Positive consequences of collectivization in the USSR. Collectivization in the USSR: causes, goals, consequences

Collectivization is the process of uniting small individual peasant farms into large socialist farms based on the socialization of property.

Goals of collectivization:

1) Creation in short term collective farms in order to overcome the state's dependence on individual peasant farms in grain procurements.

2) Transfer of funds from the agricultural sector of the economy to the industrial sector for the needs of industrialization.

3) Elimination of the kulaks as a class.

4) Ensuring industrialization with cheap labor due to the departure of peasants from the countryside.

5) Strengthening the influence of the state on the private sector in agriculture.

Reasons for collectivization.

By the end of the recovery period, the country's agriculture had largely reached pre-war levels. However, the level of its marketability remained lower than before the revolution, because large landowners were destroyed. Small peasant farming mainly provided for its own needs. Towards growth commodity production Only large-scale farming could lead, or increased marketability could be achieved through cooperation. Credit, supply and distribution, and consumer cooperatives began to spread in the countryside even before the revolution, but by 1928 there were not enough of them. The involvement of the broad masses of the peasantry in collective farms allowed the state, Firstly , implement the Marxist idea of ​​transforming small peasant farms into large socialist farms, Secondly , ensure the growth of commodity production and, Thirdly, take control of stocks of grain and other agricultural products.

The XV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in December 1927 proclaimed a course towards collectivization of the countryside. However, no deadlines or specific forms for its implementation have been established. The party leaders who spoke at the congress unanimously noted that small individual peasant farming would exist for quite a long time.

It was planned to create different forms of production cooperation:

§ Commune – high degree socialization of production and life.

§ Artel (collective farm) – socialization of the main means of production: land, equipment, livestock, including small livestock and poultry.

§ TOZ (land cultivation partnership) – common labor for cultivating the land.

But the grain procurement crisis of 1927/1928 changed the attitude of the party leadership towards individual peasant farming. Fierce debate broke out in the party (see topic “Industrialization”).

1) One solution was offered I.Stalin. He spoke out for the maximum concentration of resources due to the tension of the entire economic system, pumping funds from secondary industries (agriculture, light industry).

2) N. Bukharin insisted on the balanced development of the industrial and agricultural sectors of the economy based on a market form of communication between city and countryside with the preservation of individual peasant farms. N.I. Bukharin spoke out against the imbalance and imbalance between industry and agriculture, against directive-bureaucratic planning with its tendency to organize large leaps. Bukharin believed that under the NEP, cooperation through the market would include ever wider sections of peasants into the system economic ties and thereby ensure their growth into socialism. This should have been facilitated by the technical re-equipment of peasant labor, including electrification Agriculture.

N.I. Bukharin and A.I. Rykov proposed the following way out of the procurement crisis of 1927/28:

§ increase in purchase prices,

§ refusal to use emergency measures,

§ a reasonable system of taxes on the village elites,

§ development of large collective farms in grain-producing regions, mechanization of agriculture.

Stalin's leadership rejected this path , regarding it as a concession to the fist.
The seizure of surplus bread began in the image and likeness of the period of “war communism. Peasants who refused to sell grain at state prices were prosecuted as speculators.

At the same time, collectivization began to accelerate ( 1928). In some places, peasants were forced to join collective farms, declaring those who resisted as enemies of Soviet power.

In 1928, the first machine and tractor stations (MTS) began to appear, which provided the peasants paid services cultivating land using tractors. The tractor required the elimination of boundaries between peasant strips, and therefore the introduction of general plowing.

Forced collectivization.

In November 1929, at the Plenum of the Central Committee, Stalin spoke with the article “The Year of the Great Turning Point”, where he stated that a “radical change” had occurred in the collective farm movement: middle peasants had already joined collective farms, they were being created in large numbers. In reality, this was not the case, since only 6.9% of peasants joined collective farms.

After the announcement that a “radical change” had occurred pressure on peasants to force them to join the collective farm increased sharply, and “complete collectivization” began to be carried out ( 1929). Party organizations of the main grain regions, declared areas of complete collectivization (Lower and Middle Volga region, Don, North Caucasus), began to accept obligations to complete collectivization by the spring of 1930, i.e. in two to three months. The slogan “crazy pace of collectivization” appeared. In December 1929, a directive was issued to socialize livestock in areas of complete collectivization. In response, the peasants began to slaughter their livestock en masse, which caused catastrophic damage to livestock.

In January 1930, a resolution was adopted by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) “On the pace of collectivization and measures of state assistance to collective farm construction.” In the main grain-producing regions of the country it was proposed to complete collectivization by the fall of 1930, in other regions - a year later. The resolution declared the main form of collective farming not the agricultural artel, but the commune (most high degree socialization) . Unlike the artel, in the commune not only the means of production, but all property were socialized. Local organizations were encouraged to launch a collectivization competition. Naturally, in this situation, the pace of collective farm construction increased sharply. By March 1, 1930, almost 59% of households were members of collective farms.

The main means of forcing peasants to join collective farms was the threat of dispossession. Since 1928 a policy of limiting the kulaks was pursued. It was subject to increased taxes, and state lending to kulak farms was prohibited. Many wealthy peasants began to sell off their property and move to the cities.

