

Stalin and many other leading members saw collectivisation as an economical and political necessity.  It would sweep away the remaining elements of capitalism.  It would ensure the Soviet Union was modernised in order to defeat the threats to the revolution form both inside and outside the country.

What were the results?

The process of collectivisation involved local party officials going into villages and announcing the organisation of a collective farm (kolkhoz) and lecturing the peasants on the advantages of farming a collective.

The implementation of collectivisation led to violent opposition from a large number of peasants.  Rather than hand their property to the state many kulaks set fire to their farms and slaughtered their animals.  Party officials were sometimes murdered on arrival in the villages.  Dekulakisation squads were used to help, forcefully, organise collectives.

Dekulakisation squad – loyal party members sent into countryside to force peasants into collectives.  In practice Dekulakisation covered a range of methods for eliminating the kulaks, including murder.

The OGPU – Secret police were also used to round up kulaks that refused to co-operate.  They (kulaks) were deported to remote regions of the USSR, often to labour camps.  On some occasions the Red Army brought in.

The peasant’s opposition led to a temporary back down form Stalin.  Some concessions were made to the peasantry.  Members of the collectives could have some animals and a small garden plot of their own, but the programme of collectivisation continued to be passed.  By 1932 62% had been collectivised – rising to 93% in 1937.  

The effect of collectivisation was substantial.  1930 the MIR was abolished and replaced by the Kolkhoz administration members of the Communist Young Pioneers organisation used wooden watchtowers to spy on the peasants in the fields to ensure they did not steal food to feed their own families.

The total cost in lives is difficult to quantify.  Historians estimate between 5-10 million.

Although the political aim of ridding Soviet society of the kulaks was achieved, the economic results of collectivisation were more mixed.  The slaughtering of animals by the kulaks had a serious effect on livestock numbers – 50% reduction in the cattle.  The consequence of this was a shortage of meat and milk.  Grain production also fell – 73.3 million tonnes – 67.6 million.

The aim of producing enough food to feed the towns and Red Army was achieved but only by talking much-needed supplies from the countryside.  The result was a widespread famine 1932-33 (particularly affected Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Causcasous)

The government officially denied any existence of famine; a claim supported by foreign visitors but they had been escorted to model collectives well away from the famine areas.

The economic failure of collectivisation was partly due to inadequate planning and chaotic implementation of the policy.  The collectives were too large and suffered from too much central control – with party officials in Moscow giving orders to collectives which took little account of conditions on the ground.

The divide between town and countryside was deepened by collectivisation.  

The Tragedy Of Collectivisation

1. There were 120 million people were affected by collectivisation.
2. 25 Million holding were consolidated.
3. There were 240,000 state controlled collectives set up in the first few months of 1933.
4. According to Robert Conquest the human toll was “higher than the total deaths for all countries in World War 1”
5. By living Standards, Russia was not ready for mass collectivisation, as he had argued that there would be a need for 100,000 tractors and cultural development in the peasantry and in 1927 there was only 28.000 tractors and illiteracy was 70% to 85%.
6. The peasantry made up 80% of the population.  The communist Party had to work grip on the countryside and therefore a weak grip on the majority of the population.  They system of small individual farms gave way for class divisions; collectivisation would bring the peasant much closer to socialism.  The peasants could farm enough grain to feed the cities, the yield surplus workers and still have enough to export to generate capital for industries – if they were moved into mechanised agriculture.  Therefore it was natural to see the peasantry as a force against modernisation.
7. Grain was need for export for economic reasons – to boast the Soviet Union’s economy.  I.e. for the foreign currency.  But peasants didn’t want to give away their grain, as market prices were low.  By early 1929 USSR were forced to import grain and introduce bread rationing.
8. Molotov illustrates the fear of foreign invasion was why the policy of collectivisation was introduced, as he said.  “The imperialists have not so far decided to attack us directly”, therefore, “we must utilise this moment for a decisive advance”.  Thus collectivisation provided a ready solution to both short-term and long-term economic problems of the countryside.
9. It was the poorest peasants who volunteered to go into collectives as they had least to lose.
10. Stalin justified his decision to ‘liquidate the kulaks’ by arguing that he found the authority to do it in the Lenin of “War Communism” that Lenin who called the Kulak, “bloodsuckers, vampires, robbers of the people”.
11. By saying the term Kulak was elastic means that it could be applied to any peasant resisting collectivisation, as a Kulak class barely existed by the late 1920’s.
12. Historians J. Arch Getty and Lynne Vola are insistent that the social upheavals were not simply imposed from above, but that Stalin’s plans found clear resonance ‘below’, in the party and in Society.
13. Tractors, kerosene, salt, matches and soap were all promised to the peasants if they joined the Kolkhoz.
14. Right deviationists were the term used to describe peasants who didn’t work enough.
15. Between Jan and March 1930 the number of collectivised households raised form 4.4 Million to 14.2 Million.
16. OGPU and the Red Army were called in if active resistance flared up.  They caused mass shootings, arrests and deportations seen followed.
17. The mass slaughter of livestock took place by the peasants to show resistance to the collectivisation.  In five years, 46%of cattle, 47% of the horses and 65% of the sheep were lost.
18. The purpose of the article ‘Dizzy with success’ was to clear Stalin from what had happened in the countryside.  Stalin blamed the recent excesses on party activists and restated that collectivisation must be voluntary.
19. By the end of 1934 90% of the town acreage of the USSR was collectivised.
20. The MTS – Machine Tractor Stations – were established in order to provide tractors, but its main significance was political.  It was a proletarian bastion in the countryside, staffed by workers including the ‘political department’ of the OGPU.
21. The peasants were denied internal passports as the Government wanted/needed them to stay in the countryside to produce food for the country.
22. The increase in procurements from 18.2 million to 27.5 million was not due to improved efficiency but at the expense of peasant living standards as harvests had actually declined.  
23. The ‘five stalks law’ were passed by Stalin whereby stealing of any Kolkhoz property was punishable by a minimum of ten years imprisonment with no amnesty and a maximum penalty of death by shooting.
24. By saying the famine was ‘a deliberate instrument of policy’ it is suggesting that a famine was created to show the peasants, “who is master here”.
25. 7 million were said to have died due to the famine, but that was only half of the final human cost of the collectivisation campaign.
26. An estimate of 6.5 million died in the extermination of the kulaks.
27. The historian Alec Nove explains Stalin actions were, ‘necessary’. None argued that, given the Tsarist inheritance and party ideology, it is difficult to conceive that there were viable alternatives to the path Stalin took.
28. James R. Millar does not agree with Nove’s view saying the grain crisis was resolvable and called collectivisation an  ‘economic policy disaster’.

