Editor: Lieven Soete, 
Update: 07-03-2004

The collectivisation of the agriculture in Russia
1929 > 1934
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Six Arguments for the Collectivisation of the agriculture and to organise the peasants in Kolkhozs [co-operatives]
1.нн Soviet agriculture was backward 
Old-fashioned / inefficient / no machinery / too small / subsistence (only grew enough for themselves). 

2.нн Food was needed for workers in the towns
Essential if the Five-Year Plans were to succeed. 

3.нн NEP [New Economic Politics] was not still working in agriculture
By 1928, the USSR was 20 million tons of grain short to feed the towns. 

4.нн Town-workers were needed 
If the USSR was to become modern / industrial, peasants needed to migrate to work in the towns. 

5.нн Cash Crops were needed
If the USSR was to industrialise, peasants needed to grow cash crops (eg grain) which could be exported to raise money to buy foreign machinery and expertise. 

6.нн Kulaks opposed Communism
The Kulaks opposed Communism ? they liked their private wealth.нн They hid food from the government collectors.нн Also they were influential, and led peasant opinion.нн The communist party wanted to eliminate this social class.


Results of the collectivisation campaign
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Emanuil Evzerikhin
Agricultural Exhibition, 1938
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Simon Fridland
Woman Collective Farmer, 1932
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Simon Fridland
Peasant girl with rake, 1930's
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Simon Fridland
Portrait of two women, 1920's
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Boris Ignatovich | Lunch in the Commune - with the radio. c.1920
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Georgi Petrusov
The Ukraine. Members of the 'Lenin's Way' Collective Farm harvesting their crops, 1935.
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Ivan Shagin
Delegates of the Second Congress of Collective Farmers in the Kremlin Meeting Hall, 1933.
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Ivan Shagin
Second Collective Farmer's Congress, 1933
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Ivan Shagin
Woman driving a tractor, 1930's
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Arkadi Shaikhet
Village Construction, c. 1930
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Arkadi Shaikhet
Kolkhoz Field, 1931
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Arkadi Shaikhet
Horse Courtyard in Nignii Novgorod, 1927
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Arkadi Shishkin
Threshing, Village of Smolenzevo, 1930
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Arkadi Shishkin
The Free Land Use Act, 1935
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Arkadi Shishkin
North Caucasus. The first days of Farmer's Organization, September, 1931
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Arkadi Shishkin
Grinding with Chains, 1929
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Arkadi Shishkin
Joining a Collective Farm, 1929
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Arkadi Shishkin | Still Plowing on Foruzon, 1930
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Arkadi Shishkin | On the Plowed Land, 1929
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Arkadi Shishkin
Listening to the Radio during the Spring Sowing, 1935
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Arkadi Shishkin | Reading Hall in the Soviet Village, 1932
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Arkadi Shishkin
Preparation for Sowing. The True Way Collective Farm, 1933
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Arkadi Shishkin.
Farmer's first Spring. The Soviet region of Nizhnegorodsk's District, 1929
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Arkadi Shishkin
The First Women Tractor Drivers, 1930
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Arkadi Shishkin
The First Tractor has arrived in the Village, 1929
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Arkadi Shishkin
We Vote for the Kolkhoz, 1929
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Arkadi Shishkin
Drying the Wheat, c. 1930
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Arkadi Shishkin
Grandfather and Grandson
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Anatoli Skurikhin
Peasants collecting hay, hay bags in the foreground, 1930's
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Anatoli Skurikhin
Harvest Time. Kolkhoz, 1937
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Anatoli Skurikhin
An old man and a young woman baling hay, 1937
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Anatoli Skurikhin | Peasants reading Pravda, 1930's
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Georgi Zelma | Uzbekistan. Assake. The First Tractors, 1929.
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Georgi Zelma | Samarovsk Region, 1926
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Georgi Zelma
40 Years Ago. Mohammed Dadabaev reading the Decree on Land and Water Reforms, 1920's
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Georgi Zelma
Sharing, 1920's
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Georgi Zelma
Uzbekistan, 1920's | Sowing
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Six Successes from the Collectivisation of the agriculture 
1.нн Quarter of a million kolkhoz
99% of Russia had been collectivized . . . 

2.нн More modern
New methods / tractors / fertilisers / large-scale / new attitudes (trying to produce as much as possible) 

3.нн Grain
By 1937, 97 million tones were produced PLUS cash crops for export. 

4.нн Town workers
17 million peasants left the countryside to work in the towns, 1928­37 

5.нн End of nobles
Remember how the old landlords used to treat their peasants ­ they were now gone 

6.нн The people controls completely the agriculture