The collectivization of the Soviet countryside is the most important event in the history of Russia in the 20th century. It not only radically changed its agrarian system and the life of the bulk of the country’s population but also had a huge impact on the subsequent development of the state: the fateful events of the Great Patriotic War, the postwar development of the Soviet village, the agricultural sector of the economy, and the country as a whole. The consequences of collectivization also affected the course of modern agrarian reform in Russia and its sociopolitical life. This is evident from the active discussion of this topic in the framework of the sociopolitical and scientific discussion about Stalinism and the Soviet period as a whole.Footnote 1 Its comprehension is also relevant in relation to the sanctions imposed on Russia, when taking into account the historical experience of the development of the domestic economy based on internal sources is of practical interest.

That is why, in this article, an attempt is made to comprehend the phenomenon of collectivization. Moreover, the author understands that this is only one of the approaches to the problem under consideration, which by no means claims to be indisputable and categorical in conclusions. Given its complexity, as well as the impossibility of an exhaustive analysis in the article of all the historical consequences of collectivization, only those of them that seem to the author to be the most important are considered.

First of all, we need to note the outstanding achievements of domestic researchers. Over the past decades, due to the selfless activity of the agrarian sector of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences under the leadership of V.P. Danilov and his colleagues from Russian regions and abroad, a huge array of archival and other materials has been introduced into scientific circulation, proving the violent nature of collectivization and its tragic consequences for millions of peasants.Footnote 2 The conclusion of researchers about the common tragedy of the peoples of the former Soviet Union during the dekulakization and famine of 1932–1933 is also entirely justified. It is of particular relevance in relation to the ongoing attempts in Ukraine and in a number of Western countries to lay responsibility for this tragedy on Russia as the legal successor of the Soviet Union.Footnote 3 In this respect, the influence of the consequences of collectivization on modern international relations is obvious.

The achievements of Russian and foreign researchers in studying the causes, course, and consequences of collectivization cannot be doubted. They are unanimous in their opinion that it was the implementation in practice of the anti-peasant agrarian policy of the Stalinist group, which relied on violence in order to siphon funds from the countryside for forced industrialization. The result was a deep crisis in agriculture and a famine that claimed the lives of millions of peasants.Footnote 4

Speaking about the impact of collectivization on the further development of agriculture in the Soviet Union, researchers point out the need to study this issue in a historical retrospective. It is clear that collectivization cannot be considered outside the problem of the general industrial modernization of Russia, the chronological framework of which goes far beyond the Stalin period.Footnote 5 In my opinion, Yu.A. Petrov accurately defined modernization as “the transition from a traditional society to a modern one, that is, from an agrarian to an industrial or agrarian-industrial society.”Footnote 6

In this approach, the explanation of the phenomenon of collectivization is impossible without comprehending the entire historical path of Russian modernization, which implies studying the course of agrarian reforms in prerevolutionary and Soviet Russia and the tasks of industrialization, as well as in the context of all the fateful events of the country’s political history, determined by its peculiarities and historical development.Footnote 7 Russian researchers are following this path, having made a number of important and well-reasoned conclusions pointing to the historical regularity of collectivization as an accomplished variant of agrarian modernization, due to the peculiarities of the country. For example, L.V. Milov noted that in adverse natural conditions, with a low level of agriculture, the volume of the total surplus product created by the peasantry as the main productive force was much lower than in European countries, and the state needed very strict measures to get it for its own needs, primarily, the material support of the nobility and bureaucracy. Serfdom and the further strengthening of the autocracy were such measures. The subsequent agrarian development of the country demonstrates a fundamentally different type of evolution of Russia than in Western Europe (not to mention the United States), and this path was not chosen arbitrarily by the ruling circles, but was dictated by the objective conditions of existence. In this interpretation, even the “second serfdom of the Bolsheviks,” despite its huge costs, generally fits into the framework of adaptation to the indicated long-term trend: the need in Central Russia for the maximum concentration of labor and agricultural work in the shortest possible time.Footnote 8 The historian concluded: “There is no escape from this paradigm of Russia, since we cannot change nature.”Footnote 9

Thus, the natural-geographical factor is the undoubted reason for the development of the country towards the creation of large-scale agricultural production. As we know, this is exactly what was created in the Soviet Union. And now the pattern of efficient economic entities in Russia and the subjects of the agrarian economy is obvious as large entities, comparable in size to Soviet collective farms.