 

The Purges

1. Provide definitions for – ‘The Great Purges’

                                                ‘Show Trials’

                                                ‘Enemy of the people’

The Great Purges:  The term used to describe the wave of terror, which Stalin and his supporters used to remove enemies.  The targets were so-called enemies of the state or people who were accused of crimes they often could not possibly have committed.  Victims of the purges were either esent to labour camps or shot.

Show Trials: Public Trials of leading enemies of the state.  The proceedings were often filmed so that they could be used as propaganda in the cinema’s.  In this way they could be used to justify the actions taken against leading party members as well as being a warning to others.

Enemy Of The People:  This term was used to describe those who were victims of the purges.  Although it was a typical; communist phrase, it was a vague term that enabled the government to take action on a range of supposed offensives.

Why did the Great Terror of the 1930’s take place?

The role of Stalin’s personality

The purges have been seen as evidence of Stalin’s paranoia.  Psychological evidence of mental instability is difficult to prove but it is true that Stalin’s behaviour became increasingly erratic, as he got older.  Stalin saw opposition everywhere.  He erratic as he got older.  Stalin saw opposition everywhere.  He told Khrushchev: ‘I trust nobody, not even myself’.  

The assassination of Kirov in 1934 was used as an excuse to strike against opponents.  In the terror that followed, Stalin personally signed many death warrants.

The Historical Roots

Bolshevism – Stalin’s use of terror has been seen as a continuation of the trends established by Lenin after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.  A regime, which was highly centralised around its leader and relied on terror to maintain itself in power.  This viewpoint has been argued by liberal school of historians prominent in the west after 1945.  They have seen all aspects of the Bolshevik regime in a negative light Stalin, according to this view, grew out of the authoritarian lendencies in Bolshevism.

Russian Traditions- Some historians see Stalin as one in a long time of Russian despots imposing their will on the people by means of brutality.  In this respect Stalin was similar to Ivan the terrible and Peter the Great.  This comparison has led to stalin to Stalin being referred to as the Red Tsar.  It assumes that there were conditions related to Russia’s economic backwardness that made terror necessary.  This approach has been criticised by scholars as simplifying the starvation by ignoring the different circumstances within which each leader had to rule

The Purge Of The Right

1. What was meant by the ‘Right Opposition’
2. What were they accused of?
3. Why was Bakharan seen as a threat to Stalin?

1. Right Opposition – Those party members who had wanted to keep the NEP and criticised Stalin’s rapid industrialisation under the five-year plans as harsh and, in economic terms, necessary.  The leading member – Bukharin whose criticism of Stalin’s economic polices sealed his fate he was executed in 1935.
2. They were accused of forming a ‘Trotskyite- Rightist Bloc’
3. Bukharin was a threat to Stalin because of his outspoken criticisms of Stalin’s Economic policies.

 

The Purge on the left

1. What is meant by the ‘left opposition’
2. What was Zinoviev and Kamenev accused of?
3. Why did they confess?
4. Who did they implicate?

1. The Left Opposition – Those in the party who had supported the call for ‘Permanent Revolution’ in the 1920’s.  This put them against Stalin who had called for ‘Socialism in One Country’.  The Left had also called for rapid industrialisation and the abandonment of the NEP before Stalin was ready to do so.  Because the left were associated with the views of Trotsky it was relatively easy to attack them as enemies of the state.  Trotsky continued to denounce Stalin Zinoviev and Kamenev were the two most prominent members of the left.
2. Zinoviev and Kamenev were accused of working as Trotsky’s agents to undermine the state.
3. They confessed to crimes that they could not possibly have carried out they were wider severe pressure from the NKVD.
4. Zinoviev and Kamenev also implicated others in the conspiracy including the former leaders of the right: Tomsky, Bukharin, Rykov.

The Purge Of The Soviet Police

1. What and when was the ‘Yezhovschina’
2. Why did it come to an end?
3. What impact did the purges have on ordinary Russians?
4. How many people were sent to the Gulag?
5. How many were executed?

1. Yezhovschina was the most violent stage of the purges.  It looked from 1936-1938.  It was name after Yezhov, the head of the NKVD at the time.
2. Yezhovschina came to an end when Yezhov was dismissed in 1935 his arrest in early 1939 was partly due to Stalin’s need for a scapegoat for the excesses of the purges.
3. The old class enemies - the kulaks and Nepmen were rooted out.  Children were encouraged to inform on their parents if they suspected them of ‘capitalist lendencies’.  Malice was responsible for some of the accusations, also the realisation that job opportunities were opened up by the removal of ‘unworthy’ comrades.  
4. There were approximately 1.3 million people sent to Gulags.
5. There were nearly ¾ people executed rather than imprisoned.