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Collectivization, a policy pursued in the Soviet Union and most other communist countries, refers to a process whereby private agricultural lands were seized by the state and transferred either to collective farms (kolkhoz in Russian) or state farms (sovkhoz). The policy was unpopular with farmers and was accompanied by violence. It also contributed to lower agricultural output. Nonetheless, politically it helped consolidate communist authority in the countryside.

Rationale

Collectivization had both an ideological and a practical purpose. Its ideological justification can be found in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s Communist Manifesto (1848), in which they argue that farmers, like factory workers, should be organized into large-scale collectives to eliminate private property and this, in their view, would lead to more efficient agricultural output. Collective farms would also foster the socialist ethos upon which communist society could be built. Privately owned farms and the emergence of a “richer peasant” class were seen as incompatible with communism.

The practical goals of collectivization were threefold. First, Soviet authorities wanted to ensure a steady supply of food to burgeoning cities. Experiments with partially market-based agriculture in the 1920s under the New Economic Policy had led to increases in agricultural output, but the supply of food depended on the willingness of Russian peasants to sell grain at prices set by the state. A serious crisis in 1928 in securing peasant cooperation compelled Soviet leaders to search for alternatives, including forced seizures of food supplies. Second, the Soviets wanted to launch a program of rapid industrialization but had little available resources to pay for such a program. Exporting food to pay for capital imports thus became a central plank in the Soviet industrialization program. Third, the Russian countryside traditionally had been the basis for revolts against central authority. Soviet authorities therefore wanted to ensure that they had political control over the rural population, which in the 1920s constituted the vast majority of the Soviet people.

Collectivization Under Stalin

In 1929, Soviet authorities embarked on a nationwide program of collectivization. Although collectivization had been encouraged, only 2 percent of peasants had voluntarily entered collective farms. Peasants did not like collectivization because it meant being forced to produce food at minimal prices set by the state and give up their land. Whereas production was organized around family households prior to collectivization, peasants in collective farms would have to join large production brigades working under the direction of farm managers. Collectivization therefore had to be pursued with rigorous force and violence. Those who refused to move into the collective farms were accused of sabotaging grain collection and labeled kulaks. Millions of kulaks were sent off to brutal labor camps, where many died. Frequently, peasants slaughtered their animals rather than transfer them to collective ownership, resulting in a massive drop in the supply of meat, milk, and eggs. The drastic impact of the program led Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to announce in 1930 that officials overseeing collectivization were “dizzy with success” and needed to rein in some of their efforts. Collectivization, however, was quickly pursued with renewed vigor. From 1932 to 1933, Soviet authorities forcibly seized grain from peasants in Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan, resulting in the death by starvation of up to ten million people, an act labeled a genocide by many Ukrainians. At the same time its citizens were starving, the Soviet government was exporting grain to pay for industrialization. By 1936, 90 percent of Soviet agriculture was collectivized.

Economic Impact

Collective and state farms were far larger than small private holdings, and Soviet authorities brought in tractors and machinery to increase efficiency. Stalin predicted that the Soviet Union would become the world’s leading producer of grain. However, because of poor infrastructure and distribution and lack of incentive for collective farm workers, grain production never met expectations. The numbers of livestock were still lower in 1950 than in 1928. Soviet authorities, in an ideological and practical concession, allowed collective farmers to cultivate small private plots of land, which produced a disproportionate amount of the Soviet total of fruits, vegetables, and milk. By the 1960s, the Soviets were compelled to import grain from the United States, and bread lines remained a constant in Soviet life. Although collectivization was a failure in economic terms, it was unquestioned on ideological grounds and did establish communist authority throughout the Soviet Union.

Legacy

Collectivization became a key feature of the Soviet communist model and was pursued in many communist states, including most of Eastern Europe (except Yugoslavia and Poland), China, Vietnam, and Cambodia. As in the Soviet case, it was often resisted by farmers and was accompanied by violence.

China’s economic reforms started in the 1970s by offering market-based incentives to collective farmers to increase food output. After the collapse of communism, land was eventually privatized in most postcommunist states, including Russia, although turning collective farm workers into successful independent farmers has proven difficult and most Russian farmers continue to work in large agricultural cooperatives.

Bibliography:

Conquest, Robert, ed. Agricultural Workers in the USSR. London: Bodley Head, 1968.
Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Davies, R.W. The Socialist Offensive: The Collectivization of Soviet Agriculture 1929–1930. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980.
Fitzpatrick, Sheila. Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village after Collectivization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Karcz, Jerzy. The Economics of Communist Agriculture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979.
Lewin, Moshe. Russian Peasant and Soviet Power: A Study of Collectivization. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1968.