The course presents the life and deeds of Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union from 1924 till 1953. It analyses the reasons for his actions and their results, as well as the causes of his popularity in Russia today. It offers an analysis of the phenomenon of Stalinism and of its significance for Russia and beyond. In the late 1920s – early 1930s Stalin directed the massive and rapid industrialisation of the country and the forced collectivisation of its agriculture. The industrialisation was based on forced labour, and collectivisation on repression, but both helped to create the material base for the Soviet defence industry. In the late 1930s Stalin unleashed mass terror against the Soviet people, in which millions perished. In his view this helped to rid the country of any potential internal enemies on the eve of the coming war. The USSR, together with its allies, won the Second World War, but at the cost of dozens of millions of lives. Stalin was instrumental in creating the post-war order. The system which he created in the 1930s shaped the USSR as it was during his lifetime and for decades after his death. It also influenced the lives of millions of people beyond the Soviet borders. The course will enable those who take it to develop an informed understanding of the Stalin era and of the phenomenon of Stalinism.
4.9.2. Collectivisation Begins
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來自 National Research University Higher School of Economics 的課程
Stalin and Stalinism in Russian History
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National Research University Higher School of Economics
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Stalin's Revolution from Above
Lecture 4 analyses Stalin’s ‘revolution from above’ and the new social and economic order created by Stalin. It outlines Stalin’s reasons for collectivisation and industrialisation and the way in which they were implemented. It analyses the human and economic costs of Stalin’s radical transformation to the country and its people.
與講師見面
Irina FilatovaProfessor
Faculty of Humanities / School of History
[SOUND]
In November 1929,
Stalin announced universal and immediate collectivization.
All peasant land, all livestock, all other property had to be confiscated.
Peasants had to be moved to large scale collective farms called "Kolkhozi".
That means that they were actually turned into salaried workers.
In December, Stalin announced the campaign
of the liquidation of the kulak as a class.
Here, you can see peasants voting to join the collective farms.
Look at their eyes.
They are rather hollow.
And even a small child that is raising his hand, either they do not
understand what they are doing or they have absolutely no way out of it.
And on the right, there is a picture of
the new collective farm workers working together in the field.
Of course, they were promised that they would be given practice and
other agricultural technology.
But this did not happen, or happened very slowly.
And these are the anti-kulak posters.
What you can see here is the posters calling
to destroy the kulaks as a class.
The kulak on the left picture is very angry because you see,
he's trying to hide his crops, but the crops are being taken away.
The other picture is the same.
Kulaks have to be destroyed as a class and
you can see the lower part of the picture, there's kulaks and churches and
all other enemies of socialism being squashed by a tractor like some vermin.
Here is a picture of questioning of a kulak.
The local authorities had the right to define who was actually a kulak and
who was not, because there was no exact criteria and
of course the local authorities were happy to pronounce
as many people being kulaks as possible,
because then they could confiscate more property.
Even the poorest of the poor pheasants, if they did not want
to join the kolkhozes or did not want to give whatever they had,
to the collective farms, they were called "podkulachnik"
which is a person who served or helped the kulaks.
The campaign for de-kulakisation of the country was truly dreadful.
These are kulaks on trial, and then a kulak family evicted.
You can see that they are allowed to take the bare minimum.
And down below, you see the picture of the kulak's, or
a kulak, trying to speak to the OGPU officials.
He is obviously showing them his hands and showing,
I am a working person, look how hard I work.
They are not interested.
The leadership of the country did not really believe
that the collectivisation could be successful without pressure.
And so groups of young enthusiasts from factories and from cities mostly,
the majority of them communists, were sent to the villages.
There were several dozen thousands of them and these enthusiasts who
understood nothing in agriculture at all, who did not have any
local roots as, for example, some of the local administrators did.
They were particularly cruel.
They drove the collectivisation and often they stayed to lead the new kolkhozes.
Simultaneously, a campaign of destruction of the churches and
the rest of the clergy unfolded.
The churches were looted and destroyed.
