Agricultural Collectivization in the Soviet Union

[Grenzer]

I was just having a discussion with my cousin on this topic tonight, and I realized I didn't really know that much about it in terms of concrete and reliable stastics.

Now I have seen debates over whether the famine in the early thirties was a result of collectivization itself, or whether it was caused by the Kulaks hoarding grain. Does anyone know of some good, objective sources of information on this subject?

[Die Neue Zeit]

The famine was mainly the result of the wrong form of forced collectivization policy that was implemented, though forced collectivization generally could only have been bypassed at the expense of sacrificing urgent industrial development. From there, lots of peasants destroyed their produce rather than turn it over to the state. The state retaliated.

[Grenzer]

The famine was mainly the result of the wrong form of forced collectivization policy that was implemented, though forced collectivization generally could only have been bypassed at the expense of sacrificing urgent industrial development.

What, specifically, was wrong with collectivization as they implemented it? What would the correct form be?

[Die Neue Zeit]

It all boiled down to kolkhozization vs. sovkhozization:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/defense-trotsky-s-t156790/index.html?p=2157302

[Ismail]

The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture 1931-1933 by Stephen Wheatcroft and R.W. Davies.

Also this thread belongs in Learning. Moved.

[Jose Gracchus]

DNZ is, as usual, practicing self-promotion, and has no idea what he's talking about, since he has read none of the relevant literature.

Check out ComradeOm, I'm sure he has some great answers. Basically forced collectivization was massive state robbery of the peasant class, and the collective farm was to be a means of both increasing labor productivity and absolute productivity and mechanization, and giving the State much tighter control over the surplus than the system of smallholding which emerged out of the redistribution of 1917. There was by that point probably no way without repression of obliging the peasantry to pay for forced industrialization. It is important to note that not just peasant, but all living standards declined in this period. Nove's Economic History and Fitzpatrick's work are pretty good in fleshing out the generalities.

[Die Neue Zeit]

DNZ is, as usual, practicing self-promotion, and has no idea what he's talking about, since he has read none of the relevant literature.

I beg to differ:

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

[Jose Gracchus]

You cannot end a work on forced collectivization in 1929.

[Grenzer]

The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture 1931-1933 by Stephen Wheatcroft and R.W. Davies.

Thanks, looks like a solid read. I've got it ordered.

[Die Neue Zeit]

You cannot end a work on forced collectivization in 1929.

That's the only work the presents the full spectrum of collectivization (both forced and protracted) policy options.