Since 1930 The policy of dispossession begins. Dispossession - these are mass repressions against the kulaks: deprivation of property, arrests, deportations, physical destruction.

On January 30, 1930, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution “On measures to eliminate kulak farms in areas of complete collectivization.” The kulaks were divided into three groups :

Ø counter-revolutionary kulak activist - were subject to dispossession, arrest and imprisonment in camps, and often - death penalty;

Ø the largest fists – moved to remote areas;

Ø all other fists - were evicted outside the collective farm lands.

The property of the dispossessed was placed at the disposal of collective farms.

Dispossession was carried out not by the judiciary, but by the executive branch and the police, with the involvement of communists, the local poor, and worker agitators specially sent to the communist villages (“twenty-five thousand meters”). There were no clear criteria for who was considered a fist. In some cases, rural rich people, whose farms employed several farm laborers, were dispossessed; in others, the basis for dispossession was the presence of two horses in the yard. Often the campaign to “liquidate the kulaks as a class” turned into settling personal scores and the theft of the property of wealthy peasants. In the country as a whole, 12–15% of households were subject to dispossession (in some areas – up to 20%). Real specific gravity kulak farms did not exceed 3–6%. This indicates that the main blow fell on the middle peasantry. Those dispossessed and evicted to the North were considered special settlers. From them special artels were created, the working and living conditions in which were not much different from those in the camps.

The following methods and forms of dispossession were used:

ü administrative coercion to participate in collective farm construction;

ü exclusion from cooperation and confiscation of deposits and shares in favor of the fund for the poor and farm laborers;

ü confiscation of property, buildings, means of production in favor of collective farms;

ü pitting the poor strata of the population against the wealthy peasantry by the party and Soviet authorities;

ü use of the press to organize an anti-kulak campaign.

But even such repressive measures did not always help. Forced collectivization and mass repressions during dispossession caused resistance from the peasants. In the first three months of 1930 alone, more than 2 thousand protests related to violence took place in the country: arson and breaking into collective farm barns, attacks on activists, etc. This forced the Soviet leadership to temporarily suspend collectivization. Stalin March 2, 1930 spoke in Pravda with the article “Dizziness from success”, where coercion to join a collective farm and dispossession of middle peasants were condemned as “excesses”. The blame for this was placed entirely on local workers. The Model Charter of the collective farm was also published, according to which collective farmers received the right to keep a cow, small livestock, and poultry on their personal farmstead.

On March 14, 1930, a resolution was issued by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) “On the fight against distortions of the party line in the collective farm movement.” Those who joined the collective farm under pressure received the right to return to individual farming. A mass exit from collective farms followed. By July 1930, 21% of households remained in them, compared to 59% by March 1. However, a year later the level of collectivization again reached the level of March 1930 This is explained by higher taxes on individual farmers and the difficulties they encountered in trying to get back the plots, livestock and equipment transferred to collective farms.

In 1932 - 1933, a severe famine occurred in the grain regions, which had just experienced collectivization and dispossession. 1930 was a fruitful year, which made it possible not only to supply the cities and send grain for export, but also to leave a sufficient amount of bread for collective farmers. But in 1931, the harvest turned out to be slightly below average, and the volume of grain procurements not only did not decrease, but also increased. This was explained mainly by the desire to export as much grain as possible abroad in order to obtain foreign currency for the purchase industrial equipment . Bread was confiscated, not even leaving the peasants the required minimum

. The same picture was repeated in 1932. The peasants, realizing that the grain would be confiscated, began to hide it. Grain procurements, primarily in the main grain regions, were disrupted. In reply the state resorted to brutal punitive measures. In areas that failed to fulfill grain procurement targets, all available food supplies were taken away from the peasants, dooming them to starvation. Famine gripped the most fertile grain regions, for example, the Lower and Middle Volga region, Don, and Ukraine. Moreover, if the villages died from exhaustion, then in the cities there was only a slight deterioration in supply. The victims of famine were various estimates

, from 4 to 8 million people. In the midst of famine On August 7, 1932, the law “On the protection and strengthening of public (socialist) property” was adopted,

During the famine, the collectivization process stopped. Only in 1934, when the famine ended and agricultural production began to grow again, did peasants resume joining collective farms. Constantly growing taxes on individual farmers and restrictions on their field plots left the peasants no choice. It was necessary to either join collective farms or leave the village. As a result, by 1937, 93% of peasants became collective farmers.

Collective farms were placed under strict control of Soviet and party authorities. Purchasing prices for agricultural products were set at extremely low levels. In addition, collective farms had to pay for MTS services with their products and pay a state tax in kind. As a result, collective farmers worked virtually for free. Each of them, under pain of criminal punishment, was obliged to work a certain minimum of workdays on the collective farm field. It was impossible to leave the village without the consent of the collective farm board, because peasants did not receive passports introduced in 1932. The main source was personal plots.

Results and consequences of collectivization.

1) Solving the country's socio-economic problems over a long period through agriculture and the countryside (the collective farm system is a convenient form of withdrawing maximum volumes of agricultural products, pumping funds from the countryside to industry and other sectors of the economy).

2) Elimination of the layer of independent, wealthy peasants who wanted to work without dictate from the state.

