The economy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was based on a system of state

ownership of the means of production, collective farming, industrial manufacturing and centralized
administrative planning. The economy was characterised by state control of investment, public
ownership of industrial assets, and during the last 20 years of its existence, pervasive corruption and
socioeconomic stagnation.

After Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, continuing economic liberalisation moved the economy
towards a market-oriented socialist economy. All of these factors contributed to the final dissolution of
the Soviet Union in 1991. The stagnation which would consume the last years of the Soviet Union was
caused by poor governance under Leonid Brezhnev and inefficiencies within the planned economy.
When the stagnation began is a matter of debate, but is normally placed either in the 1960s or early
1970s.

From 1928 to 1991 the entire course of the economy was guided by a series of Five-Year Plans.
Within 40 years, the nation evolved from a mainly agrarian society and became one of the world's
three top manufacturers of a large number of capital goods, heavy industrial products and weaponry.
However, the USSR lagged far behind in the output of light industrial production and consumer
durables, mostly because of inability of Gosplan to predict the demand for such products.

The complex demands of the modern economy and inflexible administration overwhelmed and
constrained the central planners. Corruption and data fiddling became common practice among
bureaucracy to report fulfilled targets and quotas thus entrenching the crisis. At its peak, from Stalin to
early Brezhnev, the Soviet economy grew at the same phase as the economies of the United
States, Japan and that of the Russian Empire, its predecessor state.[13]

The USSR's small service industry accounted for 0.82% of the country's GDP in 1990 while the
industrial and agricultural sector contributed 21.9% and 20% respectively in 1991. Agriculture was the
predominant occupation in the USSR before the massiveindustrialization under Joseph Stalin.
The service sector was of low importance in the USSR, with the majority of the labor force employed
in the industrial sector. The labor force totaled 152.3 million people. Major
industrial products include petroleum, steel,motor
vehicles, aerospace, telecommunications, chemicals, electronics, food
processing, lumber, mining, defense industry.
Contents

[hide]

1 History

o 1.1 Early development

o 1.2 New Economic Policy

2 Planning

o 2.1 Drafting the five-year plans

  2.1.1 Time frame

 2.1.2 Guidelines

for the plan

 2.1.3 Gosplan

 2.1.4 Planning

ministries

 2.1.5 Enterprises

 2.1.6 Redrafting

the plan

 2.1.7 Approval of

the plan

 2.1.8 State budget

3 Economic development

o 3.1 1930-1970

o 3.2 1970-1990

4 Agriculture

5 Foreign trade and currency

6 Forms of property

o 6.1 Individual property

o 6.2 Collective property

7 See also

8 Further reading

9 References

10 External links

[edit]History

[edit]Early development

Both the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and later, the Soviet Union, were countries in the process

of industrialization. For both, this development occurred slowly and from a low initial starting point. Because of World War I,

the Russian Revolution and the ensuing Russian Civil War industrial production had only managed to barely recover its 1913

level by 1926.[14] By this time about 18% of the population lived in non-rural areas, although only about 7.5% were employed in

the non-agricultural sector. The remainder were stuck in the low productivity agriculture.[15]

According to David A. Dyker, the Soviet Union of the 1930's can be regarded as a typical developing country, characterized by

low capital investment and most of its population resident in the country side. Part of the reason for low investment rates lay in

the inability to acquire capital from abroad. This in turn, was the result of the repudiation of the debts of the Tsar regime by the

Bolsheviks, as well as the world wide financial troubles. Consequently, any kind of economic growth had to be financed by

domestic savings.[15]
The economic problems in agriculture were further acerbated by natural conditions, such long cold winters across the country,

droughts in the south and acidic soils in the north. However, according to Dyker, the Soviet economy did have "extremely good"

potential in the area of raw materials and mineral extraction, for example in the oil fields in Transcaucasia, and this, along with

a small but growing manufacturing base helped the USSR avoid any kind of balance of payments problems.[15]

[edit]New Economic Policy

Main article: New Economic Policy

The two major economic policy makers of the USSR, Lenin (left) created the NEP while Stalin (right) created the planned economy

By early 1921 it became apparent to the Bolsheviks that forced requisitioning of grain had resulted in low agricultural production

and widespread opposition. As a result, the decision was made by Lenin and the Politburo to try an alternative

approach."[16] The so-called New Economic Policy(NEP) was approved at the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party

(Bolsheviks)[17]

Everything except "the commanding heights", as Lenin put it, of the economy would be privatized. "The commanding heights"

included foreign trade,heavy industry, communication and transport among others.[16] The NEP encountered strong resistance

within the Bolshevik party. Lenin had to persuade communist skeptics that "state communism" was a necessary step in

achieving communism, while he himself harbored suspicions that the policy could be abused by private businessmen

("NEPmen").[18]

As novelist Andrei Platonov, among others, noted, the improvements were immediate. Rationing cards and queues which had

become hallmarks ofwar communism had disappeared. However, due to prolonged war, low harvests, and several natural

disasters the Soviet economy was still in trouble, particularly its agricultural sector. In 1921 widespread famine broke out in

the Volga-Ural region. The Soviet government changed its previous course and allowed international relief to come in from

abroad, and established a special committee chaired by prominent communists and non-communists alike. Despite this, an

estimated 5 million people died in the famine.[19]

[edit]Planning

Based on a system of state ownership, the Soviet economy was managed through Gosplan (the State Planning

Commission), Gosbank (the State Bank) and the Gossnab (State Commission for Materials and Equipment Supply). Beginning

in 1928, the economy was directed by a series of five-year plans, with a brief attempt at seven-year planning. For every
enterprise, planning ministries (also known as the "fund holders" or fondoderzhateli) defined the mix of economic inputs (e.g.,

labor and raw materials), a schedule for completion, all wholesale prices and almost all retail prices.

Industry was long concentrated after 1928 on the production of capital goods through metallurgy, machine manufacture, and

chemical industry. In Soviet terminology, the capital goods were known as group A goods, or means of production. This

emphasis was based on the perceived necessity for a very fast industrialization and modernization of the Soviet Union. After

the death of Stalin in 1953, consumer goods (group B goods) received more emphasis. For further details see consumer goods

in the Soviet Union.

Most information in the Soviet economy flowed from the top down. There were several mechanisms in place for producers and

consumers to provide input and information that would help in the drafting of economic plans (as detailed below), but the

political climate was such that few people ever provided negative input or criticism of the plan. Thus, Soviet planners had very

little reliable feedback which they could use to determine the success of their plans. This meant that economic planning was

often done based on faulty or outdated information, particularly in sectors with large numbers of consumers. As a result, some

goods tended to be underproduced, leading to shortages (defitsit, дефицит), while other goods were overproduced and

accumulated in storage. Low-level managers often did not report such problems to their superiors, relying instead on each

other for support. Some factories developed a system of barter and either exchanged or shared raw materials and parts without

the knowledge of the authorities and outside the parameters of the economic plan.

Heavy industry was always the focus of the Soviet economy, even in its later years. The fact that it received special attention

from the planners, combined with the fact that industrial production was relatively easy to plan even without minute feedback,

led to significant growth in that sector. The Soviet Union became one of the leading industrial nations of the world. Industrial

production was disproportionately high in the Soviet Union compared to Western economies. However, the production of

consumer goods was disproportionately low. Economic planners made little effort to determine the wishes of household

consumers, resulting in severe shortages of many consumer goods. Whenever these consumer goods would become available

on the market, consumers routinely had to stand in long lines (queues) to buy them.[citation needed] A black market developed for

goods that were particularly sought after but constantly underproduced (such as cigarettes).

