ANNIHILATION OF THE PEASANTRY
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By Tatyana Shvetsova
By 1930-ies peasantry still constituted an overwhelming majority of the
population of Soviet Russia.
This is what historian Pyotr Deinichenko writes:
“The food crisis that broke out in the country in 1927 – 1928, wasn’t something
the government could swiftly cope with. The peasants, fearing possible
famine, were unwilling to voluntarily hand over bread to the state even
under threat of imprisonment. In the cities the authorities began to ration
food, distributing ration cards among the population. When they closed
down the ‘backyard production’ and small-scale private shops, considered
‘capitalist enterprise’, the deficit gripped the entire country.
 Joseph Stalin
announced that the reason for the crisis was the undeveloped, unsocialist
agriculture, the unconscientious peasants, and the openly hostile actions
of their wealthy part – the ‘kulaks’. Rank-and-file communists in the cities
also tended to shift all the blame for the dire situation on the hoarding
‘kulaks’. So Stalin’s suggestion to entirely reorganize the agriculture,
completely destroying its private sector, found their ready approval. Many
communists considered collectivization in agriculture as a gigantic step
forward towards socialism. A decisive argument in favor of this for many
was the fact that in the course of 1928 hundreds of thousands of impoverished
peasants united into communities of land tillers. They hoped to somehow
raise their well-being at the expense of the state, which extended financial
aid to such communities. Such collective farms received fringe benefits
from the state.
Thousands upon thousands of workers and students were sent by the party
to the villages to stock up food provisions.
The state began to construct the first factories, which were supposed to
provide agriculture with modern technology.
Collectivization plans were constantly altered by the state in the direction
of augmentation. The basic agricultural regions were subject to total collectivization
by spring of 1931. The others – a year later. Nobody asked peasants if
this was what they wanted. Everyone was supposed to join the collective
farms – ‘kolkhozes’ – whether they wanted to or not. Simultaneously, the
authorities began the annihilation of the ‘kulaks’ – the wealthy peasantry
- as a class.
In January 1930 the Politburo commission of the Central Committee of the
Bolshevik party divided all the ‘kulaks’ into three categories. The first
were branded ‘the counterrevolutionary kulak active’ and subject to immediate
isolation in labor-correctional facilities. While all perpetrators or instigators
of anti-soviet manifestations were to be meted out the extreme penalty
– death by firing squad.
‘Kulaks’ of the second category, although loyal to the soviet authorities,
yet the wealthiest, were to be exiled to distant regions with the confiscation
of all of their property.
“Kulaks’ of the most indistinct ‘third category’, which any more or less
well-to-do peasant family could easily find themselves classed, were simply
forcibly resettled to virgin lands.
If the list of ‘first category’ kulaks was usually written up by the local
department of GPU, the second and third categories were determined by activists
from among the most underprivileged peasants at meetings of the village
poorest. These meetings compiled lists of ‘kulaks’ which were later approved
by village soviets and after that – validated by the regional administrations.
As you can guess, this afforded more than enough room for malversation.
In many regions peasants had become so impoverished, there were no characteristic
signs of welfare at all visible in their farmsteads. While the plan for
annihilation of the ‘kulaks’ had to be realized in full. So it was the
middle peasants, doggedly shying away from collectivization, that became
the principal target for the poor folk’s spite.
All in all, some 1.8 million people, including women and children, were
resettled from the villages. Taken out to back-of-the-beyond places and
abandoned there without food or agricultural implements, with total disregard
of the season of year, many of the resettled peasants died.
It was only in February 1930 that there arrived government instructions,
in line with which the kulaks were allowed to keep some of their household
articles and certain capital equipment with them after confiscation of
their property.
And on March 2nd that same year the central party newspaper “Pravda” published
an article by Joseph Stalin, entitled “Dizzy from Success”. It denounced
excesses, committed during the setting up of kolkhozes, while never doubting
the principle of collectivization. In line with party decisions, the number
of kulak farmsteads wasn’t to exceed 5% from the overall peasants’ farmsteads.