3) Destruction of the private sector in agriculture (93% of peasant farms are united into collective farms), complete nationalization of agricultural production, subordination of all aspects of rural life to the party and state leadership.

4) Abolition of the card system for food distribution in 1935.

5) Alienation of peasants from property, land and the results of their labor, loss of economic incentives to work.

6) Skilled shortage work force, youth in the village.

Thus, collectivization caused heavy damage to agriculture and brought down famine and repression on the peasants. In general, there was a slowdown in the growth rate of agricultural production, and a persistent food problem emerged in the country.

| 2018-05-24 14:10:20

COLLECTIVIZATION OF AGRICULTURE IN THE USSR (briefly)

At the XV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in December 1927, the policy of collectivization of the countryside was proclaimed. There were no specific deadlines or forms for its implementation.

OBJECTIVES OF COLLECTIVIZATION:
Overcoming the state's dependence on individual peasant farms;
Elimination of the kulaks as a class;
Transfer of funds from the agricultural sector to the industrial sector;
Providing industry with labor due to the departure of peasants from the countryside.

REASONS FOR COLLECTIVIZATION:
a) The crisis of 1927. The revolution, civil war and confusion in the leadership led to a record low harvest in the agricultural sector in 1927. This jeopardized the cities' supplies, import and export plans.
b) Centralized management of agriculture. It was very difficult to control millions of individual agricultural farms. This did not suit the new government, as it sought to take control of everything that was happening in the country.

PROGRESS OF COLLECTIVIZATION:

UNIFICATION OF INDIVIDUAL PEASANTS INTO COLLECTIVE FARMS.
The resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of January 5, 1930 “On the pace of collectivization and measures of state assistance to collective farm construction” announced the terms of unification:
Volga region, North Caucasus - 1 year
Ukraine, Kazakhstan, black earth region - 2 years
Other areas - 3 years.
Collective farms became the main form of unification, where land, livestock and equipment became common.
The most ideological workers were sent to the village. “Twenty-five thousanders” are workers of large industrial centers of the USSR, who, in pursuance of the decision of the Communist Party, were sent to economic and organizational work on collective farms in the early 1930s. Then another 35 thousand people were sent.
New institutions were created to control collectivization - Zernotrest, Kolkhoz Center, Tractor Center, as well as the People's Commissariat of Agriculture under the leadership of Ya.A. Yakovleva.

LIQUIDATION OF THE KULASTAS AS A CLASS.
Fists were divided into three categories:
-Counter-revolutionaries. They were considered the most dangerous, exiled to concentration camps, and all property was transferred to the collective farm.
- Rich peasants. The property of such people was confiscated, and the people themselves, along with their families, were resettled to remote regions.
- Peasants with average income. They were sent to neighboring regions, having previously confiscated their property.

COMBATING EXCESSES.
Forced collectivization and dispossession led to massive peasant resistance. In this regard, the authorities were forced to suspend collectivization
On March 2, 1930, the newspaper Pravda published an article by I.V. Stalin, “Dizziness from Success,” where he accused local workers of excesses. On the same day, the Model Charter of the collective farm is published, where collective farmers are allowed to keep small livestock, cows, and poultry on their personal farmstead.
In the fall of 1930, the collectivization process continued.

FAMINE OF THE EARLY 1930S.
In 1932-1933 severe famine began in collectivization areas.
REASONS: drought, livestock decline, increase in state procurement plans, backward technical base.
The peasants, seeing that government procurement plans were growing and therefore everything would be taken away from them, began to hide grain. Upon learning of this, the state took harsh punitive measures. All supplies were taken away from the peasants, dooming them to starvation.
At the height of the famine, on August 7, 1932, the Law on the Protection of Socialist Property, popularly known as the “law of five ears of corn,” was adopted. Any theft of state or collective farm property was punishable by execution, commuted to ten years in prison.
!Only in 1932, according to the law of August 7, more than 50 thousand people were repressed, 2 thousand of whom were sentenced to death

CONSEQUENCES OF COLLECTIVIZATION.
POSITIVE:
- State grain procurements increased by 2 times, and taxes from collective farms - by 3.5, which significantly replenished the state budget.
- Collective farms became reliable suppliers of raw materials, food, capital, and labor, which led to the development of industry.
- By the end of the 1930s, more than 5,000 MTS - machine-tractor stations - were built, which provided collective farms with equipment that was serviced by workers from the cities.
- Industrial leap, a sharp increase in the level of industrial development.

NEGATIVE:
- Collectivization had a negative impact on agriculture: grain production, livestock numbers, productivity, and the number of sown areas decreased.
- Collective farmers did not have a passport, which means they could not travel outside the village, they became hostages of the state, deprived of freedom of movement.
- An entire layer of individual peasants with their culture, traditions, and farming skills was destroyed. A new class came to replace it - the “collective farm peasantry.”
- Large human losses: 7-8 million people died as a result of hunger, dispossession, and resettlement. The incentives to work in the countryside have been lost.
- The formation of administrative-command management of agriculture, its nationalization.
Authors: Sattarov N. and B.