[edit]Drafting the five-year plans

Under Stalin's tutelage, a complex system of planning arrangements had developed since the introduction of the first five-year

plan in 1928. Until the late-1980s and early-1990s, when economic reforms backed by Soviet leader Mikhail

Gorbachev introduced significant changes in the traditional system (see Perestroika), the allocation of resources was directed

by a planning apparatus rather than through the interplay of market forces.

[edit]Time frame

From the Stalin era through the late 1980s, the five-year plan integrated short-range planning into a longer time frame. It

delineated the chief thrust of the country's economic development and specified the way the economy could meet the desired

goals of the Communist Party. Although the five-year plan was enacted into law, it contained a series of guidelines rather than

a set of direct orders.

Periods covered by the five-year plans coincided with those covered by the gatherings of the CPSU Party Congress. At each

CPSU Congress, the party leadership presented the targets for the next five-year plan. Thus, each plan had the approval of the

most authoritative body of the country's leading political institution.

[edit]Guidelines for the plan

The Central Committee of the CPSU and, more specifically, its Politburo, set basic guidelines for planning. The Politburo

determined the general direction of the economy via control figures (preliminary plan targets), major investment projects

(capacity creation), and general economic policies. These guidelines were submitted as a report of the Central Committee to

the Congress of the CPSU to be approved there.

After the approval at the congress, the list of priorities for the five-year plan was processed by the Council of Ministers, which

constituted the government of the USSR. The Council of Ministers was composed of industrial ministers, chairmen of various

state committees, and chairmen of agencies with ministerial status. This committee stood at the apex of the vast economic

administration, including the state planning apparatus, the industrial ministries, the trusts (the intermediate level between the

ministries and the enterprises), and finally, the state enterprises. The Council of Ministers elaborated on Politburo plan targets

and sent them to Gosplan, which gathered data on plan fulfillment.

[edit]Gosplan
Main article: Gosplan

Combining the broad goals laid out by the Council of Ministers with data supplied by lower administrative levels regarding the

current state of the economy, Gosplan worked out, through trial and error, a set of preliminary plan targets. Among more than

twenty state committees, Gosplan headed the government's planning apparatus and was by far the most important agency in

the economic administration. The task of planners was to balance resources and requirements to ensure that the necessary

inputs were provided for the planned output. The planning apparatus alone was a vast organizational arrangement consisting of

councils, commissions, governmental officials, specialists, etc. charged with executing and monitoring economic policy.

The state planning agency was subdivided into its own industrial departments, such as coal, iron, and machine building. It also

had summary departments such as finance, dealing with issues that crossed functional boundaries. With the exception of a

brief experiment with regional planning during the Khrushchev era in the 1950s, Soviet planning was done on a sectoral basis

rather than on a regional basis. The departments of the state planning agency aided the agency's development of a full set of

plan targets along with input requirements, a process involving bargaining between the ministries and their superiors.

[edit]Planning ministries

Economic ministries performed key roles in the Soviet organizational structure. When the planning goals had been established

by Gosplan, economic ministries drafted plans within their jurisdictions and disseminated planning data to the subordinate

enterprises. The planning data were sent downward through the planning hierarchy for progressively more detailed elaboration.

The ministry received its control targets, which were then disaggregated by branches within the ministry, then by lower units,

eventually until each enterprise received its own control figures (production targets).

[edit]Enterprises

Enterprises were called upon to develop in the final period of state planning in the late-1980s and early-1990s (even though

such participation was mostly limited to a rubber-stamping of prepared statements during huge pre-staged meetings). The
enterprises' draft plans were then sent back up through the planning ministries for review. This process entailed intensive

bargaining, with all parties seeking the target levels and input figures that best suited their interests.

[edit]Redrafting the plan

After this bargaining process, Gosplan received the revised estimates and re-aggregated them as it saw fit. Then, the redrafted

plan was sent to the Council of Ministers and the Party's Politburo and Central Committee Secretariat for approval. The Council

of Ministers submitted the Plan to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and the Central Committee submitted the plan to the

Party Congress, both for rubber stamp approval. By this time, the process had been completed and the plan became law.

[edit]Approval of the plan

The review, revision, and approval of the five-year plan were followed by another downward flow of information, this time with

the amended and final plans containing the specific targets for each sector of the economy. Implementation began at this point,

and was largely the responsibility of enterprise managers.

[edit]State budget

The national state budget was prepared by the Ministry of Finance of the USSR by negotiating with its all-Union local

organizations. If the state budget was accepted by the Economic Committee of the Supreme Soviet, to then get adopted.[20]

[edit]Economic development

An assembly-line worker works on the axle of a Moskvich car, made by AZLK. Enterprises in the Soviet Union were more than just places of work; they were

responsible for a broad range of social welfare functions—building and maintaining housing for their workforces, and managing health, recreational,

educational, and similar facilities.

Starting in 1928, the five-year plans began building a heavy industrial base at once in an underdeveloped economy without

waiting years for capital to accumulate through the expansion of light industry, and without reliance on external financing. The

country now became industrialized at a hitherto unprecedented pace, surpassing Germany's pace of industrialization in the

19th century and Japan's earlier in the 20th century.

After the reconstruction of the economy (in the wake of the destruction caused by the Russian Civil War) was completed, and

after the initial plans of further industrialisation were fulfilled, the explosive growth slowed down, but still generally surpassed

most of the other countries in terms of total material production (GNP)[citation needed] until the period of Brezhnev stagnation in the

1970s and 1980s.

Led by the creation of NAMI, and by the GAZ copy of the Ford Model A in 1929,[21][22] industrialization came with the extension

of medical services, which improved labor productivity. Campaigns were carried out against typhus, cholera, and malaria; the
number of physicians increased as rapidly as facilities and training would permit; and death and infant mortality rates steadily

decreased.

[edit]1930-1970

As weighed growth rates, economic planning performed very well during the early and mid-1930s, World War II-era

mobilization, and for the first two decades of the postwar era. The Soviet Union became the world's leading producer

of oil, coal, iron ore, and cement;manganese, gold, natural gas and other minerals were also of major importance. However,

information about the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 was suppressed by the Soviet authorities until perestroika. In 1933 workers'

real earnings sank to about one-tenth of the 1926 level.[23] Common and political prisoners in labor camps were forced to do

unpaid labor, and communists and Komsomol members were frequently "mobilized" for various construction projects.

In 1961, a new redenominated Soviet ruble was issued. It maintained exchange parity with the Pound Sterling until the

dissolution of the USSR in 1991. After a new leadership, headed byLeonid Brezhnev, had come to power, attempts were made

to revitalize the economy through an economic reform. Starting in 1965, enterprises and organizations were made to rely on

economic methods of profitable production, rather than follow orders from the state administration. By 1970, the Soviet

economy had reached its zenith and was estimated at about 60 per cent of the size of the USA[citation needed] in terms of the

estimated commodities (like steel and coal). In 1989, the GDP of the Soviet Union was $2,500 Billion[24] while the GDP of the

United States was $4,862 Billion[25] with per capita income figures as $8,700 and $19,800 respectively.

[edit]1970-1990

USSR and FSU GDP

The Brezhnev Stagnation in the mid-70's was aggravated by the war in Afghanistan in 1979 and led to a period of economic

standstill between 1979 and 1985. Soviet military buildup at the expense of domestic development kept the USSR's GDP at the

same level during the first half of the 80's.[citation needed] The Soviet planned economy was not tailored at a sufficient pace to the

demands of the more complex modern economy it had helped to forge.

