From the Komsomol Archive
By Sean at 14 December, 2009, 6:28 am
Today, I began research on Komsomol participation in collectivization and found this little tidbit in the archive. This is from Komsomol Central Committee member Gerasimov’s report, October 1929:
In Penzen region, there were rumors that a [grain requisitioning] commission arrived to close the church. Or in a similar rumor, the commission arrived to arrest the priest and take him away. A crowd gathered. Or another case, to catch a swindler. A crowd of up to 800 people surrounded the commission and began shouting. They wanted to arrange a samosud. There were shouts of “They attack the peasantry from all sides, let’s beat them all.” True, more than half of [the crowd] was drunk.
RGASPI f. 1M, op.5, d. 24a, l. 22
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Sean, as far as I understand, prior to 1927 it was not yet clear whether collectivization would be forced and entire. The 1928 was a decisive year.
1) In your opinion, were there any chances that time to build a working system of agriculture, without forcing people to work at collective farms?
2) How do you assess efficiency of collective farms vs. infividual farmers nowadays?
(The second question refers to the modern agriculture.)
I don’t think there was any consensus in 1927 among the leadership that there would even be collectivization. Stalin suggested it in 1927, but it went nowhere. I think it wasn’t until the grain crisis of 1927-28, and then another one in 1928-29 that made the state turn to coercive measures. First with the Ural-Siberian Method and then with full collectivization. It is interesting that taking grain was a throwback to methods of the Civil War. The need for coercion was also deemed necessary because the Bolsheviks believed there as an increase in “kulak terror” and “grain hording.” The context drove the Stalinists to do what they tended to do in crisis mode–lash out with extreme violence.
As for question #1, there was a debate between Alex Nove and James Millar years ago, where Millar suggested that the Bolsheviks just needed to adjust prices and that would have alleviated the 1928-29 crisis. There is question if he was right or it was even political feasible at the time. But with the Bolshevik mindset, the increasing tensions between Bukharin and Stalin, and grumbling in the cities over bread prices and the introduction of rationing, radical measures were taken.
I don’t think the Bolsheviks would have allowed the development of the Russian form of the yeoman farmer. They were too suspicious of the peasantry and their “petite bourgeois” nature. Perhaps if Bukharin won the fight, but he didn’t . . .
As for #2, I have no idea. Are their any collective farms left? Speaking historically, clearly collectivization was a total disaster for Soviet agricultural productivity. Forget about the immediate costs and number of human lives expended to establish it, but the fact that even in the 1980s, private plots were producing the vast majority of the nation’s food.
Doesn’t sound like the comrades were dizzy with success.
Are their any collective farms left?
Good questions – not sure about Russia but the situation in Slovakia is tha tthe collective farms were turned onto co-operations and private farms. Land was restored through restitution and gradually large corporate farms have bought up private and co-op land and farms. A complete 360 degree change then, where again the peasants work land they do not own and take orders on how to farm it.
@ Bryan,
You raise a very interesting point with regards to the current state of agricultural affairs (particularly in the US, where agribusiness is a major player in our economy). Large multinationals control most of the farmland in this country today, dictating what is farmed and how it is farmed. Ultimately, this lends itself to the question of what, exactly, is a farmer’s place in the system and how much does it differ from that of the Soviet collective farmers.
Fundamental differences notwithstanding, most collective farmers were less than thrilled about joining the collectives (correct me if you feel this is inaccurate). While not all of them had been labeled ‘kulak’, they had overwhelmingly been Old Believers and were highly skeptical of Party city-slickers dictating what and how they farmed. Again, interesting parallel possibly to farmers today and their corporate counterparts in the agri-biz?
Evgeny,
There is no controversy about whether Soviet collective farms were efficient or not. They weren’t. Soviet economists were saying precisely that by the mid-1950s. Not only was their labor force less productive than it had been in the 1920s, it was less productive than it was in the mid-1930s!
But the alternative of collective farms is not individual private farms, not today (see Bonnie Boglioli Randall’s comment on agrobussiness in the US and in Russia) and most certainly not in the USSR. The alternative to collective farm was state farms (sovkhoz). The realization that the collective farm system was failing brought the state in 1958 to campaign to turn collective farms into state farms.
At the same time it would not be wise to generalize. Contrary to what capitalist propaganda is telling you, collective farms did work elsewhere. They worked in Hungary (see Martha Lampland’s work), they worked in Israel (read a little about the kibbutz). Capitalism is not the essential result of human nature. Economic systems should be examined based on local cultural and political practices. There is no universal good/bad when it comes to that.
Modern agribusiness is entirely reliant on cheap fossil fuel and fertilizer inputs. Once that vanishes, we may see a return to smaller holdings and more traditional ways of farming.
“They worked in Hungary (see Martha Lampland’s work),”
Well what about it ? COuld you drop a line on that ? It looks interesting.
Thanks
“The need for coercion was also deemed necessary because the Bolsheviks believed there as an increase in “kulak terror” and “grain hording.””
The apparatchiks misconstrued a customary practice of holding the equivalent of one crop (sometimes up to three crops, if the farmer could afford that, practice documented as far West as in Hungary) as reserve in case of bad weather as a case of “grain hoarding” … fun ensued.