I.A. Kuznetsov, according to whom collectivization was one of the options for solving the “agrarian (peasant) question” in the form in which it arose after the great reform of 1861, reasoned in a similar way to Milov.Footnote 10 Researchers note the continuity of the solution of the agrarian issue in relation to the needs of industrial development. For example, V.V. Shelokhaev draws attention to the paradox: “The new, Bolshevik, power also [just as the autocracy, VK] tried to impose their own model of socialist modernization ‘from above’.”Footnote 11 He is supported by V.V. Zverev, believing that “it could not be otherwise in an agrarian country,” where modernization was carried out according to the principle “peasant labor in exchange for an industrial breakthrough.” In his opinion, which I share, “the same tactics were subsequently borrowed by the Bolsheviks.” “In terms of the characteristic features of its activity, the new government differed little from the bureaucratic style of autocracy: the same rigid centralization and the same directives.”Footnote 12

At the same time, the fundamental difference between the agrarian policy of the autocracy and the Soviet government during the period of industrialization is understandable. First of all, it manifested itself in the price paid in human lives and the productive resources of the rural economy. In the first case, it was quite acceptable, since it was carried out with the active participation of foreign capital, which was not the case in Stalin’s industrialization with its reliance only on its own forces.Footnote 13 This circumstance, in my opinion, must be taken into account when explaining the negative consequences of collectivization.Footnote 14 At the same time, it should be remembered that famine-related catastrophes also took place in those countries in whose economic development foreign capital took an active part (British India, French Indo-China).Footnote 15

Speaking about the inextricable link between collectivization and industrial modernization, researchers point to the importance of studying the historical forms of collective farming in Russia, their appearance, and the attitude of the state power towards them. For example, P.N. Zyryanov noted that the forced imposition of collective power by the authorities is a tradition that has a long history. In particular, large-scale attempts to introduce elements of such a system were made under Nicholas I (since 1827, at the initiative of the head of the allotment department, L.A. Perovsky, “community plots” were introduced everywhere among the estate peasants). However, they “all the time encountered resistance from the peasant community.”Footnote 16 However, V.P. Danilov noted that the peasants voluntarily united in artels and associations for joint management of the farms. In confirmation, he cited the example of the First All-Russian Agricultural Congress held in September 1913, at which, according to the report of the famous agronomist A.N. Minin “On promoting the development of collective cultivation of the land,” a corresponding decision was made.Footnote 17 The voluntary participation of the peasants in prerevolutionary Russia in the creation of collective farms is confirmed by T.M. Kitanina, which points to a gap in historiography regarding the study of the collective farms of peasants that arose during the period of the Stolypin agrarian reform in the Volga region and other regions of Russia.Footnote 18 Thus, the line for the development of collective agriculture before the revolution should not be related only to the activity of the autocratic-bureaucratic apparatus.

In any case, the nonrandom nature of collectivization as a process of creating a large collective farm is obvious. It is a direct product of the industrial modernization of the country. Recognizing this fact, the researchers discuss the reasons for its implementation in the Stalinist variant. In my opinion, without an answer to this question, it is difficult to understand not only the subsequent history of the country but also its current state.