Under the threat of the final collapse of the already destroyed by war and revolution agriculture [see article Decree on Land 1917 and its consequences ] Bolsheviks at the beginning of 1921 they abandoned the methods war communism and at Lenin’s suggestion they move to NEP. Armed men who scoured for bread and ravaged the peasantry food squads are being liquidated. Committees were liquidated even earlier. Prodrazverstka and forced requisitions of grain in the countryside are replaced by a legally established agricultural tax in kind (" tax in kind"). The peasantry is allowed free sale of bread and other agricultural products.

New economic policy immediately had an extremely favorable effect on the national economy of the country and on agriculture in particular. The peasantry gained an interest in labor and confidence that the products of their labor would not be requisitioned by the authorities or forcibly purchased from them for next to nothing. Agriculture was restored within the first 5 years, and the country overcame famine. The sown area exceeded pre-war sizes, bread production per capita turned out to be almost equal to pre-revolutionary levels; The number of livestock was also 16% higher than before the revolution. Gross agricultural output in 1925-1926 was 103% compared to the 1913 level.

During the NEP period, noticeable qualitative changes occurred in agriculture: the share of industrial crops, grasses and root crops increased; the peasantry carries out a number of agricultural activities, the multi-field system is becoming widespread, all in large sizes agricultural machinery and chemical fertilizers begin to be used; The yield of all crops and livestock productivity are rapidly increasing.

The free development of Russian agriculture promised good prospects. However, leaders communist party could not allow the further development of the country's agriculture on the old principles, on the principles of private property and personal initiative. The communist leaders understood well that a strengthened peasantry could become a strong economic and political force capable of leading to the elimination of the communist regime, and, therefore, the communist party in Russia.

Collectivization. Russia on blood

The idea of ​​a communist restructuring of agriculture was born in the bowels of the Bolshevik Party long before this party came to power. During the period of the revolutionary struggle against the tsarist and then the provisional government, the Bolsheviks, using the anti-landowner sentiments of the peasantry and their desire for the division of landowners' lands, pushed this peasantry to revolutionary actions and considered them as their ally. Having seized power, the Bolsheviks deepened the revolution, transformed it from “petty-bourgeois” to “socialist” and now consider the peasantry as a reactionary, anti-proletarian class.

Lenin directly believed that privately owned peasant farming was a condition for the restoration of capitalism in Russia, that peasant “small production gives birth to capitalism and the bourgeoisie constantly, daily, hourly, spontaneously and on a mass scale.”

In order to finish off the remnants of capitalism in Russia, undermine its foundation and forever eliminate the threat of “capitalist restoration”, Lenin puts forward the task of restructuring agriculture on a socialist basis - collectivization:

“While we live in a country of small peasants, there is a stronger economic basis for capitalism in Russia than for communism. This must be remembered. Anyone who has carefully observed the life of the village, in comparison with the life of the city, knows that we have not torn out the roots of capitalism and have not undermined the foundation, the basis of the internal enemy. The latter is based on small-scale farming, and to undermine it, there is one way - to transfer the country’s economy, including agriculture, to a new technical basis, to the technical basis of modern large-scale production... We realized this, and we will bring the matter to the point that the economic moved from small-peasant to large-scale industrial."

In 1923, Lenin's work " About cooperation" In this pamphlet and in other pre-death works, Lenin directly poses the question: “Who will win?” Will the private sector defeat the public sector and thereby deprive the socialist state of its material base, and, therefore, liquidate the socialist state itself, or, conversely, will the public sector defeat and absorb private owners and thereby, having strengthened its material base, eliminate any possibility of capitalist restoration?

Agriculture at that time seemed to be a sea of ​​private individual peasant farms. Here private initiative and the right of private property completely dominated. According to Lenin, with the help of production cooperation (collectivization) of small private peasant farms, it was possible and necessary to carry out a socialist reorganization of the countryside and thereby subordinate the country's agriculture to the interests of the socialist state.

“The power of the state over all major means of production, the power of the state in the hands of the proletariat, the union of this proletariat with many millions of small and minute peasants, ensuring the leadership of this proletariat in relation to the peasantry, etc.... Isn't this all that is necessary to build a socialist society? This is not yet the construction of a socialist society, but this is everything necessary and sufficient for this construction.”

As a faithful student and successor of Lenin’s work, Stalin immediately and completely accepted Lenin’s point of view, considering Lenin’s cooperative plan for transferring the peasantry to the socialist path of development the only the right decision question To eliminate the threat of the restoration of capitalism, according to Stalin, it was necessary

“...strengthening the proletarian dictatorship, strengthening the alliance of the working class and the peasantry...translation of everything National economy on a new technical base, mass cooperation of the peasantry, the development of economic councils, limiting and overcoming the capitalist elements of the city and countryside."

The question of restructuring agriculture in a socialist way and the ways and methods of this restructuring was practically already raised a year after the introduction of the NEP, namely at the XI Party Congress, in March and April 1922. Then it is touched upon and discussed at the XIII Party Congress (1924), at the XIV Party Conference and XIV Party Congress (1925), at the III All-Union Congress of Soviets (1925) and receives its final permission at XV Party Congress in December 1927.

A. Rykov, N. Skrypnik and I. Stalin at the XV Congress of the CPSU(b)

All the statements of the leaders of communism and all the party decisions of that period leave no doubt that collectivization was undertaken by the Bolsheviks mainly for political, and not at all economic, reasons . In any case, the main goal of this restructuring was the desire to “finish off the remnants of capitalism and forever eliminate the threat of restoration.”

