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Unlock This CourseIn 1928 the USSR had about 25 million peasant farms. Each family worked its own land and sold its own crops. Collectivisation ended this. The farms of a village were joined into one large farm, which the peasants worked together under state control.
In December 1927 the Fifteenth Party Congress agreed that peasants should be encouraged to join collective farms by choice. Very few did. In 1928 fewer than three farms in every hundred were collective. A crisis over grain turned this slow, voluntary plan into a forced one.
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Remember, in the winter of 1927-28 the state could not buy enough grain. It paid peasants a low price and there were few goods for them to buy, so they kept their grain back. Stalin sent officials to seize grain by force, but the shortage came back the next winter. He decided that as long as millions of peasants chose when to sell, they could hold the whole country to ransom. Large farms under state control would end that.
The first Five-Year Plan was moving millions of people into mines and factories. They grew no food, so the state needed more grain every year, at a steady low price. Peasants farmed scattered strips of land, mostly by hand and with horses, so they produced little to spare. Communists believed big farms using machines would grow far more with fewer people. The peasants no longer needed on the land could then become factory workers.
The USSR had to buy machinery abroad, and grain was the main thing it could sell to pay for it. Collective farms would let the state take the grain it needed at a price it set itself. It could sell some abroad and sell the rest in the towns for more than it had paid.
Under the NEP peasants farmed for private profit. To Communists this was capitalism, and the richer peasants, called kulaks, were seen as class enemies. Collective farming fitted socialist ideas of working together and sharing. It would also bring the party's power into the villages, where the party was weak.
The first Five-Year Plan expected only about one farm in five to be collective by 1933. Then Stalin changed the pace.
How the peasants resisted, and what happened to the kulaks, is covered in The Kulaks, the Great Famine and the Results of Collectivisation.
A typical kolkhoz was made from the farms of one village, often 50 to 100 families. They gave up their land, horses, cattle and ploughs to the farm.
A sovkhoz was different. The state owned it outright and paid its workers a regular wage. Most farms were kolkhozes because they cost the state less: the peasants, not the state, carried the risk of a bad harvest.
A kolkhoz did not own tractors. The state kept them at Motor Tractor Stations. The first was set up in 1928, there were about 2,500 by the end of 1932 and about 7,000 by 1940.
The station hired out tractors and combine harvesters, with drivers and mechanics to work them. This was meant to show peasants what modern farming could do. The kolkhoz paid for the work with a share of its harvest, so the stations were also another way for the state to collect grain.
Whoever held the machines had power over the harvest. In 1933 and 1934 each station had a political department, staffed by party officials and a secret police officer. Its job was to watch the collective farms, spread propaganda and make sure the grain quotas were handed over. After 1934 a party official at each station carried on this watch.
Don't mix up a kolkhoz and a sovkhoz. Kolkhoz peasants shared what was left after the state took its quota; sovkhoz workers were paid a wage. Don't say the peasants owned the tractors. And don't write that collectivisation began with force in 1928. It began as a voluntary policy, and the forced drive came from the winter of 1929-30.
(b) Explain two effects of the setting up of collective farms (kolkhozes) on the way Soviet peasants farmed. [8 marks]
One effect was that peasants lost control of their land and of what they grew. Before collectivisation each family worked its own farm and decided when to sell its grain. On a kolkhoz the families of a village pooled their land, animals and tools. The state told the farm what to plant and took its quota first, at a low fixed price, and the peasants shared only what was left, by labour days. As a result they now worked to the orders of a chairman chosen by the party, and their income depended on what remained after the state had been paid.
A second effect was that peasants came to depend on the state for machinery. A kolkhoz did not own tractors. These were kept at Motor Tractor Stations, about 2,500 of them by the end of 1932, which hired out tractors and combine harvesters with drivers. This meant ploughing and harvesting could be done by machine instead of by hand and horse. However, the farm had to pay with a share of its harvest, and in 1933 each station was given a political department. Because of this, the stations gave the state a close watch over the farms as well as more of their grain.
What lifts this to the top level: it gives two separate effects, backs each with precise facts (the quota, labour days, the number of stations, the political departments of 1933) and uses linking phrases such as 'as a result' and 'this meant' to show how the kolkhoz changed the way peasants farmed.
Read the last words of the question: 'on the way Soviet peasants farmed'. Both effects must be about that. Reasons for collectivisation, such as the grain crisis, would earn nothing here because they are causes, not effects. Write two paragraphs: one effect alone cannot score more than 4 of the 8 marks.