As the economy grew, the volume of decisions facing planners in Moscow became overwhelming.[citation needed] The cumbersome

procedures for bureaucratic administration did not enable the free communication and flexible response required at the

enterprise level for dealing with worker alienation, innovation,

customers, and suppliers. During 1975-85, corruption and data fiddling

Comparison between USSR and US economies (1989)
became common practice among bureaucracy to report satisfied according to 1990 CIA The World Factbook[10]
USSR US
targets and quotas thus entrenching the crisis.[citation needed]
GDP (1989 - millions $) 2,659,500 5,233,300

Calls for greater freedom for managers to deal directly with suppliers Population (July 1990) 290,938,469 250,410,000
GDP Per Capita ($) 9,211 21,082
and customers were gaining influence among reform-minded
Labor force (1989) 152,300,000 125,557,000
Communist cadres during the mid-1970s and 1980s were largely

ignored.
However, with the ascent of Mikhail Gorbachev as General Secretary of the Communist Party and the economic reform during

the Perestroika, Soviet Nominal GDP rose sharply from $900 billion to $1.5 trillion in a period of five years.[citation needed] According

to CIA estimates by 1989 the size of the Soviet economy was roughly half that in the United States of America [10]. According to

the European Comparison Program, administered by the U.N, the size of the Soviet Economy was 36% of that in the United

States in 1990 [26]

[edit]Agriculture

Main article: Agriculture in the Soviet Union

n the Soviet Union, collectivization was introduced by Stalin in the late 1920s as a way, according to the theories of communist

leaders, to boost agricultural production through the organization of land and labor into large-scale collective farms (kolkhozy).

At the same time, Soviet leaders argued that collectivization would free poor peasants from economic servitude under

the kulaks.

Stalin believed that the goals of collectivization could be achieved voluntarily, but when the new farms failed to attract the

number of peasants hoped, the government blamed the oppression of the kulaks and resorted to forceful implementation of the

plan, by murder and wholesale deportation of farmers to Siberia. Millions of unfortunates who remained died of starvation, and

the centuries-old system of farming was destroyed in one of the most fertile regions in the world for farming, once called "the

breadbasket of Europe". The immediate effect of forced collectivization was to reduce grain output and almost halve livestock,

thus producing major famines in 1932 and 1933.

In 1932-1933, an estimated 3.1–7 million people, mainly in Ukraine, died from famine after Stalin forced the peasants into the

collectives (Ukrainians call this famine Holodomor). Most modern historians believe that this famine was caused by the sudden

disruption of production brought on by collective farming policies and mass seizure of property (the proceeds of which were

used, according to Aleksandr Bushkov, to accelerate industrial development). These policies were implemented by the

government of the Soviet Union, of which Ukraine was then a part. Some believe that, due to unreasonably high

government quotas, farmers often received far less for their labor than they did before collectivization, and some refused to

work; others retaliated by destroying their crops. It was not until 1940 that agricultural production finally surpassed its pre-

collectivization levels.[4][5]

Since Soviet agriculture is replete with failures, Western critics argue that economic systems based on planning and social

ownership are unworkable in theory and practice.[6]

Anyway, "failure" is a term which indicates nothing about the magnitude of goals set and results achieved. For instance, the

meat target set in the 1982-1990 Soviet Food Program was an average annual output of 20.25 million tons. The Food Program

target was not met, though production in 1990 hit 20 million tons.[7] Hence, the plan failed. However, focusing exclusively on the

failure of the meat target overlooks the important facts that in 1990 meat output was up some 30% over that in 1981 (20 million

vs. 15.2 million tons) and that 1990s per capita meat consumption (67 kg)[8] was up some 18% over that of 1981.

To sum up, an important progress with respect to the goal of increasing meat production and consumption was obtained

through the socialist agricultural system even if the plan officially "failed".[9]
Besides, between 1956 and 1970 the Soviet Union was a net exporter of grain, exporting (net) circa 3.5 million tons per

year[10] and from 1970 onward it became an importer. Import of net grain increased from circa 9.88 million tons per year

between 1970 and 1974 to 20.52 million in the 1975-1979 period, to 30.88 in 1980-1984 and to 32.1 million tons in the four-

year period 1985 1988 (USDA 1989:49). Before 1970, net meat imports of the USSR were small but by 1990 they were

approaching the levels of the United States. These increases in imports of grain and meat were actually not triggered from

declining production. Grain output increased from circa 181.6 million tons between 1971 and 1975 to an average 206.9 million

in the period 1986-89. Moreover, meat production rose from 14.0 million tons in 1971-75 to 19.2 million tons in 1986-89, id est,

a 37% increase. The imports were triggered by the increasing demand for meat which accompanied rather sharp increases in

income. In fact, In the inception of 1965, when the average wage was 96.5 rubles per month, meat was an expensive item for

the family.[11] In the setting of the late 1980s when the average wage had risen to 257 rubles per month,[12] it was relatively much

cheaper and therefore people have purchased much more meat. Ironically, increased shortages have grown hand in hand with

increased consumption because meat is so cheap.

Agriculture was organized into a system of collective farms (kolkhozes) and state farms (sovkhozes). Organized on a large

scale and highly mechanized, the Soviet Union was one of the world's leading producers of cereals, although bad harvests (as

in 1972 and 1975) necessitated imports and slowed the economy. The 1976-1980 five-year plan shifted resources to

agriculture, and 1978 saw a record harvest followed by another drop in overall production in 1979 and 1980 back to levels

attained in 1975. Cotton, sugar beets, potatoes, and flax were also major crops.

However, despite immense land resources, extensive machinery and chemical industries, and a large rural work force, Soviet

agriculture was relatively unproductive,[original research?]hampered in many areas by the climate (only 10 percent of the Soviet

Union's land was arable), and poor worker productivity since the collectivization in the 1930s.[citation needed] Lack of transport

infrastructure also caused much waste.

A view of poor performance of Soviet collective farms is provided by two historians, M. Heller and A. Nekich ("Utopia in Power,

History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to Present," Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1986). The authors report that in 1979, 28% of the

Soviet agricultural production was from small plots of private citizens, which represented less than 1% of the cultivated land. So

according to them, collective farms operated very inefficiently.

[edit]Foreign trade and currency

Main article: Foreign trade of the Soviet Union

Largely self-sufficient, the Soviet Union traded little in comparison to its economic strength. However, trade with noncommunist

countries increased in the 1970s as the government sought to compensate gaps in domestic production with imports.

In general, fuels, metals, and timber were exported. Machinery, consumer goods, and sometimes grain were imported. In the

1980s trade with the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) member states accounted for about half the

country's volume of trade. Although often associated with alcohol production, such as that of vodka, none of these were leading

Soviet exports.

The Soviet currency (ruble) was non-convertible after 1932 (when trade in gold-convertible "chervonets", introduced by Lenin

in NEP years was suspended) until the late eighties. It was impossible (both for citizens and state-owned businesses) to freely
buy or sell foreign currency even though the "exchange rate" was set and published regularly. Buying or selling foreign

currency on a black market was a serious crime until the late eighties. Individuals who were paid from abroad (for example

writers whose books were published abroad) normally had to spend their currency in a foreign-currency-only chain of state-

owned "Beryozka" ("Birch-tree") stores. Once a free conversion of currency was allowed, the exchange rate plummeted from its

official values by almost a factor of 10.