Having established full state control over the peasantry, the Bolsheviks hoped to carry out without interference in the countryside any measures pleasing to the party and the communist government - economic, political, cultural - and thereby put both the country's agriculture and the entire peasantry at the service of communism.

In the promotion and approval of the idea of ​​collectivization, however, economic arguments and considerations of communist leaders played an important role. In any case, Stalin’s economic arguments and statistical calculations in his report at the XV Party Congress officially became the final and most compelling arguments in favor of the collective farm restructuring of the countryside.

On XIV Party Congress The Bolsheviks set a course for rapid industrialization countries. In this regard, Soviet leaders made very increased demands on agriculture. According to Stalin, agriculture was to become a solid basis for industrialization. It was supposed to provide a large amount of grain for rapidly growing cities and new industrial centers. In addition, agriculture was required to large quantities: cotton, sugar beets, sunflowers, essential oils, leather, wool and other agricultural raw materials for growing industry. Then agriculture should provide grain and technical raw materials not only for domestic consumption, but also for export, which, in turn, should provide funds for the import of industrial equipment. Finally, agriculture must provide a colossal amount of labor for the rapidly growing industry.

Agriculture, built on old principles, according to the Soviet leaders, could not cope with these grandiose tasks. Stalin, in particular, pointed to a sharp deterioration in the country's grain balance, and a reduction commercial products bread due to the liquidation of landowners' farms and the restrictions and oppression undertaken by the communist government " kulaks».

Not allowing the thought of weakening the policy of oppression of the “kulaks”, Stalin saw a way out of the “crisis”, as it seemed to him, state of pre-collective farm agriculture

“...in the transition of small and dispersed peasant farms to large and united farms based on social cultivation of the land, in the transition to collective cultivation on the basis of new, higher technology... There are no other options.”

Since 1928, immediately after the decision of the XV Party Congress, a powerful campaign has been launched in the country to promote the “advantages” of the collective farm form of agriculture, in comparison with individual peasant agriculture. Thousands of brochures, articles, reports, and lectures are devoted to collectivization issues. In all the literature, in all the reports and speeches of the leaders, it was persistently proven that while maintaining the old order in the countryside, the country cannot solve the grain problem, cannot avoid the famine that threatens it, that in order to solve the national economic problems facing agriculture, agriculture must be restructured to new higher technical base and that this can only be achieved by uniting small, dispersed peasant farms into large production units - collective farms.

Go to the collective farm. Soviet propaganda poster of the collectivization era

At the same time, it was proven that the collective farm form of agriculture should inevitably provide a number of enormous benefits and advantages both for the state and for the peasants themselves. In particular, it was argued that:

1) large consolidated plots of land are incomparably more convenient for use and economic use bulky and expensive machines and that all these machines will be incomparably more accessible to a large agricultural enterprise than to small, economically weak peasant farms;

2) labor productivity in fully mechanized agricultural enterprises, such as collective farms, will inevitably rise by 2-3 times, work on collective farms will become easy and enjoyable;

3) on collective farms it will be incomparably easier to carry out all the necessary agricultural activities, to organize the matter in full accordance with the requirements of science - agronomy and livestock science. As a result, the productivity of all agricultural crops and animal productivity will increase by 2-3, or even 4 times;

4) the collective farm restructuring of agriculture will ensure a rapid and sharp increase in harvests and an increase in livestock production, the country will be inundated with bread, meat, milk and other agricultural products in a short time;

5) the profitability of agriculture will increase enormously; collective farms will be extremely profitable and rich enterprises; the incomes of the peasants will increase immeasurably and the peasants, having turned into collective farmers, will live a cultured, happy and prosperous life, forever freed from kulak bondage and exploitation;

6) the entire Soviet society will benefit enormously from collective farm restructuring; the city will be abundantly supplied with all agricultural products, industry will receive the enormous surplus of labor that is generated in the countryside thanks to mechanization; rich and living on collective farms happy life the peasantry will easily join in all the benefits of culture and will finally get rid of the “idiocy of village life.”

It is difficult to establish to what extent the leaders of communism themselves believed in all these fantastic “inevitable” benefits of collectivization; but it is well known that they were generous with promises. The creator and inspirer of the collective farm “epic” himself, Stalin, in his article “The Year of the Great Turning Point,” published in November 1929 in Pravda, wrote:

“...If the development of collective and state farms continues at an accelerated pace, then there is no doubt that in just three years our country will become one of the most grain-producing countries, if not the most grain-producing country in the world.”

In 1933, at the 1st Congress of Shock Collective Farmers, i.e. already when, with the help of the “increased rate of development of collective farms,” agriculture was ruined and the country was suffocating in the grip hunger, Stalin again promised:

“If we work honestly, work for ourselves, for our collective farms, we will achieve that in just 2-3 years we will raise collective farmers and former poor and former middle peasants to the level of the wealthy, to the level of people who enjoy an abundance of products and lead well cultural life."

These were communist forecasts and promises.