“…it would not be wise to generalize. Contrary to what capitalist propaganda is telling you, collective farms did work elsewhere. They worked … in Israel (read a little about the kibbutz).”
Yes, by all means, let’s not generalize (because it would not be wise).
Kibbutzes may be organized as communes but they “work” in the framework of free markets. For that matter, pre-revolutionary Russian agriculture (in those old days when “nobody was dying of hunger in Russia”) was based on strong communal (obschina) principles, including regular re-partition of land.
I think we may postulate that it matters little how the producing units are organized internally, as long as they are free to make their own decisions what and how to produce and how to sell it to the outside world.
The problem of the Soviet times (when people started dying of hunger) was that the State took complete control of all the facets of rural life.
Thank you, Sean.
Candide, a couple of minor corrections.
A. The kibbutz thrived in a socialist setting. It is when “free market” started running wild in the 1980s that the kibbutz collapsed.
B. The assumption of capitalist propaganda is that people do not work when they don’t economic incentives – the kibbutz proves that the incentive could be communal.
(in those old days when “nobody was dying of hunger in Russia”)
Is this a joke ?
THere were famines in tsarist times. And not just one !
Sean,
I love the post. Those sorts of finds show just how complicated it can be to understand exactly what was happening. I love it when the archives enrich what we know and let us down at the same time.
I have farming friends from the Belgorod region who still talk about “kolkhozy” as if they still exist, but I don’t know if it’s technically the case or if they’re just using the old term and, in fact, the farms are cooperatives.
Hello to Galina Mikhailovna from me (whom she remembers, probably, as “Thomas,” since that’s my first name and Russians never seem to understand middle names. The Komsomol archive is a great place to work–best lunch for the price anywhere (at least it was in 07). Keep giving her presents, man. She loves you.
“THere were famines in tsarist times. And not just one !”
Like, for instance?
There were lean years and hard times, to be sure, but no dying of hunger en masse. That was the whole point of living in the ‘Obschina’ system, where everyone was taken care of somehow.
The horrid irony was that the Russian peasant ‘Obschina’ was pretty much local primitive communism, which was destroyed by the advanced “scientific” communism centralized in the State. “Class War” has nothing to do with it.
Maya Haber,
A. I agree with your point that Israel can be classified as a Socialist state. However, free market mechanisms still play an important role in Israeli economy.
B. People work because they always have an incentive to eat, not because they want to serve the community.
Of course, people may organize to work in a variety of ways, but there is always a communal element there. It was clearly visible in primitive agricultural communities, but even if you take a modern corporation not all of its functions can be explained by ruthless efficiency. There is a great deal of favoritism and nepotism going on there, often to the point of getting seriously counter-productive.
Candide:
There was a very serious famine in the Volga region in 1891-1892. It was the cause of a large number of Volga Germans migrating both to the western hemigsphere and eastward to Asian areas of the Russian Empire. Indeed it was the primary reason Volga Germans first settled in Central Asia.
See Viktor Krieger, _Rein, Volga, Irtysh: Iz Istorii Nemtsev Tsentralnoi Azii_ (Almaty: Daik Press, 2006), p. 51.
J. Otto Pohl,
Thank you. I’ll be sure to get that book, because my grandmother family (Volga Germans) moved to Omsk (on Irtysh river) at about the same time and in consequence to the events you mention.
“There was a very serious famine in the Volga region in 1891-1892.”
That’s just one famine. You should read Mark Tauger’s papers.
@Maya Haber
Is this the book you are referring to?
http://www.amazon.com/Object-Labor-Commodification-Socialist-Hungary/dp/0226468305/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2
Jean Marat, This is indeed the book and I strongly recommend it. She is a brilliant woman and a very good scholar.
And re-Candide, you must be kidding! Not all natural AND social ills originated in communism. God plagued us with some.
Yet at the same time, what I found interesting about your response is how you interesting combine between populist nonsense about the peasant obshchina, and newly invented Russian propaganda on how everyone was happy and well taken care of under tsarism.
My landowner went as far as to tell me that in Russia there were never epidemics like in Europe because the landlords always took care of their peasants and built them banias. Peasants bathed once a week in Russia. Utter nonsense. If the soviets weren’t particularly good to the peasants it doesn’t make what came before them brilliant. Why the hell did these people revolt if they were so happy and cared for?
“My landowner went as far as to tell me that in Russia there were never epidemics like in Europe because the landlords always took care of their peasants and built them banias. Peasants bathed once a week in Russia. Utter nonsense.”
HA ! Well if he knows English you could give him some papers I have in mind of S.Wheatcroft about typhus and all sorts of epidemics during tsarism.
There has been an opinion that hadn’t october revolution happened Russia could be in the state that India is today.
“If the soviets weren’t particularly good to the peasants it doesn’t make what came before them brilliant.”
Soviet policy wasn’t a static one. It changed from favourable to hostile to less favourable for the peasants. It sure started as MOST FAVOURABLE for them , as they partioned the huge feudal estates giving land to the middle and poor peasants.
Excuse me, where did I say that “everyone was happy and well taken care of under tsarism”? I was careful to note that life was very often very hard. If you want to have an honest discussion, don’t make stuff up, please.
Soviet gov’t deliberately starved the peasants in 1920-s and 1930-s, causing millions of people to die of hunger. There was nothing like that in Tsarist Russia.