Overall, the banking system was highly centralized and fully controlled by a single state-owned Gosbank, responsive to the

fulfillment of the government's economic plans. Soviet banksfurnished short-term credit to state-owned enterprises.

[edit]Forms of property

There were two basic forms of property in the Soviet Union: individual property and collective property. These differed greatly in

their content and legal status. According to communist theory, capital (means of production) could not be individually owned,

with certain negligible exceptions. In particular, after the end of a short period of the New Economic Policy and

withcollectivization completed, all industrial property and virtually all land were collective.

Land in rural areas was allotted for housing and some sustenance farming, and persons had certain rights to it, but it was not

their property in full. In particular, in kolkhozes andsovkhozes there was a practice to rotate individual farming lots with

collective lots. This resulted in situations where people would ameliorate, till and cultivate their lots carefully, adapting them to

small-scale farming, and in 5–7 years those lots would be swapped for kolkhoz ones, typically with exhausted soil due to

intensive, large-scale agriculture. There was an extremely small number of remaining individual farmsteads (khutors хутор),

located in isolated rural areas in the Baltic states, Ukraine, Siberia and cossack lands.

[edit]Individual property

To distinguish "capitalist" and "socialist" types of property ownership further, two different forms of individual property were

recognized: private property (частная собственность, chastnaya sobstvennost) and personal property (личная

собственность, lichnaya sobstvennost). The former encompassed capital (means of production), while the latter described

everything else in a person's possession. This distinction has been a source of confusion when interpreting phrases such

as "socialism (communism) abolished private property"; one might conclude that all individual property was abolished, when

this was in fact not the case.

[edit]Collective property

There were several forms of collective ownership, the most significant being state property, kolkhoz property, and cooperative

property. The most common forms of cooperative property were housing cooperatives (жилищные кооперативы) in urban

areas, consumer cooperatives (потребительская кооперация, потребкооперация), and rural consumer societies(сельские

потребительские общества, сельпо).

[edit]See also
General

 History of the Soviet Union

 Enterprises in the Soviet Union

 Eastern Bloc economies

 Kosygin reform

Organisations

 Five-Year Plans of the USSR

 State Planning Committee of the USSR

 Ministry of Finance of the USSR

Post-communism

 Economy of post-Soviet Russia

 History of post-Soviet Russia

Classifications of Soviet economy and society

 Bureaucratic collectivism

 Coordinatorism

 State capitalism

 State socialism

 Degenerated workers state

[edit]Further reading

 Marshall Goldman, What Went Wrong With Perestroika (New York: Norton, 1991).

 Marshall Goldman, Lost Opportunity: Why Economic Reforms in Russia Have Not Worked (New York: W. W. Norton,

1994).

 Paul Gregory and Robert Stuart, Soviet and Post Soviet Economic Structure and Performance 7th edition (Boston:

Addison Wesley, 2001).

 S. Kara-Murza. Soviet Civilization: From 1917 to the Great Victory (in Russian) = Сергей Кара-Мурза. Советская

цивилизация. От начала до Великой Победы. - 2004 (ISBN 5-699-07590-9)

 S. Kara-Murza. Soviet Civilization: From the Great Victory Till Our Time (in Russian) = Сергей Кара-

Мурза. Советская цивилизация. От Великой Победы до наших дней. - 2004 (ISBN 5-699-07591-7)

 Paul Kennedy. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987).

 Robert Rutland, The myth of the plan: Lessons of Soviet planning experience (London: Hutchinson, 1985).

[edit]References

1. ^ a b GDP - Million 1990. CIA Factbook. 1991. Retrieved June 12, 2010.

2. ^ GDP - Million 1991. CIA Factbook. 1992. Retrieved June 12, 2010.

3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Soviet Union Economy 1991. CIA Factbook. 1992. Retrieved June 12, 2010.

4. ^ GDP Per Capita 1991. CIA Factbook. 1992. Retrieved June 12, 2010.

5. ^ Inflation Rate % 1991. CIA Factbook. 1992. Retrieved June 12, 2010.
 6. ^ Labor Force 1991. CIA Factbook. 1992. Retrieved June 12, 2010.

7. ^ Exports Million 1991. CIA Factbook. 1992. Retrieved June 12, 2010.

8. ^ Imports Million 1991. CIA Factbook. 1992. Retrieved June 12, 2010.

9. ^ "Budget External Debt Million 1991". CIA Factbook. 1992. Retrieved June 12, 2010.

10. ^ a b c "1990 CIA World Factbook". Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 23 July, 2010.

11. ^ Budget Revenues Million Million 1991. CIA Factbook. 1992. Retrieved June 12, 2010.

12. ^ Budget Expenditures Million 1991. CIA Factbook. 1992. Retrieved June 12, 2010.

13. ^ Daniels, Robert Vince (1993). The End of the Communist Revolution. Routledge. p. 63. ISBN 0415061504.

14. ^ Dyker 1992, p. 2.

15. ^ a b c Dyker 1992, p. 3.

16. ^ a b Moss 2005, p. 228.

17. ^ Hosking 1993, p. 119.

18. ^ Moss 2005, p. 227.

19. ^ Hosking 1993, p. 120.

20. ^ the IMF (1991). A Study of the Soviet economy. 1. International Monetary Fund (IMF). pp. 287. ISBN 9264134689.

21. ^ Georgano, G. N. Cars: Early and Vintage, 1886-1930. (London: Grange-Universal, 1985)

22. ^ Wikipedia, GAZ

23. ^ The decline and demise of the Comintern , The Australian National University

24. ^ [1]

25. ^ [2]

26. ^ http://www.allbusiness.com/government/630097-1.html

[edit]External links

 Douglas B. Reynolds, "Soviet Economic Decline: Did an Oil Crisis Cause the Transition in the Soviet Union?"

 Paul Craig Roberts, "My Time With Soviet Economics."

 Andre Gunder Frank, "What Went Wrong in the 'Socialist' East?"

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Collectivization in the Soviet Union was a policy pursued under Stalin between 1928 and 1940. The goal of this policy was to

consolidate individual land and labour into collective farms (Russian: колхо́ з, kolkhoz, plural kolkhozy). The Soviet leadership was

confident that the replacement of individual peasant farms by kolkhozy would immediately increase the food supply for urban

populations, the supply of raw materials for processing industry, and agricultural exports. Collectivization was thus regarded as the

solution to the crisis of agricultural distribution (mainly in grain deliveries) that had developed since 1927. This problem became more

acute as the Soviet Union pressed ahead with its ambitious industrialization program.[1]

Already in the early 1940s over 90% of agricultural land was "collectivized" as rural households entered collective farms with their land,

livestock, and other assets. The sweeping collectivization often involved tremendous human and social costs while the issue of

economic advantages of collective farms remained largely undecided.

The idea of collective farms was seen by peasants as a revival of serfdom[2] and has since been perceived by historians such as Lynne

Viola as a Civil War of peasant against Bolshevik Government and the attempted colonisation of the countryside.[3]

Contents

[hide]

1 Background

2 The crisis of 1928

3 The all-out drive, winter 1929-30

4 "Dizzy with Success"

5 Peasant reaction

6 Results

o 6.1 Resistance to collectivization and

consequences

o 6.2 Siberia
 o 6.3 Central Asia and Kazakhstan

7 Progress of collectivization in the USSR 1927-

1940

8 Decollectivization under German occupation

9 See also

10 Notes

11 Further reading

12 External links

13 Further reading

[edit]Background

Repression in the Soviet Union

General

Political repression •Economic repression •Ideological repression

Political repression

Red Terror • Collectivization •Great Purge •Population transfer in the

Soviet Union •Gulag •

Mass killings under Communist regimes •

Ideological repression
Religion in the Soviet Union •Suppressed research in the Soviet
Union • Censorship in the Soviet Union •Censorship of images in the Soviet
Union
v•d•e

After emancipation in 1861, peasants gained control of about half of the land they had previously cultivated, and began to ask for the

redistribution of all land.[4] Aspirations to land for all the peasants, however, would be difficult to achieve; given the simple cultivation

technology of Russian peasants at the time, there wasn't enough land to sustain everyone who wanted their own farm.[4] The Stolypin

agricultural reforms between 1905 and 1914 gave incentives for the creation of large farms, but these ended during World War I.