However, this noisy communist propaganda of collective farm advantages among the peasantry had no success and did not arouse any collective farm-cooperative enthusiasm. Artels and communes, intensively planted with the help of organized and financial measures by the government and the party, made up of the poor, workers stuck in the countryside after the revolution and other Soviet activists, turned out to be unviable and disintegrated without even existing for a year. Prosperous peasants, middle peasants and hardworking poor people, despite any persuasion, did not join these artels and communes, and even if they formed their own voluntary cooperatives, they were not at all similar to the future collective farms. Usually these were partnerships for joint cultivation or purchasing and marketing companies, in which neither land, nor livestock, nor any other property was socialized.

But even taking into account these rural cooperatives, which in no way satisfied the party and the government, in mid-1929 only 416 thousand peasant farms were united in collective farms out of more than 25 million farms in Russia at that time, or 1.7% all peasant households.

Collectivization- a process that took place in the USSR in the late 20s - early 30s of the XX century and consisted of the unification of small peasant farms into large collective socialist farms, called collective farms.

History of collectivization in the USSR

As part of the policy of accelerated economic development and socialization of individual property, a decision was made to carry out general collectivization. At the XV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1927, the principles of its implementation were announced.

The period from 1930 to 1933 can be considered the apogee of the collectivization policy, when all peasant farms in the USSR were forcibly united into collective farms. In republics such as Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Moldova and others, which were annexed to the USSR later, the collectivization process was completed only by 1950.

Consequences of collectivization

Collectivization was carried out using harsh and violent methods, since the majority of peasants who had large individual farms did not want to switch to collective work and to an equal distribution of the resulting products.

Collectivization had both positive and negative results. State important goal was the creation of a system for distributing finances in such a way that most of them went to the needs of industrialization. This task was completed, and the industrial sector began to develop at an accelerated pace - the industrial gap between the USSR and Western countries was liquidated.

But the lack of funds in the agricultural sector led to massive starvation of the population. It should be noted that the cause of the famine was not only reduced funding. In the early 30s, there was a terrible harvest failure - non-compliance with agricultural techniques and the reluctance of landless peasants to work led to disastrous results.

Many peasants did not want to unite into collective farms and give their property to the state, so they often completely destroyed all their property, including livestock and crops.

The first attempts at collectivization were made Soviet power immediately after the revolution. However, at that time there were many more serious problems. The decision to carry out collectivization in the USSR was made at the 15th Party Congress in 1927.

Collectivization- the process of uniting individual peasant farms into collective farms (collective farms in the USSR). It was carried out in the USSR in the late 1920s - early 1930s (1928-1933) (the decision on collectivization was made at the XV Congress of the CPSU (b) in 1927), in the western regions of Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, in Estonia, Latvia and In Lithuania, collectivization was completed in 1949-1950.

On January 5, 1930, a resolution was adopted by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, proclaiming “complete collectivization” and “liquidation of the kulaks as a class.” The main means of forcing peasants to unite into collective farms was the threat of “dekulakization” (according to some sources, the total number of “dekulakized” reached 10 million).

The famine of 1932–1933 played an important role in the final victory of the regime over the peasantry. It was caused by the policy of the state, which confiscated all the grain from the village (the minimum number of famine victims was about 2.5 million people).

Famine of 1932-33

Sharp increase in grain exports

Violent methods of collectivization

A sharp increase in state grain procurements, up to the seizure of seed funds

A sharp reduction in livestock numbers and gross grain harvest

Goal of collectivization- establishment of socialist industrial relations in the countryside, eliminating small-scale commodity production to resolve grain difficulties and provide for the country required quantity commercial grain

The reasons for collectivization were, first of all:

1) the need for large investments in industry to carry out the industrialization of the country;

2) the “grain procurement crisis” that the authorities faced in the late 20s.

The collectivization of peasant farms began in 1929. During this period, taxes on individual farms were significantly increased. The process of dispossession began - deprivation of property and, often, deportation of wealthy peasants. There was a massive slaughter of livestock - the peasants did not want to give it to collective farms. Members of the Politburo who objected to harsh pressure on the peasantry (Rykov, Bukharin) were accused of right-wing deviation.

In 1929, Stalin’s article “The Year of the Great Turning Point” appeared in the Pravda newspaper and a course was set for the creation of collective farms and the elimination of the kulaks as a class. In January 1930, a resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks established deadlines for collectivization for the regions. For the country as a whole, this task should have been solved by the end of the first five-year plan. But nothing was said about the means of collectivization and the fate of the kulaks. Therefore, local authorities began to resort to violence.

As part of the implementation of complete collectivization, this obstacle had to be “removed.” On January 30, 1930, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution “On measures to eliminate kulak farms in areas of complete collectivization.”

But, according to Stalin, the process was not going fast enough. In the winter of 1930, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee decided to carry out complete collectivization of agriculture in the USSR as quickly as possible, within 1–2 years. Peasants were forced to join collective farms under the threat of dispossession. The seizure of bread from the village led to a terrible famine in 1932-33, which broke out in many regions of the USSR. During that period, according to minimal estimates, 2.5 million people died.

As a result, collectivization dealt a significant blow to agriculture. Grain production decreased, the number of cows and horses decreased by more than 2 times. From mass dispossession (at least 10 million were dispossessed during the period from 1929 to 1933) and entry into collective farms, only the poorest layers of peasants benefited. The situation in rural areas improved somewhat only during the 2nd Five-Year Plan period. Carrying out collectivization became one of the important stages in the approval of the new regime.