As we know, at the turn of 1980s–1990s and subsequently, there was a fashion for “alternative history” in the scientific community. With regard to the problem under consideration, we are talking about the Bukharin alternative, which was actively supported by Danilov. He put forward the concept of the existence of “Lenin’s cooperative plan,” especially Bukharin’s views on the development of agriculture, based on the theoretical developments of scientists-economists in the organizational and production direction (A.V. Chayanov and others). The central link of this concept is the idea of “cooperative socialism”: peasant cooperation as a motor to overcome the stagnation of agriculture in the late 1920s and the creation of the conditions for the successful implementation of industrialization without casualties and upheavals.Footnote 19 Another component of the argument was the conviction that there was no real military threat to the Soviet Union at the start of and during the period of collectivization. As is known, it was this thesis of Stalin and his team that substantiated the need to accelerate the creation of a large-scale industry through the “military-feudal exploitation of the peasantry.” According to the historian, the rejection of this program as a result of the NEP being broken by the bureaucratic nomenclature, which carried out the “Thermidorian counter-revolutionary coup” in the country, led to the tragedy of the village and the whole society of the forced collectivization and famine and the establishment of Stalin’s repressive regime.Footnote 20

The English sociologist and peasant expert T. Shanin argued in the same vein. He formulated the core of the alternative view of collectivization: “If the Soviet economy had developed in the 1930s as suggested by the best analysts and planners, the country, in my opinion, would have come to 1940 with a slightly smaller number of factories, but they would have been much more efficient, with higher production than was actually achieved. Agriculture by 1940 would have been no less than a third more productive, the best commanders would have remained alive, party cadres would have remained intact, and about 5 million people could have joined the ranks of the army. Shouldn’t it be admitted that this would have been the best way of industrialization (if it had been followed, the Nazi armies would have been stopped not on the outskirts of Moscow, but near Smolensk)?Footnote 21

Danilov’s concept was subjected to serious criticism, especially its core: cooperatives. The researchers, in my opinion, convincingly proved that in reality, by the beginning of collectivization, the cooperative had ceased to be all-peasant, turning into an appendage of the state apparatus, a mutual assistance fund for the poor and an instrument for implementing tax policy in the countryside. This was the natural result of a deliberate policy of moderating cooperatives and forcing kulaks, as well as ordinary farm peasants, out of them. Therefore, it could no longer become an “alternative” in principle.Footnote 22 The Bukharin Alternative has also been criticized for its obvious weaknesses. First of all, it did not take into account the current international situation, which required the acceleration of the country’s economic development, while Bukharin allowed the country’s development to take place at an extremely slow pace.Footnote 23 In relation to this, S.A. Esikov asked: “Could the ‘Bukharin alternative’ be implemented?” And answered: “Apparently not. Due to serious flaws in the constructions of Bukharin, and in relation to the current situation in the country and the party, this alternative hardly had a chance of success.”Footnote 24

The theoretical seminar organized by Danilov on May 6, 1993 at the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences was a notable event in the discussion about alternatives to Stalinism and collectivization.Footnote 25 It discussed the monograph of the American economists G. Hunter and I. Schirmer, in which, with the help of mathematical modeling, a picture of the economic development of the Soviet Union without collectivization was presented.Footnote 26 The authors came to the conclusion that in the late 1920s a different economic policy was possible, which would ensure a more efficient movement towards the same goals. Without collectivization, while maintaining the level of agricultural production of the NEP period, there would have been higher yields and livestock productivity by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, and most importantly, it would have been possible to maintain human capital and huge production resources in agriculture.Footnote 27

I do not share either this conclusion or the general positive assessment of such studies by the participants of the seminar (except for L.I. Borodkin), because they did not take into account the real sociopolitical situation in the period under review. This was convincingly pointed out by one of the most prominent researchers of the Soviet economy of the Stalinist period, R. Davis:

“According to Hunter and Schirmer, if the Bolsheviks had not rushed headlong into collectivization, the peasants could well have increased agricultural production, the necessary part of which would have provided for the needs of industry and the urban population. This assumption was built into the alternative model of economic policy. However, it seems to imply, as it were, that the market conditions would have been acceptable to the peasants from 1928 to 1940. However, in 1928, G. Hunter’s study starts, the market was undermined, and the Soviet government used considerable administrative pressure to get grain from the recalcitrant peasants.”Footnote 28

As noted, in the discussion about the alternatives to collectivization, the question of the international situation in the period under consideration is important. In a broader sense, this is the question of an external factor in collectivization, which, in my opinion, has not yet received due attention in historiography. Without taking it into account, it is impossible to fully understand the consequences of collectivization for Russia or for other countries, which are related in one way or another with its recent history.