The Russian Provisional Government accomplished little during the difficult wartime months, though Russian leaders continued to

promise redistribution. Peasants began to turn against the Provisional Government and organized themselves into land committees,

which together with the traditional peasant communes became a powerful force of opposition. When Vladimir Lenin returned to Russia

on April 3, 1917, he promised the people "Peace, Bread, and Land," the latter appearing as a promise to the peasants for the

redistribution of confiscated land.

During the period of war communism, however, the policy of Prodrazvyorstka meant peasantry were obligated to surrender the

surpluses of almost any kind of agricultural produce for a fixed price. When the Russian Civil War ended, the economy changed with

the New Economic Policy (NEP) and specifically, the policy of prodnalog or "food tax." This new policy was designed to re-build morale

among embittered farmers, and lead to increased production, while as a progressive tax, those with more money paid more.
Peasants having lunch in a commune.

Until this time, the Bolsheviks had little choice but to allow the peasants to take the land and farm it privately.[4] In the 1920s, however,

they began to lean toward the idea of collective agriculture. The pre-existing communes, which periodically redistributed land, did little to

encourage improvement in technique, and formed a source of power beyond the control of the Soviet government. Although the income

gap between wealthy and poor farmers did grow under the NEP, it remained quite small, but the Bolsheviks began to take aim at the

wealthy kulaks.Clearly identifying this group was difficult, though, since only about 1% of the peasantry employed labourers (the

basic Marxist definition of acapitalist), and 80% of the country's population were peasants.[4]

The equal land shares among the peasants gave rise to food shortages in the cities. Although grain had nearly returned to pre-war

production levels, the large estates who had produced it for urban markets had been divided up.[4] Not interested in acquiring money to

purchase overpriced goods, the peasants chose to eat their produce rather than sell it, so city dwellers only saw half the grain that had

been available before the war.[4] Before the revolution, peasants controlled only 2,100,000 km² divided into 16 million holdings,

producing 50% of the food grown in Russia and consuming 60%. After the revolution, the peasants controlled 3,140,000 km² divided

into 25 million holdings, producing 85% of the food, but consuming 80% of what they grew.[5]

The Soviet Communist Party had never been happy with private agriculture and saw collectivization as the best remedy for the problem.

Lenin claimed "Small-scale production gives birth to capitalism and the bourgeoisie constantly, daily, hourly, with elemental force, and in

vast proportions."[6] Apart from ideological goals, Stalin also wished to embark on a program of rapid heavy industrialization which

required larger surpluses to be extracted from the agricultural sector in order to feed a growing industrial work force and to pay for

imports of machinery.[7] The state also hoped to export grain, a source of foreign currency needed to import technologies necessary for

heavy industrialization.[citation needed] Social and ideological goals would also be served though mobilization of the peasants in a co-

operative economic enterprise which would produce higher returns for the State and could serve a secondary purpose of providing

social services to the people.

[edit]The crisis of 1928

Soviet propaganda poster: "Comrade, come and join the kolkhoz!"

This demand for more grain resulted in the reintroduction of requisitioning which was resisted in rural areas. In 1928 there was a 2

million ton shortfall in grains purchased by the state. Stalin claimed the grain had been produced but was being hoarded by "kulaks."

Instead of raising the price, the Politburo adopted an emergency measure to requisition 2.5 million tons of grain.

The seizures of grain discouraged the peasants and less grain was produced during 1928 and again the government resorted to

requisitions. Much of the grain being requisitioned from middle peasants as sufficient quantities were not in the hands of the "kulaks." In

1929, especially after the introduction of the Ural-Siberian Method of grain procurement, resistance to grain seizures became

widespread with some violent incidents of resistance. Also, massive hoarding (burial was the common method) and illegal transfers of

grain took place.[citation needed]

Faced with the refusal to hand grain over, a decision was made at a plenary session of the Central Committee in November 1929 to

embark on a nationwide program of collectivization.

Several forms of collective farming were suggested by the People's Commissariat for Agriculture (Narkomzem), distinguished according

to the extent to which property was held in common:[8]

 Association for Joint Cultivation of Land (Товарищество по совместной обработке земли, ТОЗ/TOZ), where only land was

in common use;

 agricultural artel (initially in a loose meaning, later formalized to become an organizational basis of kolkhozes, via The

Standard Statute of an Agricultural Artel adopted by Sovnarkom in March 1930);

 agricultural commune, with the highest level of common use of resources.

Also, various cooperatives for processing of agricultural products were installed.

In November 1929, the Central Committee decided to implement accelerated collectivization in the form of kolkhozes and sovkhozes.

This marked the end of the New Economic Policy(NEP), which had allowed peasants to sell their surpluses on the open market. Stalin

had many so-called "kulaks" transported to collective farms in distant places to work in agricultural labor camps. It has been calculated
that one in five of these deportees, many of them women and children, died. In all, 6 million peasants lost their lives to the conditions of

the transportation or the conditions of the work camps[citation needed]. In response to this, many peasants began to resist, often arming

themselves against the activists sent from the towns. As a form of protest, many peasants preferred to slaughter their animals for food

rather than give them over to collective farms, which produced a major reduction in livestock.

Collectivization had been encouraged since the revolution, but in 1928, only about one percent of farm land was collectivized, and

despite efforts to encourage and coerce collectivization, the rather optimistic First Five Year Plan only forecast 15 percent of farms to be

run collectively.[4]

[edit]The all-out drive, winter 1929-30

The situation changed incredibly quickly in the fall of 1929 and winter of 1930. Between September and December 1929, collectivization

increased from 7.4% to 15%, but in the first two months of 1930, 11 million households joined collectivized farms, pushing the total to

nearly 60% almost overnight.

To assist collectivization, the Party decided to send 25,000 "socially conscious" industry workers to the countryside. This was

accomplished during 1929–1933, and these workers have become known as twenty-five-

thousanders ("dvadtsat'pyat'tysyachniki"). Shock brigades were used to force reluctant peasants into joining the collective farms and

remove those who were declared kulaks and their "agents".

The First Tractor by Vladimir Krikhatsky(Socialist realism)

Collectivization sought to modernize Soviet agriculture, consolidating the land into parcels that could be farmed by modern equipment

using the latest scientific methods of agriculture. It was often claimed that an American Fordson tractor (called "Фордзон" in Russian)

was the best propaganda in favor of collectivization. The Communist Party, which adopted the plan in 1929, predicted an increase of

330% in industrial production, and an increase of 50% in agricultural production.

The means of production (land, equipment, livestock) were to be totally "socialized", i.e. removed from the control of individual peasant

households. Not even any private household garden plots were allowed for.

Agricultural work was envisioned on a mass scale. Huge glamorous columns of machines were to work the fields, in total contrast to

peasant small-scale work.

