what were the aims of collevtivisation, and to what extent were they achieved?

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What were the aims of collectivization and to what extent were they achieved?

By the end of the 1920’s, it became clear just how inadequate Russian agriculture was because thousands of peasants were not producing enough food to feed the population. Russia needed a savior to free them from this problem this problem that had hindered them for many years. So in 1927, Stalin declared that collectivization was the solution to this problem, meaning that people in each village would voluntarily unite farms together into one collective farm. Because the peasants did not agree with this, due to the problems of loosing their independence and the amount of organization it would require, they ignored Stalin’s words and after the famine in 1929, Stalin made collectivization compulsory. Stalin had many aims of collectivization, either economic or political aims. Although it now appears that Stalin had ulterior motives for the introduction of collectivization, some of which were only to benefit him as he wanted to gain political power of the peasants. He achieved most of his aims to different extents, although there were some aims which, when he tried to satisfy them, instead caused problems against him.

There were obvious problems for Stalin to overcome, the main one being that vastness of Russia (22 million square kilometers) - making it notoriously difficult to have complete control as messages would take a lot of time to travel from one side of the country to the other. If Stalin wanted to make an impact with collectivization, it would need to be enforced strongly as farming methods at this point were primitive and inefficient because the peasants were traditionally very independent and would do their best to resist interference from the government.

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Another obstacle were the kulaks, and the fact that they owned 90% of the most fertile land, this problem would require and agreement or some form of negotiation which was a problem for the Bolsheviks as they were majoritively from an urban background and did not understand the complexities of peasant lifestyles.

Stalin enforced collectivization with brute force, showing his desire to make sure that his commands would be obeyed. 25,000 police and Red Army Units confiscated grain and livestock to feed the cities meaning that it would become very hard for the peasants to resist. Also, Motor Tractor Stations ...

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