Recent studies on this topic correct the opinion that had been established in historiography about the absence of a military threat to the Soviet Union.Footnote 29 We take note of the arguments of the participant in the fundamental documentary series on the history of the Soviet military-industrial complex and the author of the monograph of the same name, A.K. Sokolov.Footnote 30 He critically assessed the attempts of a number of researchers in hindsight to say that “at that time there was no threat the Soviet Union and that the military preparations of the Soviet Union had no particular justification.” The military threat at that time was seen to be entirely real. The limitrophe states created on the territory of the former Russian Empire, as well as the countries of the Little Entente, which were in close alliance with France and England, which, in the event of war, could provide assistance to their allies, were seen as the potential enemies. At the Headquarters of the Red Army, “the military preparations in Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and other countries were carefully monitored” and persistent demands for militarization were voiced: intensification of the production of weapons and strengthening the defense component of the five-year plan.

Sokolov underlined that the 1929 peace treaties with Poland, Romania, Latvia, and Estonia did not remove suspicion about the intentions of the neighboring and other countries. In all the documents of this time, “the idea that a military attack on the Soviet Union is possible in the coming years” and the underestimation of the military danger became “an identification mark of the rightist bias, the struggle against which unfolded in 1928–1929.” The Stalinist leadership emphasized in every possible way that defending the country’s independence was “impossible without an advanced industry and insisted on the maximum acceleration of the pace of industrialization.” Questions about the date of the start of the war and about possible enemies “were constantly considered in the echelons of power.”Footnote 31 However, the military threat was not only seen on the western borders but also clearly identified in the Far East. The conflict on the Chinese Eastern Railway, the Manchurian Incident, as the actual beginning of the implementation of Japan’s imperialist policy in China was convincing proof of this. According to the authoritative Japanese researcher K. Terayama, it was the actions of the Kwantung Army in Manchuria in the autumn of 1931 that led to the fact that “the Soviet Union began to seriously prepare for war along all lines.”Footnote 32

However, the main factor was interna: the victory of the Stalinist group in the struggle for power.Footnote 33 This conclusion is shared by the vast majority of researchers, including the author of this article. However, the explanation of the success of collectivization and the relative durability of the collective-farm system only by the power of the administrative-repressive apparatus needs to be clarified. Otherwise, all subsequent events in Soviet history should be viewed only through the prism of “terrible power” and “good people” who became its innocent victims. In relation to this, I agree with another Japanese researcher, H. Okuda, who reasonably pointed out that on the eve of collectivization, a significant layer of young peasants arose in the Soviet countryside, linking their fate with the rural Komsomol, the Soviet, rural cell of the Bolshevik Party. They abandoned the plow for the sake of a “portfolio,” they were closer to the ideas of the cultural revolution, industrialization, and collectivization than labor on a piece of land. Even rural girls in the NEP village began to prefer the activist to hardworking men from wealthy households. As a result, collectivization received active supporters in the countryside, for whom it created many new positions (in collective farms, Soviets, parties, etc.), and also freed them from hard work. Therefore, tens of thousands of peasants supported collectivization and became its social base and instrument.Footnote 34 Otherwise, success would not have been possible. Here we should note an undoubtedly positive fact in the history of the collective farm system: the cultural revolution, mechanization of production, urbanization, electrification of the countryside, creation of a social elevator for the young people in it through the MTS, workers’ faculties and universities, military service, etc.Footnote 35

