Collectives and kulaks

Collectives and Kulaks

In the first half of 20th century, USSR have known a lot of changes of policies, and agriculture was one of the most affected field. Indeed, peasants played a very important role in Russian and Soviet History. After Lenin's death in 1924, Stalin gradually emerged as leader of the USSR. Since 1928, a totalitarian regime took place, based on Karl Marx ideology, which managed to totally eradicate capitalism. The documents we are going to work on, are a picture in black and white, which represents soviet peasants at work in October 1923, and a table showing the evolution of food production in the USSR between 1928 and 1932. The last document is an extract of a report sent by a British journalist working in the USSR in 1933, which describes the situation of people and the famine they suffer of. Based on these documents, we can wonder how Stalin’s communist policy affects peasants and kulaks. We are first going to see that agriculture is at the heart of the communist policy, then we will study the effects of the dictatorship and finally, we will talk about the failure of this plan.

I. In 1928, Stalin began to implement his first Five-year plan, for intensive economic growth. He wanted to transform the USSR, the agrarian country, which depended on the whims of the capitalist countries, into an industrial and powerful country. One of the Stalin’s main goal was to suppress the social classes. The economy was first centralized in the industry, to buy new mechanisms for increasing worker productivity. The first five-year plan installed an organization of the peasantry into collective units that the authorities could easily control. According to Stalin, the profit made on the collectivisation would help to afford the latest machinery for industry. This collectivisation program joined all the peasants’ lands, tools and animals into collective farms, called kolkhozes, and state farms that belonging to the country, called sovkhozes. Peasants were very poorly paid, their outputs were sold at low prices to the government. The collectivisation restricted peasant’s movements from these farms. By 1934, 26 million farms had been collectivized. As we can see on this picture, peasants worked in awful conditions. They were crammed on one m2. The sickles we can see on the picture are the symbol of the communism and represent labor and agriculture. Although the program was designed to affect all peasants, Stalin especially acted to liquidate the rich peasants, the kulaks. However, collectivization met resistance not only with kulaks, but from poor peasants as well. To contest, peasants slaughtered their crops, killed their cows and pigs rather than give them to the collective farms, so the livestock resources remained below the 1929 level, for years afterward.

II. Stalin’s communist system was a complete dictatorship, so all the people who didn’t agree with his policy were seen as traitors, and were punished. Peasants who got revolved and who hid their productions were tortured to give them to the collective farms. The text of Malcolm Muggeridge explains that the country “suggested a military occupation and even “worse, an active war” because there were soldiers everywhere. The military presence demonstrates the use of terror to enforce the rules imposed.

II)2)

The USSR population, during the Stalin area were starving, poor, oppressed, whereas the soldiers were well fed. As we can see, in the Source B, the text, more than 6 million people were starving to death, there was no food, no supplies for the population. It was a real chaos in the entire countryside. This Famine also called « Holodomor », or « Execution  by hunger »  is one of the most representative exemple of the suffering endured during the Soviet Regime that touched also Ukraine, the Northern Caucasus, the Volga Region, Kazakhstan and Siberia but the most affected area was Ukraine.

This famine was due to a lot of factors:

-the increased demand of food because of collectivization programm of the USSR 

- the goverment turned private farms into collective ones crushed the existing balance of the peasant class,

-the fact that USSR still exported seeds even if their own population was dying.

Other says, that it was due to the rural exodus, everybody has deserted the countryside because of the industrialisation.

According to the text, everything was very expensive, like « sausages » for 15 roubles, so  people could not afford any food. Dead bodies were all over the streets, children were stepping over them, Women were starving. People even started to eat other human : so calibalism.

The military force breaks into the peasant farms, took all the grains and leaves to build up stocks.

The Ukraine area was more touched by this famine than other areas, because more than 80%  of the Soviet Union grain production was situated here. So these regions were the victims of the most cruel repression, and it was here that the famine was felt the most, more than 17 people died every minute.  

This famine lasted, according to the text, more than 3 years  from 1931 to 1933, and affected the grain-producing areas.

People were not coming out during the day, and only coming out at night like shadows, , wandered all around the city, to see if there was any bread to buy.  

According to the Ukrainiens, this famine was a genocide, an «extermination by hunger ».  that is totally rejected by Russia, they claim that this famine touched a lot of ethnie groups across the USSR. It is now a source of tension betweent Russia and Ukraine, because it was an attempt to destroy the nation. But a lot of arguments shows that it was « a plan », USSR didn't ask any international help and tried to « hide » this famine.

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