Collectivised Farm Analysis

Assess the impact of collectivised farms on the Russian peasantry

Leszek Kolakowski, a famous philosopher referred to collectivisiation as 'probably the most massive warlike operation ever conducted by a state against its own citizens.' Collectivisation aimed to achieve socialism in the countryside by converting privately owned farms into collectivised farms which were to be run amongst the peasants, requiring them to hand over produce to the state. There were many impacts, mainly negative impacts, of collectivised farms on the Russian peasantry. These include, the economic effects and the effects on the standard of living, the elimination of the kulaks, and the creation of opposition.

Collectivisation was introduced so that the state
However this was not the case, between 1928 and 1934 there was a fall in the production of grain from 73.3 million tonnes to 67.6 million tonnes. With a fall in agricultural production and with the state collecting produce, it was inevitable for there to be a knock on effect on the quantity of food available for areas in the Soviet Union. ''There are hundreds of people bloated with hunger. I don't know how many die every day. Many are so weak that they no longer come out of their houses... We've eaten everything we could lay hands on...The trees have been stripped of their bark and the horse manure has been eaten. We fight over it.'' [V. Kravchenko, I Chose Freedom, 1947]. The author, Kravchenko, became a senior Communist Party official. This strengthens the evidence from the source because as a communist official he would not be likely to be against the idea of collectivisation but still admits there food shortages that followed. The source shows the extremes people would go to in order to survive from starvation which emphasizes the severity of the famine, however 1947 was long after collectivisation was introduced therefore there could be other factors which affected the levels of food in
A lot of the peasants were completely against the idea of collectivisation as it limited the amount of profit they could personally earn and enjoyed the freedom they used to possess in comparison to being on collectivised land. Halfway through 1929, fewer than 5% of the country's peasants were in collective farms. In January 1930 Stalin announced his plans to have 25% of farms producing grain to be collectivised by the end of the year but the Central Committee doubled this prediction which came as a surprise as collectivisation was meant to be voluntary and gradually introduced. ''Oh Brothers! Oh sisters! Don't go into the collective farm. Antichrist will lay his mark upon you three times, once on the hand, the second on the forehead for all to see, and the third on the breast. If you believe in God, don't join the collective farm. And if you are in the collective farm, oh sisters, leave.'' This was a popular rhyme in 1930 that shows the opposition towards collectivisation. From this source you can see that some peasants believed that abiding the Soviet government and joining a collectivised farm is like a sin as the rhyme states that 'antichrist' will punish those who do so. Due to the vast amounts of opposition and resistance to collecetivisation, the Soviet government sent in many reinforcements. 25,000 party activists from cities were sent out to help control the farms in