The peasants traditionally mostly held their land in the form of large numbers of strips scattered throughout the fields of the village

community. By an order of 7 January 1930, "all boundary lines separating the land allotments of the members of the artel are to be

eliminated and all fields are to be combined in a single land mass." The basic rule governing the rearrangement of the fields was that

the process would have to be completed before the spring planting.[9]

The new kolkhozy were initially envisioned as giant organizations unrelated to the preceding village communities. Kolkhozy of tens, or

even hundreds, of thousands of hectares were envisioned in schemes which were later to become known as 'gigantomania'. They were

typically "divided into 'economies (ekonomikii)' of 5,000 - 10,000 hectares which were in turn divided into fields and sections (uchastki)

without regard to the existing villages - the aim was to achieve a 'fully depersonalized optimum land area'..."[citation needed] Parallel with this

were plans to transfer the peasants to centralized 'agrotowns' offering modern amenities.

In the prevailing socio-economic conditions, little could become of such utopian schemes. The giant kolkhozy were always exceptional,

existing mainly on paper, and in any case they were mostly soon to disappear. The peasants remained in their traditional, somewhat

primitive, villages.[10]

[edit]"Dizzy with Success"

The price of collectivization was so high that the March 2, 1930, issue of Pravda contained Stalin's article Dizzy with success, in which

he called for a temporary halt to the process:

"It is a fact that by February 20 of this year 50 percent of the peasant farms throughout the U.S.S.R. had been collectivized. That means

that by February 20, 1930, we hadoverfulfilled the five-year plan of collectivization by more than 100 per cent.... some of our comrades

have become dizzy with success and for the moment have lost clearness of mind and sobriety of vision." [11]

After the publication of the article, the pressure for collectivization temporarily abated and peasants started leaving collective farms.

According to Martin Kitchen, the number of members of collective farms dropped by 50% in 1930. But soon collectivization was

intensified again, and by 1936, about 90% of Soviet agriculture was collectivized.

[edit]Peasant reaction

Theoretically, landless peasants were to be the biggest beneficiaries from collectivization, because it promised them an opportunity to

take an equal share in labor and its rewards. However the rural areas did not have many landless peasants, given the wholesale

redistribution of land following the Revolution. For those with property, however, collectivization meant giving it up to the collective farms

and selling most of the food that they produced to the state at minimal prices set by the state itself, so they were opposed to the idea.

Furthermore, collectivization involved significant changes in the traditional village life of Russian peasants within a very short time

frame, despite the long Russian rural tradition of collectivism in the village obshchina or mir. The changes were even more dramatic in

other places, such as in Ukraine, with its tradition of individual farming, in the Soviet republics of Central Asia, and in the trans-

Volga steppes, where for a family to have a herd of livestock was not only a matter of sustenance, but of pride as well.

Many peasants opposed collectivization, and often responded with acts of sabotage, including the burning of crops and the slaughter

of draught animals. According to Party sources, there were also some cases of destruction of property, and attacks on officials and

members of the collectives. Isaac Mazepa, prime minister of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) in 1919–1920, claimed "[t]he

catastrophe of 1932" was the result of "passive resistance … which aimed at the systematic frustration of the Bolsheviks' plans for the

sowing and gathering of the harvest". In his words, "[w]hole tracts were left unsown,... [and as much as] 50 per cent [of the crop] was

left in the fields, and was either not collected at all or was ruined in the threshing".[12]

[edit]Results

[edit]Resistance to collectivization and consequences

Due to high government production quotas peasants received, as a rule, less for their labor than they did before collectivization, and

some refused to work. Merle Fainsod estimated that, in 1952, collective farm earnings were only one fourth of the cash income from

private plots on Soviet collective farms.[13] In many cases, the immediate effect of collectivization was to reduce output and cut the

number of livestock in half. The subsequent recovery of the agricultural production was also impeded by the losses suffered by the

Soviet Union during World War II and the severe drought of 1946. However the largest loss of livestock was caused by collectivization

for all animals except pigs.[14] The numbers of cows in the USSR fell from 33.2 million in 1928 to 27.8 million in 1941 and to 24.6 million

in 1950. The number of pigs fell from 27.7 million in 1928 to 27.5 million in 1941 and then to 22.2 million in 1950. The number of sheep

fell from 114.6 million in 1928 to 91.6 million in 1941 and to 93.6 million in 1950. The number of horses fell from 36.1 million in 1928 to

21.0 million in 1941 and to 12.7 million in 1950. Only by the late 1950s did Soviet farm animal stocks begin to approach 1928 levels.[14]

Despite the initial plans, collectivization, accompanied by the bad harvest of 1932–1933, did not live up to expectations. Between 1929

and 1932 there was a massive fall in agricultural production resulting in famine in the countryside. Stalin and the CPSU blamed the

prosperous peasants, referred to as 'kulaks' (Russian: fist), who were organizing resistance to collectivization. Allegedly, many kulaks

had been hoarding grain in order to speculate on higher prices, thereby sabotaging grain collection. Stalin resolved to eliminate them as

a class.

The Soviet government responded to these acts by cutting off food rations to peasants and areas where there was opposition to

collectivization, especially in Ukraine. Many peasant families were forcibly resettled in Siberia and Kazakhstan into exile settlements,

and most of them died on the way. Estimates suggest that about a million so-called 'kulak' families, or perhaps some 5 million people,

were sent to forced labor camps.[6][15]

On August 7, 1932, the Decree about the Protection of Socialist Property proclaimed that the punishment for theft of kolkhoz or

cooperative property was the death sentence, which "under extenuating circumstances" could be replaced by at least ten years of

incarceration. With what some called the Law of Spikelets ("Закон о колосках"), peasants (including children) who hand-collected

or gleaned grain in the collective fields after the harvest were arrested for damaging the state grain production. Martin Amis writes

in Koba the Dread that 125,000 sentences were passed for this particular offense in the bad harvest period from August 1932 to

December 1933.

Estimates of the deaths from starvation or disease directly caused by collectivization have been estimated as between 4 and 10 million.

According to official Soviet figures, some 24 million peasants disappeared from rural areas but only 12.6 million moved to state jobs[citation

needed]
. The implication is that the total death toll (both direct and indirect) for Stalin's collectivization program was on the order of 12

million people.[16]

It is said that in 1945, Joseph Stalin confided to Winston Churchill at Yalta that 10 million people died in the course of collectivization.

[17]
However this allegation has been criticized by historian Michael Parenti as being inaccurate. At Yalta, Churchill asked Stalin about

the famine in the USSR to which Stalin responded by raising his hands, gesturing an unwillingness to speak about the subject, which

Churchill interpreted as Stalin confessing a death-toll of 10 million people.

[edit]Siberia

Main article: History of Siberia

Since the second half of the 19th century, Siberia had been a major agricultural region within Russia, espеcially its southern territories

(nowadays Altai Krai, Omsk Oblast, Novosibirsk Oblast, Kemerovo Oblast, Khakassia, Irkutsk Oblast). Stolypin's program of
resettlement granted a lot of land for immigrants from elsewhere in the empire, creating a large portion of well-off peasants and

stimulating rapid agricultural development in 1910s. Local merchants exported large quantities of labeled grain, flour and butter into

central Russia and Western Europe.[18]

In May 1931, a special resolution of the Western-Siberian Regional Executive Committee (classified "top secret") ordered the

expropriation of property and the deportation of 40,000 kulaks to "sparsely populated and unpopulated" areas in Tomsk Oblast in the

northern part of the Western-Siberian region.[19] The expropriated property was to be transferred to kolkhozes as indivisible collective

property and the kolkhoz shares representing this forced contribution of the deportees to kolkhoz equity were to be held in the

"collectivization fund of poor and landless peasants" (фонд коллективизации бедноты и батрачества).