The study of the complex of available sources leads to the question of the role of the collective farm system as one of the factors of victory in the Great Patriotic War. The influence of collectivization had its full effect in those tragic years.Footnote 36 The paradox was that the provision of food to the front was achieved by agriculture, which, after collectivization, was in a state of permanent crisis and extremely inefficient. Food difficulties began in 1939–1940, when bread and flour disappeared from the free market, and the country switched to rationing. In the spring of 1940, the collective farmers of Ukraine and the Russian regions ate meat from cattle burial grounds, sunflower cake, and other surrogates because of the famine, left their jobs, and fled from collective farms to other districts and cities.Footnote 37

This situation did not arise immediately. It was the result of the actions of the Stalinist leadership in the second half of the 1930s, aimed at eliminating the negative processes in the collective farm village. Despite all the efforts to enforce conscientious work, the collective farmers did not want to work for “free.” Having received, according to the Charter of the agricultural artel of 1935, the right to a personal plot of land, later called a personal subsidiary plot (PSP), they threw all their strength into it, pushing their work on collective farm fields and farms into the background. Moreover, in the conditions of a huge need for labor in the cities and at the construction sites of five-year plans, the most able-bodied young men put together teams and left the collective farm to earn money. Some of the collective farmers and individual farmers on the farms, despite the tax pressure, were engaged in various types of entrepreneurship and lived better than the bulk of the collective farmers. The Stalinist leadership reacted to these processes by decrees and “on violations of the Charter of the Agricultural Artel,” according to which a mandatory minimum of workdays was established on the collective farms, the farmstead plots of collective farmers were trimmed (by 2 542 200 hectares) so that they would not spend too much time on working on them, the sizes of obligatory deliveries from subsidiary farms were increased, and farms were liquidated. As a result, the collective farm market was undermined, where there were no products from peasant farmsteads, and the peasants themselves were forced to return to work on collective farms, where they were still not actually paid for their hard work.Footnote 38

Thus, reliance on the administrative-repressive resource of managing the village was maintained. However, it did not improve production: crops did not grow (with the exception of the climatically favorable 1937, V.K.) and animal husbandry was in a crisis.Footnote 39 Such a situation could not continue for long, since the inefficiency of the collective farm system was obvious and its reform would become inevitable; however, the war delayed this process.Footnote 40 However, for the wartime period and emergency situations, the collective farm economy during turned out to be most effective. The state had the opportunity to receive from the village the maximum possible amount of food and raw materials for its needs, without caring about the situation of the villagers, who had to survive through the PSPs.

By this time, the Stalinist leadership had successful experience related to the activities of the political departments of the MTS and state farms in 1933 and 1934. They worked effectively in the emergency conditions of the deepest crisis in agriculture and mass famine, achieving organizational and economic strengthening of collective farms through forced labor, including through mass repressions. It was an atypical case for the Stalin era, when the repressions did not lead to a deterioration in the situation in the economy. The political departments ensured the conduct of the main agricultural campaigns and the fulfillment by the collective farms of state tasks for the delivery of grain.Footnote 41 This experience was fully used during the Great Patriotic War.

Of course, the sacrifices made by the peasantry in these years is beyond doubt; nevertheless, the main reason for the fulfillment of state obligations was the administrative-repressive, command model of managing the agrarian economy. During the period under review, the legislation and its application were tightened in relation to collective farmers who did not go to work and plundered collective farm property, and the managers of collective farms, disrupting state supplies, increased tax pressure on peasants.Footnote 42 Repression again increased and the military-feudal exploitation of the village reached its climax.Footnote 43 Only in the Tambov region, in the first half of 1943, 200 heads of collective farms were prosecuted for the disruption of grain procurement.Footnote 44 As a result, throughout the war, the collective farms, regardless of any costs, handed over to the country everything that could go to the needs of the front. Soviet historians have written a great deal about expanded production in the collective farm village during the Great Patriotic War. Of course, nothing like this was observed, the collective farm system was in a deep crisis. Objective reasons played their role (occupation of a significant territory of the country, mobilization of labor resources and equipment to the front, etc.), but collectivization with its faults turned out to be the main one. The collective farms were only able to partly feed only the army and the cities.Footnote 45 A significant addition to the diet of soldiers was the famous Lend-Lease stew (in the second World War), and millions of citizens, workers, and employees in 1942 received land for vegetable gardens and farms.Footnote 46

