Other changes Stalin made were to increase production in agriculture by the collectivization policy. Document 4 shows how he planned to do this by joining small peasant farms together and eliminate the Kulaks who were wealthy farmers. During the First Five Year Plan, livestock went from 33 to 16 million. During the Second Five-Year Plan, livestock went up slightly from 16 million to about 17 million. Wheat production yo-yoed from 25 to 18 million between the years 1928-1937.
Stolypin believed that the encouragement of a class such as the Kulaks would make them hostile to further change therefore more conservative and loyal to the Tsar as the Tsar had made them wealthy. Furthermore, peasants made up 85% of the population of Russia and a majority relied on agriculture for their income. Reforms that would please the ‘dark masses’ would strengthen the tsarist regime. Another reason for reforming agriculture was to oppress peasant unrest. In Poltava and Kharkov provinces, mass impoverishment of the peasants, which was exacerbated by the poor harvests of 1901 led to 40,000 peasants took part in an uprising where they also ransacked 150 landlord properties.
Industrialization was creating even more towns, increasing this problem. So in order to feed his industrial workforce Stalin needed to revolutionize agriculture. He achieved this through forced grain seizure and the prosecution of kulaks and forcing peasants to work together in ‘collectives’. By doing so he was able to secure extra grain to feed the growing urban population of workers and sell the surplus to gain foreign currencies for purchasing foreign machineries. Though collectivisation may have had short term boosts to the economy but the effects of collectivisation were disastrous.
By 1933 the value had dropped to three billion. Also, American industrial output as decreased by half. In 1933 the world acreage that covered wheat, rice, rye, maize, barley, and oats had been larger than in 1929. All the other crops, such as potatoes and sugar, that furnish calories for human consumption, had actually risen. As six sevenths of the American race depend on cereals for most of their nourishment, this gain in agricultural production was extremely important at the time.
To the government the whole reason of the law was to guarantee land owners profits of which they had became accustomed to during the war. However opponents of the regime both inside and outside of the regime only saw the law as a class piece of legislation in which the law saved landowners from three things: cheaper foreign grain, stabilised prices and making corn more expensive for the consumer. This concept and idea was not new, a similar law 1804 had been introduced to guarantee 80 shillings a quarter. In spite of this the government had problems to face including riots, petitions and demonstrations. The main protest for this law, was the Luddism riots and machine breaking.
However the failures of collectivisation may contradict the theory of Stalin’s economic policy being a success; whereby this is in relation to how collectivisation resulted in both economic failure and human cost. In terms of economic failure collectivisation resulted in a great harvest drops dramatically in the early of 1930s and also a huge decline in Russia’s animal population furthermore in reference to human cost collectivisation had resulted in seven million deaths due to famine and ten million peasants being reposed which often resulted in much of the effected being sent to prison camps. This concludes that Stalin’s economic policy was not a great success in relation to collectivisation. In
The reasons for agrarian discontent in the late 19th century were derived from trusts and monopolies, railroad freight costs for transportation of produce, and the circulation of money. Arguably, some of their complaints were not valid. The agricultural depression at the time in question could not solely be blamed on the government. Come to think about it, it was simple economics that mostly brought the farmers down. They grew too much too fast during a time where it wasn’t as required.
In addition it will also examine the human failures; this would be defined as human loss, death and or a decrease in living conditions and quality of life. Stalin’s first economic policy of the 1930’s was to introduce Collectivization. This was the joining of private plots which had been previously divided amongst the peasants by the Tsar, in order to increase the amount of output production altogether. Efficiency of farms and a boost in agriculture was essential in order to support industrialization which Stalin wanted to push forward. He needed enough food to be produced in order to support the working masses that would be turning to industry in cities.
To what extent did the policy of collectivisation achieve its objectives? Collectivisation was the process by which Russian agriculture was reformed. Traditionally, peasants had worked on small farms with very limited technology. Stalin planned to merge all the small farms into larger ‘collective’ farms. These new, larger farms would pool the labour and resources and therefore operate more efficiently.
He intended to provide an industrial basis for China by ordering 25,000 strictly regimented communes, thus making agriculture more efficient which would enable more farmers to labour in industry. He also believed that the abolition of private ownership would stop peasants indulging themselves by overeating so more mouths could be fed. However these ideas of Mao backfired and the disruption caused by ending private farming was a major cause to the famine because it discouraged peasants from producing food beyond their own immediate needs. The results of collectivisation were disastrous because the production simply didn’t compare with the population, in 1958 China produced 200 million tonnes of wheat and by 1960 it had fell 143.5 million. The falls in production led to 300,000,000 Chinese deaths so Mao’s agricultural policy was extremely responsible for the scale of the great famine in China.