syndicat
1st September 2007, 17:57
a fundamental problem of the Russian revolution was that of agricultural productivity. the peasant village councils had traditionally controlled the land. they re-distributed the land every so often on the egalitarian basis of how many mouths a peasant family had to feed. thus there was relatively little class differentiation in rural society and the development of a capitalist agriculture was retarded. in 1917 only 2% of the farm workforce worked regularly in wage labor. only 3% of the peasants owned enough land to hire laborers to work for them. and by 1922 this kulak class had declined to only 0.7% of the peasantry, due to expropriation of kulak lands. the peasant households mainly worked for their own consumption. they would sell their surplus on the market and this is how the cities were fed.
in the 1920s after the introduction of the NEP, the soviet government faced the following problem. if they didn't offer a high enough price, the peasants would simply cut back on the amount of work they did for the market. they'd take more leisure, consume more of their own product. if the soviet government offered a higher price, they would be faced with a difficult choice: cut worker wages or reduce import of equipment and supplies from abroad. to industrialize the country, the leadership wanted to exact a surplus of grain that they could sell abroad in exchange for products used in industrialization.
the forced collectivization under the first Five Year Plan, beginning in 1929, was aimed at solving this problem by increasing productivity in agriculture.
during the revolution, an alternative strategy to collectivization had been proposed by G.P. Maximov. Maximov was a former student radical who had been trained as an agronomist. During the revolution he was one of the main writers and speakers for the Russian anarcho-syndicalists.
Maximov's proposal for agriculture was as follows. He believed that the strategy should be to encourage the voluntary formation of peasant collectives or cooperatives. His proposed strategy was to convert war industry into the manufacture of tractors and electrical generating equipment. This equipment would be offered to the peasants in exchange for their agricultural products. a tractor would be too expensive for a single peasant family. the peasants would have to band together into a collective organization in their village to buy the tractor. Maximov's proposal was that organizers would encourage them to form village collective farms to make common use of the tractors, and also to buy, possibly with other village collectives, electrical generating equipment. Electrical generating equuipment would also make it possible to locate workshops in rural areas, thus facilitating economic development of the countryside.
as long as Russia was at war, during the civil war, this program would have been impossible because Russia's industrial capacity had to be used to keep the Red Army in the field. but once the civil war came to an end in 1920, a peace conversion strategy and manufacture of equipment for rural economic development would have been possible.
Stalin's first Five Year Plan, however, was aimed at building up heavy industry, in order to build an armaments industry which depended on heavy industry, and thus beefing up the country's military power.
in the 1920s after the introduction of the NEP, the soviet government faced the following problem. if they didn't offer a high enough price, the peasants would simply cut back on the amount of work they did for the market. they'd take more leisure, consume more of their own product. if the soviet government offered a higher price, they would be faced with a difficult choice: cut worker wages or reduce import of equipment and supplies from abroad. to industrialize the country, the leadership wanted to exact a surplus of grain that they could sell abroad in exchange for products used in industrialization.
the forced collectivization under the first Five Year Plan, beginning in 1929, was aimed at solving this problem by increasing productivity in agriculture.
during the revolution, an alternative strategy to collectivization had been proposed by G.P. Maximov. Maximov was a former student radical who had been trained as an agronomist. During the revolution he was one of the main writers and speakers for the Russian anarcho-syndicalists.
Maximov's proposal for agriculture was as follows. He believed that the strategy should be to encourage the voluntary formation of peasant collectives or cooperatives. His proposed strategy was to convert war industry into the manufacture of tractors and electrical generating equipment. This equipment would be offered to the peasants in exchange for their agricultural products. a tractor would be too expensive for a single peasant family. the peasants would have to band together into a collective organization in their village to buy the tractor. Maximov's proposal was that organizers would encourage them to form village collective farms to make common use of the tractors, and also to buy, possibly with other village collectives, electrical generating equipment. Electrical generating equuipment would also make it possible to locate workshops in rural areas, thus facilitating economic development of the countryside.
as long as Russia was at war, during the civil war, this program would have been impossible because Russia's industrial capacity had to be used to keep the Red Army in the field. but once the civil war came to an end in 1920, a peace conversion strategy and manufacture of equipment for rural economic development would have been possible.
Stalin's first Five Year Plan, however, was aimed at building up heavy industry, in order to build an armaments industry which depended on heavy industry, and thus beefing up the country's military power.