Grain was procured so cheaply from the peasants because they were forced to sell to the state under the conditions outlined above. Harvest yields barely increased in the 1930s, so the growth in procurement meant a greater level of extraction from the countryside than before. This was possible because the state firm control over collective farms. The kolkhoz was in theory self-governing, but it was obliged to meet state orders, including how much each farm had to produce and what supplies it would receive. In 1932 internal passports were introduced in the USSR, but not issued to peasants who were, therefore, tied to their home areas. Theft of kolkhoz property was met with the death penalty. Other practices seen as against state interests were dealt with harshly. The most powerful instrument of state control was the MTS. The machine tractor station held all machinery needed by the kolkhoz, but it was a separate organisation under firm Party control and in a powerful position to instruct the peasants. MTS's were formed under a decree of June 1929.
Procurement was calculated ruthlessly on the ‘biological yield’, meaning the crop was counted as area sown, from 1933. This was meant to force peasants to gather and declare the entire harvest, but there was bound to be loss between growing and final grain yield. The real harvest in 1933 is reckoned to have been 25% less than the official harvest. The result for many peasants in that year was starvation, as the state took more than they could afford to give. (The biological yield system was used until after Stalin’s death, so it was not the only cause of the great famine).
Between 1929 and 1933 meat production fell because peasants slaughtered their livestock for their own consumption in advance of collectivisation, knowing livestock were to be collectively owned. The situation improved after 1933 because the rules were relaxed to allow peasants to own a small number of animals privately.
The reasons for the systems undoing was that peasants were hostile to the system, most seeing no advantage in collective ownership, especially under control from outside. The main gain of the revolution from the peasant’s point of view was land ownership and control over one’s land. Peasants were not protected by labour laws as industrial workers were. Material incentives disappeared with the free market. It now became more likely that investment in the land would result in higher losses since state payments were unlikely to cover costs of production. Where private plots were allowed - and they became increasingly common - the peasants put far more effort into them than into the collective farm. In the late 1930s private plots comprised 4% of arable land, but produced 22% of arable output. Peasant hostility to the state or collective system meant inefficient labour.
Although the state was able to control procurement firmly, it was much weaker in directing production. The pace of collectivisation meant there was no time to plan properly or to acquire the machinery to make use of the economies of scale. In the early years 17 million horses were lost. It was not until the late 1930s that the horsepower available to Soviet agriculture regained 1920s levels. In the early 1930s there was only one agricultural scientist to every 50 kolkhoz on average. Kolkhoz chairmen received a 3-week crash course in management and decision making. Those farmers who had managed their own land had been removed in the dekulakisation. Decisions about what to sow, how much, where and when were taken without the necessary field knowledge.
The peasants’ way of life was radically changed. The church had been central to village life. The Orthodox Church was attacked under Stalin. It was deemed a class enemy, faith was condemned as shameful, priests were persecuted and the number of churches halved in the 1930s. Peasant craft industries were condemned as useless and outdated. There was no time or place for them on the kolkhoz and no market to sell them in.
Peasant living standards declined during collectivisation. The worst phase was the famine of 1932-1933. in 1931 and 1932 there were severe harvest failures in parts of the Ukraine, southern Russia and the northern Caucasus. State procurements continued. There was no official recognition of a problem, but the most severe famine in Russian history was developing. Journalists were banned from the famine areas. Although rumours leaked out, many people - even in the west - were prepared to believe the official propaganda that it was not serious. Conquest (1986) estimated that 7 million died in the famine of 1932-1933. The deaths can be blamed on the state procurement agency and on political decisions from the top. Not until the 1950s did peasant food consumption reach the level of 1926.
Bukharin had feared the effect mass collectivisation would have on the Party. It led, in Solzhenitsyn’s words, to the "reign of the lie", as statistics were fabricated. For example, after the census of 1937 was delivered to the government Stalin had the chief of the census office arrested for trying to diminish the Soviet population. In fact it was Stalin’s agricultural policies that were responsible for a lower outcome than propaganda had led people to expect. The census was suppressed. Those who had to carry out dekulakisation and mass collectivisation had to be brutal. This brutality left tensions in the Party that contributed to the purges.