A photograph of a man sowing inUzbekistan.

[edit]Central Asia and Kazakhstan

In areas where the major agricultural activity was nomadic herding, collectivization met with massive resistance and major losses and

confiscation of livestock. Livestock in Kazakhstan fell from 7 million cattle to 1.6 million and from 22 million sheep to 1.7 million.

Restrictions on migration proved ineffective and half a million migrated to other regions of Central Asia and 1.5 million to China in

Ukrainian. During the similar famines of 1921–1923, numerous campaigns, inside the country, as well as internationally were held to

raise money and food in support of the population of the affected regions. Nothing similar was done during the drought of 1932–1933,

mainly because the information about the disaster was suppressed by Stalin.[20] Moreover, migration of population from the affected

areas was restricted.[21]

About 40 million people were affected by the food shortages including areas near Moscow where mortality rates increased by 50%

people were deported and resettled at various points throughout the USSR.

After these deportations, the pace of collectivization increased as a flood of farmers rushed into kolkhozes. Within two weeks 1740 new

kolkhozes were established and by the end of 1950, just 4.5% of Latvian farmsteads remained outside the collectivized units; about

226,900 farmsteads belonged to collectives, of which there were now around 14,700. Rural life changed as farmers' daily movements

were dictated to by plans, decisions and quotas formulated elsewhere and delivered through an intermediate non-farming hierarchy.

The new kolkhozes, especially smaller ones, were ill-equipped and poor - at first farmers were paid once a year in kind and then in
cash, but salaries were very small and at times farmers went unpaid or even ended up owing money to the kholhoz. Farmers still had

small pieces of land (not larger than 0.5 ha) around their houses were they grew food for themselves. Along with collectivization, the

government tried to uproot the custom of living in individual farmsteads by resettling people in villages. However this process failed due

to lack of money since the Soviets planned to move houses as well.[22][23]

[edit]Progress of collectivization in the USSR 1927-1940

Number of Percent of farmsteads Percent of sown area

Year
collective farms in collective farms in collective use

1927 14,800 0.8 –

1928 33,300 1.7 2.3

1929 57,000 3.9 4.9

1930 85,900 23.6 33.6

1931 211,100 52.7 67.8

1932 211,100 61.5 77.7

1933 224,500 65.6 83.1

1934 233,300 71.4 87.4

1935 249,400 83.2 94.1

1936 – 90.5 98.2

1937 243,700 93.0 99.1

1938 242,400 93.5 99.8

1939 235,300 95.6 –

1940 236,900 96.9 99.8

Sources: Sotsialisticheskoe sel'skoe khoziaistvo SSSR, Gosplanizdat, Moscow-Leningrad, 1939 (pp. 42, 43); supplementary numbers

for 1927-1935 from Sel'skoe khoziaistvo SSSR 1935, Narkomzem SSSR, Moscow, 1936 (pp. 630, 634, 1347, 1369); 1937 from Great

Soviet Encyclopedia, vol. 22, Moscow, 1953 (p. 81); 1939 from Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR 1917-1987, Moscow, 1987 (pp. 35); 1940

from Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR 1922-1972, Moscow, 1972 (pp. 215, 240).

The official numbers for collectivized area (the column with percent of sown area in collective use in the table above) are biased upward

by two technical factors. First, these official numbers are calculated as percent of sown area in peasant farmsteads, excluding the area

cultivated by sovkhozes and other agricultural users. Estimates based on total sown area (including state farms) reduce the share of

collective farms between 1935-1940 to about 80%. Second, the household plots of kolkhoz members (i.e., collectivized farmsteads) are

included in the land base of collective farms. Without the household plots, arable land in collective cultivation in 1940 was 96.4% of land

in collective farms, and not 99.8% as shown by official statistics. Although there is no arguing with the fact that collectivization was

sweeping and total between 1928 and 1940, the table below provides different (more realistic) numbers on the extent of collectivization

of sown areas.

Distribution of sown area by land users, 1928 and 1940

Land users 1928 1940

All farms, '000 hectares 113,000 150,600

State farms (sovkhozy) 1.5% 8.8%

Collective farms (kolkhozy) 1.2 78.2

Household plots
1.1 3.5
(in collective and state farms)

Peasant farms and other users 96.2 9.5

Source: Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR 1922-1972, Moscow, 1972 (p. 240).

[edit]Decollectivization under German occupation

"A new order of land use — the gift of Adolf Hitler to the Russian people" (February 1942).

During World War Two, Alfred Rosenberg, in his capacity as the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, issued a series of

posters announcing the end of the Soviet collective farms in areas of the USSR under German occupation. He also issued an Agrarian

Law in February 1942, annulling all Soviet legislation on farming, restoring family farms for those willing to collaborate with the

occupiers. But decollectivization conflicted with the wider demands of wartime food production, and Hermann Göring demanded that

the kolkhoz be retained, save for a change of name. Hitler himself denounced the redistribution of land as 'stupid.'[24][25] In the end, the

German occupation authorities retained most of the kolkhozes and simply renamed them "community farms" (Russian: obshchinnye

khoziaystva, a throwback to the traditional Russian commune). German propaganda described this as a preparatory step toward

ultimate dissolution of the kolkhozes into private farms, which would be granted to peasants who had loyally delivered compulsory

quotas of farm produce to the Germans. By 1943, the German occupation authorities had converted 30% of the kolkhozes into German-

sponsored "agricultural cooperatives", but as yet had made no conversions to private farms.[26][27]

The image on the left is a reproduction of a fake issue of the newspaper Pravda distributed by Germans in the Occupied Eastern

Territories in February 1942. It announces "a gift of Adolf Hitler to the Russian people" — a land reform for "the long-suffering Russian

peasant". As part of the land reform, "kolkhozes are abolished and an order of community farms is established as a transitional stage to

individual peasant farms". The text under the German eagle reads:

Peasants. The German government, having liberated you from bolshevism, has decided to give peasants land in individual use... Own

land to the toiling peasant.

The two photographs of man and woman are captioned "Free people on free land!"

Note that the standard Pravda slogan "Workers of all countries unite" is modified in this fake newspaper to "Workers of all countries

unite in a fight against Bolshevism".

[edit]See also

 Index of Soviet Union-related articles

 Dekulakization

 Holodomor

 Denial of the Holodomor

 History of the Soviet Union (1927-1953)

 Collectivization in Hungary

 OZET

 Eastern Bloc economies

[edit]Notes

1. ^ Davies, R.W., The Soviet Collective Farms, 1929-1930, Macmillan, London (1980), p. 1.

2. ^ Tucker, Robert (1992). Stalin in Power. Norton & Company. p. 195. ISBN 0393308693.

3. ^ Viola, Lynne, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance, Oxford University Press, Oxford

(1996), p. 3.

4. ^ a b c d e f g A History of the Soviet Union from Beginning to End. Kenez, Peter. Cambridge University Press, 1999.

5. ^ page 87, Harvest of Sorrow ISBN 0-19-504054-6, Conquest cites Lewin pages 36-37 and 176

6. ^ a b How Russia is Ruled by Merle Fainsod, p. 526

7. ^ How Russia is Ruled by Merle Fainsod, p. 529

8. ^ James W. Heinzen, "Inventing a Soviet Countryside: State Power and the Transformation of Rural Russia, 1917-1929", University of

Pittsburgh Press (2004) ISBN 0-8229-4215-1, Chapter 1, "A False Start: The Birth and Early Activities of the People's Commissariat

of Agriculture, 1917-1920"

9. ^ James R Millar, ed., The Soviet Rural Community (University of Illinois Press, 1971), pp.27-8.