"Bungler 100%"

In the spring of 1930, it became clear that collectivization was threatening disaster. On March 2, Stalin published the article “Dizziness from Success,” in which he blamed local leaders for the failures and condemned “excesses.” In response, peasants began leaving the collective farms in large numbers.

Results

1) in 1932–1933. Famine came to the most grain-producing regions of the country, primarily Ukraine, Stavropol, and the North Caucasus, and more than 3 million people died. Although both grain exports from the country and the volume of government supplies grew steadily;

2) by 1933, more than 60% of peasants were united into collective farms, and by 1937 - about 93%. Collectivization was declared complete;

3) collectivization dealt a huge blow to the Russian countryside (reduction in grain production, livestock numbers, yields, and sown areas). At the same time, state grain procurements increased by 2 times, and taxes on collective farms increased by 3.5 times. In this contradiction there is a genuine tragedy of the Russian peasantry;

4) large, technically equipped farms had advantages. But collective farms, which formally remained voluntary cooperative associations, in fact turned into agricultural state enterprises, which had strict planned targets, were subject to directive management;

5) collective farmers did not receive passports during the reform, which actually attached them to collective farms and deprived them of freedom of movement;

6) industrialization was carried out at the expense of agriculture;

7) collectivization turned collective farms into reliable and uncomplaining suppliers of raw materials, food, capital, and labor;

8) the social layer of individual peasants with its culture and moral values ​​was destroyed.

24. The main periods of the Great Patriotic War, assessment of the main events on the fronts. The meaning and price of the victory of the Soviet people over fascism.

Briefly (2 pages)

History of the Great Patriotic War is divided into three stages: 1) June 22, 1941 – November 19, 1942, i.e. from the German attack on the USSR to the start of the counter-offensive Soviet troops near Stalingrad - disruption of the blitzkrieg, creating conditions for a radical change in the war; 2) November 17, 1942 - December 1943 - a radical turning point during the Second World War and the Second World War, the transfer of strategic initiative to the Soviet Army ended with the crossing of the Dnieper and the liberation of Kyiv; 3) 1944 - May 9, 1945, complete expulsion of the invaders from the territory of the USSR, liberation Soviet Army countries of Central and South-Eastern Europe, final defeat and the surrender of Nazi Germany.

Main periods of the war:

At dawn Sunday June 22, 1941 Soviet state border The German army, numbering about 5.5 million people and consisting of representatives of 12 countries of Western Europe, crossed over. By the end of September the enemy was already near Moscow. Assessing such a rapid retreat of the Red Army, historians point to a number of reasons: the defeat of army command cadres before the war; Stalin's conviction that Hitler would not risk fighting on two fronts in the near future; the lack of preparedness of the Soviet troops for defense; the dominance of the ideological doctrine that the Red Army will fight only on foreign territory and only with “little blood”; a miscalculation in assessing the direction of the main attack: it was expected on the southwestern bridgehead.

The most important achievements of the first stage of the war were the organization of the Red Army's counteroffensive near Moscow on December 6, 1941 and the creation by the end of 1942 of a superiority of Soviet military products over German ones. By the end of 1941, 12.4 million people were evacuated to the East, 2,593 enterprises were relocated, including 1,523 large ones. The tragedy of the first years of the war was the problem of Soviet prisoners of war. The bulk of them, about three million people, were captured in 1941. Order No. 270 declared all Red Army soldiers who were captured as traitors.

The most important battles:

Battle of Moscow 1941 - 1942 (Konev, Budyonny, Zhukov) The battle has two main stages: defensive (September 30 - December 5, 1941) and offensive (December 5, 1941 - April 20, 1942). At the first stage, the goal of the Soviet troops was the defense of Moscow, at the second - the defeat of enemy forces advancing on Moscow.

Main events military history became the victories of Soviet troops at Stalingrad, Kursk, Orel and Kiev. At this stage, the partisan movement provided enormous assistance to the active army. During the entire war, 6,000 partisan detachments were created, and the number of their participants was about 1 million people. On November 28 – December 1, 1943, a meeting of the heads of three states – the USSR, the USA, and England – took place in Tehran, which adopted the “Declaration on joint actions in the war against Germany and post-war cooperation of the three powers.”

Main battles:

Battle of Stalingrad 1942 - 1943 (Zhukov, Voronov, Vatutin) Defensive (July 17 - November 18, 1942) and offensive (November 19, 1942 - February 2, 1943) operations carried out by Soviet troops in order to defend Stalingrad and defeat a large enemy strategic group operating in the Stalingrad direction.

Battle of Kursk 1943 (Zhukov, Konev, Vatutin, Rokossovsky) Defensive (July 5 - 23) and offensive (July 12 - August 23) operations carried out by Soviet troops in the Kursk region to disrupt a major offensive by German troops and defeat the enemy’s strategic grouping. After the defeat of its troops at Stalingrad, the German command intended to conduct a major offensive operation in the Kursk region (Operation Citadel).

