The New Stage of Collectivisation, October 1929–January 5, 1930

Abstract

The impressive increases in kolkhoz membership in June–September 1929 did not immediately result in any major change in official plans, and agriculture did not play a prominent part in the discussions on the control figures for 1929/30 at Gosplan and Sovnarkom in October 1929.¹ On the eve of the Day of the Harvest and Collectivisation, a Kolkhortsentr report cautiously estimated the number of households in kolkhozy at ‘over one million’, and proposed that by the end of 1929/30 3.1 million households should be collectivised in 103,000 kolkhozy, with a sown area of 15 million hectares.² This proposal, only a slight increase above the plan announced in the previous month (see p. 128 above) was included without change in the volume of control figures approved by Sovnarkom and published early in 1930.³ The proposal in the control figures that the sown area of large kolkhozy should amount to 3.3 million hectares at the end of 1929/30 was also relatively moderate; this was a smaller proportion of the total planned sown area of kolkhozy than in the plans prepared in the previous July.⁴ In other respects, however, the control figures were much bolder, proposing that the number of RSKs should increase from 25 to 60–80 in 1929/30, and that a high percentage of the livestock of peasants joining kolkhozy should be socialised (see vol. 2, p. 76).