10. ^ R W Davies, The Soviet Collective Farm 1929 - 1930 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1980), pp.ix, 42-50,

60; cf. p.52.

11. ^ Stalin, J. V. (March 2, 1930 (No. 60)). "Dizzy with Success: Concerning Questions of the Collective-Farm Movement" (in Russian

translated by Foreign Languages Publishing House inWorks, Vol. 12, pp. 197-205, Foreign Languages Publishing House: Moscow,

1955.). Pravda. Retrieved September 15, 2010.

12. ^ Mazepa, Isaac (1933-1934). Ukrainia Under Bolshevist Rule. 12. pp. 342–343. Retrieved September 15, 2010.

13. ^ How Russia is Ruled by Merle Fainsod, p. 542

14. ^ a b How Russia is Ruled by Merle Fainsod, p. 541

15. ^ The Economics of Soviet Agriculture by Leonard E. Hubbard, p. 117

16. ^ The Economics of Soviet Agriculture by Leonard E. Hubbard, pp. 117-18

17. ^ Joseph Stalin: A Biographical Companion by Helen Rappaport, p. 53

18. ^ Commerce in the Siberian town of Berdsk, early 20th century.

19. ^ Western-Siberian resolution of deportation of 40,000 kulaks to northern Siberia, May 5, 1931.

20. ^ page 159, Stéphane Courtois, ed., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, 1999,

hardcover, 858 pages, ISBN 0-674-07608-7

21. ^ page 164, The Black Book of Communism, ISBN 0-674-07608-7

22. ^ Plakans, Andrejs. The Latvians: A Short History, 155-6. Hoover Institution Press, Stanford, 1995.

23. ^ Freibergs J. (1998, 2001) Jaunako laiku vesture 20. gadsimts Zvaigzne ABC ISBN 9984-17-049-7

24. ^ Leonid Grenkevich, The Soviet Partisan Movement, 1941-1945: A Critical Historiographical Analysis, Routledge, New York (1999),

pp. 169-171.
 25. ^ Memorandum by Brautigam concerning conditions in occupied areas of the USSR, 25 October 1942.

26. ^ Joseph L. Wieczynski, ed., The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, Academic International Press, Gulf Breeze,

FL, 1978, vol. 7, pp. 161-162.

27. ^ Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia, 1941 - 1945: A Study of Occupation Politics (London, Macmillan, 1957), pp.346-51; Karl

Brandt, Otto Schiller and Frantz Anlgrimm, Management of Agriculture and Food in the German-Occupied and Other Areas of

Fortress Europe (Stanford, California, Stanford University Press, 1953), pp.92ff. Ibid., pp.96-9, gives an interesting case study of the

dissolution process.

[edit]Further reading

 Ammende, Ewald. "Human life in Russia", (Cleveland: J.T. Zubal, 1984), Reprint, Originally published: London, England:

Allen & Unwin, 1936, ISBN 0-939738-54-6

 Conquest, Robert. The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine, Oxford University Press, October

1986, hardcover, ISBN 0-88864-110-9; trade paperback, Oxford University Press, November, 1987, ISBN 0-19-505180-7;

hardcover, ISBN 0-19-504054-6

 Davies, R. W. The Socialist Offensive (Volume 1 of The Industrialization of Soviet Russia), Harvard University Press (1980),

hardcover, ISBN 0-674-81480-0

 Davies, R. W. The Soviet Collective Farm, 1929-1930 (Volume 2 of the Industrialization of Soviet Russia), Harvard University

Press (1980), hardcover, ISBN 0-674-82600-0

 Davies, R. W., Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 1929-1930 (volume 3 of The Industrialization of Soviet Russia), Harvard

University Press (1989), ISBN 0-674-82655-8

 Davies, R.W. and Stephen G. Wheatcroft. Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933, (volume 4 of The Industrialization

of Soviet Russia), Palgrave Macmillan (April, 2004), hardcover, ISBN 0-333-31107-8

 Davies, R. W. and S. G. Wheatcroft. Materials for a Balance of the Soviet National Economy, 1928-1930, Cambridge

University Press (1985), hardcover, 467 pages, ISBN 0-521-26125-2

 Dolot, Miron. Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust, W. W. Norton (1987), trade paperback, 231 pages, ISBN 0-393-

30416-7; hardcover (1985), ISBN 0-393-01886-5

 Hindus, Maurice. Red Bread: Collectivization in a Russian Village, Indiana University Press, 1988, hardcover, ISBN 0-253-

34953-2; trade paperback, Indiana University Press, 1988, 372 pages, ISBN 0-253-20485-2; earlier editions dating from 1931 are

available at used book sellers.

 Lewin, Moshe. Russian Peasants and Soviet Power: A Study of Collectivization, W.W. Norton (1975), trade paperback, ISBN

0-393-00752-9

 Library of Congress Revelations from the Russian Archives: Collectivization and Industrialization (primary documents from

the period)

 Martens, Ludo. Un autre regard sur Staline, Éditions EPO, 1994, 347 pages, ISBN 2-87262-081-8. See the section "External

links" for an English translation.

 Nimitz, Nancy. "Farm Development 1928–62", in Soviet and East European Agricultures, Jerry F. Karcz, ed. Berkeley,

California (US): University of California, 1967.

  Satter, David. Age of Delirium : The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union, Yale University Press (1996), hardcover, 424

pages, ISBN 0-394-52934-0

 ' Smith, Hedrick. The Russians (1976) ISBN 0-8129-0521-0

 Taylor, Sally J. Stalin's Apologist: Walter Duranty : The New York Times Man in Moscow, Oxford University Press (1990),

hardcover, ISBN 0-19-505700-7

 Tottle, Douglas. Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian genocide myth from Hitler to Harvard. Toronto: Progress Books,

1987. ISBN 0-919396-51-8.

 Zaslavskaya, Tatyana. The Second Socialist Revolution, ISBN 0-253-20614-6 (a survey by a Soviet sociologist written in the

late 1980s which advocated restructuring of the economy)

[edit]External links

 "The Collectivization 'Genocide'", in Another View of Stalin, by Ludo Martens. Translated from the French book Un autre

regard sur Staline, listed above under "References and further reading".

 "Reply to Collective Farm Comrades" by Stalin

 Ukrainian Famine: Excerpts from the Original Electronic Text at the web site of Revelations from the Russian Archives

 "Soviet Agriculture: A critique of the myths constructed by Western critics", by Joseph E. Medley, Department of Economics,

University of Southern Maine (US).

 "The Ninth Circle", by Olexa Woropay

 Prize-winning essay on FamineGenocide.com

 1932-34 Great Famine: documented view by Dr. Dana Dalrymple

 COLLECTIVIZATION AND INDUSTRIALIZATION Revelations from the Russian Archives at the Library of Congress

[edit]Further reading

 Roy D. Laird, "Collective Farming in Russia: A Political Study of the Soviet Kolkhozy", University of Kansas, Lawrence,

KS (1958), 176pp.

 Robert G. Wesson, "Soviet Communes", Rutgers University Press, 1963

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Categories: Agriculture in the Soviet Union | Agricultural cooperatives | Agricultural labor | History of the Soviet Union and Soviet

Russia | Soviet internal politics | Holodomor

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