3) Liberation of the territory of the USSR and European countries. Victory over Nazism in Europe (January 1944 - May 1945).
At the final stage of the Second World War, during ten military-strategic operations, Soviet troops reached the borders of the USSR by the summer and began a victorious march across Europe. In February 1945, a new summit meeting took place in Yalta. At it, a decision was made on the organization of the UN and the entry of the USSR into the war with Japan after the defeat of Germany. On April 16, 1945, the most ambitious military operation of the Second World War, Berlin, began. On April 25, Soviet and American troops met on the Elbe. On April 30, the Reichstag was taken. On May 9, the Great Patriotic War ended.

The most important operations:

Belarusian operation (June 23 - August 29, 1944). Code name: Operation Bagration. One of the largest strategic offensive operations undertaken by the Soviet high command with the aim of defeating the Nazi Army Group Center and liberating Belarus.

Berlin operation 1945 (Stalin, Zhukov, Rokossovsky) Final strategic offensive, carried out by Soviet troops from April 16 to May 8, 1945. The goals of the operation were to defeat the group of German troops defending in the Berlin direction, capture Berlin and reach the Elbe to unite with the Allied forces. in the Berlin direction, the troops of the Vistula group and the Center group under the command of Colonel General G. Heinritz and Field Marshal F. Scherner occupied the defense.

Full information about the entire war with background:

Germany before the war:

As a result of the global economic crisis, the National Socialist Party NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party) came to power in Germany and launched intensive preparations for revenge for the defeat in the First World War. The victorious countries in the First World War (USA, UK and France), with their policy of non-intervention, contributed to the fact that Germany ceased to comply with the restrictions imposed on the growth of its military potential by the Treaty of Versailles. Germany entered the demilitarized Rhineland unopposed and used military force in Spain to support the fascist putsch. American and British corporations actively invested in the German economy and actually contributed to the creation of a powerful military-economic potential of Nazi Germany.

In March 1938, Germany annexed Austria (Anschluss), and the Munich Treaty was concluded in September of the same year between Germany, Italy, England and France. The Munich Agreement allowed the Nazis to occupy Czechoslovakia (with the participation of Poland).

In August 1939, the USSR concluded a non-aggression pact with Germany, known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (similar agreements had already been concluded by Germany with Poland and some others European countries). According to the secret protocols to the pact (published in 1948 from a copy and in 1993 from the original), the USSR and Germany divided zones of influence in Eastern Europe: the USSR received Estonia, Latvia, Finland and Bessarabia and the east of Poland (up to the Vistula), Germany - Lithuania and western Poland (in September Lithuania was exchanged for the Lublin Voivodeship of Poland).

After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Germany occupied western part Poland, and the USSR - the eastern part (Western Ukraine and Western Belarus). In 1940-1941 Germany captured Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, parts of France, Denmark, Norway, Yugoslavia, and Greece (shared with Italy); entered into military alliances with Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia. For its part, the USSR annexed the Baltic countries, the Vyborg province of Finland, Bessarabia and Bukovina. The militarization of the economy and the entire life of Germany, the seizure of industry and reserves of strategic raw materials of other countries, the forced use of cheap labor from occupied and allied states significantly increased the military-economic power of Nazi Germany.

USSR before the war:

Thanks to accelerated industrialization in the 1930s, a powerful heavy industry was created in the USSR, including defense industry. However, for the production of steel, cast iron, coal, electricity, most types of chemical products Soviet Union inferior to Germany. The gap became even more serious after the industry of almost all of western and central Europe fell into the hands of the Third Reich.

Despite fast development, the USSR lagged behind Germany in many technical areas. This was especially true for communications and radar, shipbuilding, rocketry, and the automotive industry. The majority of the Soviet population (about 66 percent) was still a peasantry with a fairly low level of education - in contrast to the long-urbanized and industrialized Germany.

And, although the USSR was superior to Germany in the production of some types of military equipment (tanks, aircraft, artillery pieces), the overall technical armament of the Soviet troops was lower than that of the Germans, especially in communications, modern optics, heavy vehicles (including those necessary for transportation of tanks), engineering equipment.

The defense power was negatively affected by repressions against the command staff of the Red Army, miscalculations in military development, in determining the likely timing of the outbreak of war, and, above all, the concentration of most of the army at the new state border.

In the first half of 1941, Soviet intelligence constantly reported about an impending German attack, but the Soviet leadership ignored these warnings, since they contained contradictory (and, as shown modern research, sometimes false) information, and partly - false conclusions were drawn from correct and fair information (the false conclusions of the intelligence service chief Golikov were widely known). The peace treaty with Germany, as well as constant statements by the German military about the impending landing on British Isles, gave hope that there would be no war in 1941. Unlike all other German offensive campaigns, the war against the USSR was not preceded by political demands. Stalin believed that Germany would not attack simply because it had no chance of defeating the USSR.

On June 18, 1941, the USSR fleet and border troops were put on alert. Similar order ground forces The Red Army was surrendered only on June 21.

The theory of preparing an attack on Germany by Stalin was first voiced by Hitler in a speech about the beginning of an attack on the USSR, addressed to the Germans. In the 90s, it became the subject of discussion among professional historians due to the publication of books by Viktor Suvorov, in which the author actively proved the theory of preventive war. However, as further research has shown, Suvorov’s writings contain a lot of fraud, false quotes and technical absurdities.