The food supply problem was not solved in the future, despite desperate attempts at reform. Researchers found that after the death of Stalin, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the party and government adopted over 1500 resolutions aimed at improving the efficiency of agricultural production.Footnote 47 In 1961–1980s alone, 505.5 billion rubles were invested in agriculture; in 1950–1980s, the tax burden on the peasantry was eased, the “virgin soil epic” was launched, and a grandiose land reclamation program was launched. Annual deliveries of tractors to the countryside in some years approached 40 000. By the mid 1980s, the massive budget injections into the industry were close to the total cost of all its products.Footnote 48 However, the expected effect did not take place. Collective and state farms could not cope with the task of supplying the urbanized country with food. The system’s failure can be seen in the annual growth of grain imports since the 1960s by the country with the largest cultivated areas in the world: in 1973, 13.2% of grain production in the Soviet Union was purchased; in 1975, 23.9%; and in 1981, 41.4%. A “record” was set in 1985 with grain imports of 44 million tons.Footnote 49

The explanation of the reasons for this situation deserves a separate and very serious analysis. I agree with those researchers who believe that the inefficiency of the collective farm system is primarily related to the subordinate nature of the agrarian economy in relation to the industrial sector and other interests of the state, as well as with the “barrack” way of life and work of collective farmers, which gave them little incentive to be highly productive.Footnote 50 A.A. Nikonov, an academician of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (VASKhNIL), accurately characterized this: “Deprived of property and economic freedom, and of any right to choose, he (the collective farmer, V.K.) had no incentive to show his abilities, was not interested in working well or using land and other resources prudently …. The system tore the peasant away not only from the land but also from the ownership of the products produced. He had the right and duty only to work.” The result was the formation of the psychology of dependency, lack of initiative, and indifference.Footnote 51 This is one of the main negative consequences of collectivization.

Summing up, it should be noted that the collective farm system solved important problems. Thanks to collectivization, a model of an agrarian economy was created that was best adapted to wartime, and despite all its shortcomings, it proved this during the Great Patriotic War. The contribution of collectivization is also evident in the analysis of the sources of the creation of the military-industrial complex. It secured the large-scale industrial-type farm as the leading form of agricultural production, which retains its potential in modern Russia, despite attempts to force decollectivization and farmerization.Footnote 52 Collectivization was an important factor in industrial modernization, the study of the features of which in Russia, especially at the regional level, remains an urgent task. Researchers have made progress in this direction, putting forward a number of original concepts: agricultural transition, capitalization of the agrarian economy, transformation of the agrarian system, etc.Footnote 53

At the same time, the new organization of the agrarian sector turned out to be unreformable and ineffective in terms of solving its main task: feeding the country. Collectivization had a huge impact on the mentality and everyday life of not only rural residents, changing their attitude to work on the land for the worse, but also the townspeople. The depeasantization of the countryside led to the peasantization of cities due to the flow of a huge mass of people who fled from collective farms throughout their existence, but did not break ties with their “small motherland.”Footnote 54 As a result, in the 1990s, citizens, instead of defending their rights by participating in political actions, threw all their strength into cultivating their dacha plots. The peasant mentality, collective traditions, and family cooperatives manifested themselves in this situation in full.Footnote 55 This averted the powerful social explosion generated by the “shock therapy” policy. At the same time, the former collective farmers, cut off for a long time from real participation in the management of production and turned into mere hired workers, and corrupted by mismanagement and irresponsibility, the former collective farmers, did not defend either the collective farms or the Soviet government that created them. This was a natural result for a system that arose against the will of the peasants, was based on coercion, was geared only for the fulfillment of state tasks, and barely took the interests of workers into account.