And the clergy was humiliated.
In fact, what was going on was not just the war against the kulaks.
It was the war against a whole peasant way of life.
The pace of collectivisation was amazing.
By brute force from 1st, October '29 to 20th,
February 1930, just a few months,
the percentage of the collectivized
peasantry grew from 7.5% to 52.7%.
The peasants responded with uprisings.
You can see the number of uprisings by year.
Particularly have a look at 1930, there are thousands of uprising and
in 1930, about 3.4 million peasants
participated in the uprising in different parts of the country.
The most dangerous thing for the Soviet government was that the murmurs of
discontent reached even the army because the young recruits came from the villages.
And they knew what was going on.
And their relatives wrote to them what was going on.
So of course, all these uprisings were very severely suppressed.
OGPU send its unitive detachments, and they had to be suppressed.
The result of collectivization was devastating.
Peasants often killed their cattle rather than allow it to
be expropriated for collective farms.
5.7 million households were destroyed.
The number of economically active peasant population in the countryside,
dropped by about 20 million.
Stalin could not fail to see all that.
So on 2nd March, 1930, he published an article in the Pravda, Dizzy with success.
He praised the peasants' radical turn to socialism but
he said that not all peasants joined the kolkhozes voluntarily.
So he actually blamed the excesses on the local administration.
The secret order was sent out, and the content was
that some poultry should be returned to the peasants, and
some livestock, and even some plots adjacent to their houses.
The easing of policy on churches also was advised.
At that moment, about 5 million peasants left the kolkhozes.
But in autumn of the same year,
the pressure to join the kolkhozes started all over again.
In 1932, hundreds of thousands of kulaks were shot,
imprisoned, or sent to labor camps.
2 million kulak families were exiled to far away regions of the country.
Many died of starvation and exposure.
The majority of peasants were forced to join the kolkhozes, but
their life there was hard.
Soviet agriculture never recovered after the excesses of collectivisation.
Here is the grain production and you can easily see that the years of
collectivisation were the worst in terms of grain production.
A drop in livestock numbers just have a look that by 1935,
cattle, pigs, sheep,
there was about half of them compared to the beginning of collectivization.
So the only benefit of collectivization, real benefit,
was that the Soviet state could manage peasants easier.
One of the most horrific results of collectivization
was the man-made famine of 1932, 33.
The regions that suffered most, you can see the map here.
They were Kazakhstan, lower Volga Basin, Southern Siberia, North Caucasus, Ukraine.
These were the areas which were the richest with the best soils and
which used to be the granary of Russia.
That is why the opposition to collectivization here was the strongest.
The peasants had to be punished so
all their grain, all their reserves were confiscated.
And the government allowed people to die,
because they did not get any assistance.
The government continued to export grain while the people were dying.
And unlike 1920s, when Lenin allowed
external aid, Stalin did not allow it.
Now, these are the pictures from the famine.
You can see that they are quite awful.
The areas suffering from famine were cordoned off.
Those who tried to flee were returned.
5 to 7 million people died.
And in 1932, 33, about 70 million people were in one way or
another suffering from hunger or famine.
The famine led not only to the deaths but also to moral degradation.
The OGPU reported many murders, and even the cases of cannibalism.
On 19th November, 1932,
Stalin's wife committed suicide.
She had a quarrel with Stalin on the eve of that and
probably that was the reason for her decision to end her life.
But there was speculation that Nadejda Allilueva
accused her husband of butchering people.
It was said that she heard about the famine in industrial
academy where she studied from her colleagues there.
If even she did not know about famine.
What can we say about the rest of the population?
The fact of famine was not advertised.
Nobody could read about it in the media.
Nobody could hear about it.
Some knew very little, others knew nothing at all.
In February 1933, Stalin spoke at the congress of the best kolkhoz workers.
This is what he said.
One of our achievements is that the vast masses of poor peasants,
who formerly lived in semi-starvation, now, in the collective farms,
became middle peasants, have attained material security.
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