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.
Private farms were taken over and the collectivisation process happened. This upset farmers as their traditional ways and values of farms were exploited and collectivisation led to shortages in food- leading to rationing. In the early 1950’s, many farmers fled and moved west. This shows that communism was not working because many civilians were unhappy and the idea of making farms state-owned had ruined the ways that the farms worked and led to food shortages for East Germany. This shows that the SED were bad at increasing the economy and it made communism look weak.
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.
This shows that collectives improved soviet agriculture to a small extent. Collectivisation was not favoured by the peasants as firstly the results of it were chaotic and devastating for agriculture for a whole. This is because peasants resisted the dramatic changes imposed on them by collectivisation and as a result they burnt their crops as well as slaughtered their animals. This again reiterates the point that collectivisation didn’t improve agriculture to any extent. After the introduction of collectivisation peasants productivity declined.
The Old Poor Law of 1834 was reformed because it could not cope due to the large numbers of people claiming poor relief. This was due to population rise, commercialisation of farming which left people with no jobs, decline of agricultural crafts, harvest failures, food shortages due to war, higher food prices and change in attitude to claiming social welfare as there was no stigma attached to being poor anymore. This led to different measures such as the introduction of the Speenhamland system of 1795. Having investigated the reasons for the reformation of the Poor Law, we will now focus on the reasons that led to the reform. There were six main reasons that led to the old Poor Law Reform to easily pass which were: a willing government, Tories were a minority, Climate change, objectors were not listened to, and a Report based on evidence collected by the commission of enquiry.
Collectivisation was introduced by Mao in 1958, in 1958 production rate of food was at 200 million tonnes, but by 1960 the production rate had fallen to 143.5 million. Within 2 years one of Mao’s own policies had caused a fall in production rate of 56.5 million. Despite the figures Mao insisted that many peasants were growing more food than necessary and keeping some for themselves, Mao accused the peasants of being ‘inherently capitalist’ and that they were against being a part of a communist state. The policy of collectivisation contributed hugely to the scale of the famine; the peasants resented the change as they didn’t have enough land to farm their crops, on top of this the authorities believed that they needed to be ‘strictly controlled and directed’. This attitude towards the peasants amplified the issues of collectivisation and caused scale of the famine to worsen.
Russia was severely behind the rest of Europe when it came to industrialisation, partly because the agricultural techniques used in the mid nineteenth century had not changed since the medieval period. The Russian social system being based on serfs did not assist the change that was needed to industrialise Russia because the serfs were effectively slaves and made up about 85% of the peasant population. Almost every other country in Europe had freed their serfs because they were hindering industrialisation; however Russia had not and could not hope to improve their industry if they continued to use the serfs. The Russians also believed that once the serfs were emancipated, they would create a pool of flexible labour and that they would be more willing to work if they were viewed as free people and were paid for their labour. Alexander had to emancipate the serfs in 1861 because he saw that they were delaying progress and change.
The largest problem with currency was that each state printed there own money. Different merchants from each state couldn’t trade with each other, for the money they would be trading would mean nothing in their home state. This also made the national currency almost worthless. The government also had money problems as they were not allowed to tax the people. This brought great debt on the nation’s government.
Since no one was able to afford animals, farmers had to kill them off. Despite Hoover’s promise to recover the economy in government, FDR’s recovery focused not only on the government, but assistance for the American people in a New Deal. According to the newspaper article, “Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Presidential Nominee of the Democrats, on the record of his past utterances, favors state of control of liquor, reciprocal tariffs, wiser and more equitable distribution of wealth and a reorganization of the federal government.” He also holds that “Modern society eating through its government owes the definite obligation to prevent starvation on dire distress of its fellow men and women who try to maintain themselves but can not.”(Distribute Wealth Wisely, Shape July 2, 1932). This New Deal was composed of balanced budgets and relief to the
The astonishing frequency of peasant revolts in the six years and two months of Alexander II’s reign prior to the Emancipation Edict (474 revolts, accounting for 32% of all peasant revolts in 19th century Russia according to Ignatovich’s figures) was clearly a contributory factor. The result was the abolition of human bondage which was, if nothing else, an increase in status for Russian peasants. The effectiveness of peasant opposition to serfdom can be contrasted with their reluctance under Stalin to become part of collective farms or kolkhoz which had to deliver an assigned amount of grain to the state. They even slaughtered their own resources to spite Stalin, with the number of horses declining from 34 to 16.6 million between 1929 and 1933. However, collectivization could not be averted and this time peasant revolts was not enough to direct government policy in their favour.