To achieve collectivization, another 25 thousand workers were sent to the
rural areas. They were to take upon themselves the responsibilities of
Chairmen of the newly established kolkhozes. In everything they did they
relied on the support of the local party leaders, the militia, military
and the GPU. Collectivization was proceeding strictly according to timetable.
On March 14th 1930 there came out a decree of the Party Central Committee
“On Fighting Distortions of the Party Line in Kolkhoz Building”. Once again,
the decree denounced ‘excesses’, committed during the establishment of
kolkhozes. The decree had an instantaneous effect: peasants began to withdraw
from the kolkhozes en mass. In March 1930 alone some 5 million peasants
left the kolkhozes.
Quite possibly, the authorities were prepared to slow down the tempo of
collectivization, yet the excellent
harvest of 1930 played false with the peasants. The state received twice
the amount of grain that they got in the last years of new economic policy.
This only served to reinforce the resolve of the authorities to push ahead
with collectivization, which they now saw as an obvious boon. Once again
the peasants were forcibly dragged into the kolkhozes. There was a fresh
wave of repressions against those peasants, who were branded ‘well-to-do’.
The policy of blind collectivization sparked the protests of not only common
folk, but in the communists’ midst, too. Thus, at the end of the summer
of 1932 prominent party activist Martemiyan Riutin spoke out against the
launching of reprisals against kulaks, demanded that Joseph Stalin be removed
from leadership, with a subsequent return to democratic principles in party
life.
Stalin insisted on Riutin’s immediate arrest and a death sentence for him.
However, a majority of Central Committee Politburo members refused to support
Stalin. Martemiyan Riutin wasn’t executed, but he was exiled. However,
Stalin got his way and eventually had him executed later, in 1937. A case
was fabricated against Riutin, accusing him of counterrevolutionary and
terrorist activity. He was exonerated after his death, in 1988…
The authorities needed grain for export shipments to Germany. In line with
a German-Soviet agreement dated 1931 in return for grain and gold Germany
pledged to grant the Soviet Union credits and technology. The volume of
exports never shrank, even after the crop failure of 1931. As a result
thousands of kolkhozes were left without seeds and fodder. In 1932 the
first terrible signs of famine manifested themselves in Ukraine. In order
to survive, kolkhoz members attempted to conceal at least some part of
the grain. In response the authorities adopted highly severe laws. For
damage to the kolkhoz one could be exiled for up to ten years.
In autumn of 1932 the authorities decided to deal the final blow: hundreds
of thousands of kolkhoz members were accused of undermining soviet power
for the most trivial of misdemeanors, such as cutting a few spikes of wheat.
Kolkhoz Chairmen, too, were arrested, accused of sabotaging grain procurement.
Over a third of the Kolkhoz Chairmen were evicted from their posts! In
grain regions, food procurement units, just like in the times of military
communism, took on the role of punitive detachments! They took out all
the grain to the last scrap, leaving none for planting. The peasants were
doomed to famine and death.
In 1932 – 1933 Ukraine, the North Caucuses, the lower and central reaches
of the Volga and Kazakhstan were gripped by famine. Over 5 million people
died of starvation in Ukraine alone, while in Kazakhstan the losses were
over 7 million.
The authorities were anxiously concealing everything from the rest of the
world. Armed units didn’t let anyone out of the starving regions. In soviet
newspapers of the time you won’t find any mention of famine. Naturally,
the authorities didn’t extend any help to the starving population.
All this makes one think that there were underlying ideological considerations
that explain the repressive measures unleashed against the peasants. Besides,
soviet power, in exiling the more successful peasants to outback regions
of the country, hoped to subdue those lands at their expense. Over half
of the exiled ‘kulaks’ were also sent to work in the lumber and mining
industries, as well as to construction sites, which were unfolding in line
with the first 5-year plan for the development of the national economy.
Illustrations: K.Tarnovsky, “Illustrated History of the USSR”, Novosti
Press Agency Publishing House, Moscow, 1982
03/31/2006
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