Collectivisation: a matter of economics, ideology and power

If you get the right kind of question in your exam, and one based on why Stalin moved to collectivise agriculture would certainly fit the bill, then this analysis should serve you well. For we can consider three interlocking factors in reaching an answer: economics, ideology and power. For agriculture wasn’t meeting the Soviet Union’s needs and had to be changed, based as it was on landownership, it didn’t fit comfortably with Marxist ideology either, whilst it gave Stalin the opportunity to rid himself of the last of his rivals. So, let’s take a look.

A practical problem existed, a structural flaw in the Russian economy, and Stalin was only too aware that it had to addressed. For the intertwined relationship between the agricultural sector and the industrial sector of the economy hadn’t been resolved at a fundamental level. If the Soviet Union was to industrialise on the scale it was capable of (it had the natural resources and a huge population), and as it needed to (in order to defend the Revolution), it needed to generate profits from the export of agriculture goods to pay for the industrialisation of heavy industry – coal, iron, steel and the like – which was necessary as a prerequisite for light industry to really take off and provide the consumer goods for its people, as well as to develop its armaments industry. And at the same time it needed to still have enough grain left to feed the cities which would grow in size as industry developed. This meant that agriculture had to become much more efficient: growing more with less hands (and less hands in the fields would mean more hands in the factories). This wasn’t happening because the peasant-based agriculture economy wasn’t geared for such vast surpluses, and neither was the peasant mentality. Their small strips of land were simply inefficient and collectivisation was necessary if machinery were to be used and economies of scale were to make farming more efficient.

This leads us to the ideological mismatch that had been created by the initial Bolshevik land policy and reaffirmed by NEP. For this allowed the peasantry to farm their own land, and it created a kulak class of wealthier peasants holding more land than the norm (defined by Stalin as a peasant with two horses and four cows so still not the kind of scale to generate surpluses). The NEP also created Nepmen: small-time traders who had taken advantage of the NEP. Nepmen would pay more than the state for food, selling in the cities for a tiny profit, or else they would pay unemployed workers to queue for goods that would then be sold at a small profit. In this way the Communist Party had overseen the creation of capitalist forces in the countryside.

The reality of the situation was that by the autumn of 1927, the Soviet Union was facing another economic crisis. There had been three good harvests yet there were bread shortages and, consequently, high food prices. The problem was that peasants were refusing to sell their produce at prices fixed by the state which they thought were set too low. Also, there were not enough tools or other goods for the peasants to buy. There were the usual riots and forced collection of grain.

Though Stalin had come out in favour of ‘socialism in one country’ and continuing with the NEP in 1924, against Trotsky’s ‘permanent revolution and the socialization of agriculture, by the Fifteenth Party Congress at the end of 1927 he was criticising Bukharin for encouraging the kulaks to ‘enrich themselves.’ He now felt that the NEP had reached its limits and called for a focus on the collectivisation and modernisation of agriculture as well as on heavy industry. This led him into conflict with Bukharin and others on the Right who continued to support the NEP and the smychka, the alliance between the workers and the peasantry which had been the foundation of the NEP.

Stalin, even while continuing to criticise and defeat the Left, nevertheless moved to the Left himself, accepting the need to use the power of the state to force through a more socialist economy. At a meeting of the Central Committee in July, 1928, Bukharin secured an increase in the price of grain and an end to forced requisitioning. The smychka, he argued, had to be maintained. However, with Stalin set on rapid industrialisation, he was having none of it, and after the meeting ordered that requisitioning should continue. The Soviet Union was to industrialise and the cosy relationship with the peasantry, particularly the kulaks, had to end. Grain surpluses were needed to pay for industrialisation and to feed the workers, and that meant collectivisation, not more concessions. The Fifteenth Party Congress in December, 1927 was dominated by the defeat of the Left and the First Five Year Plan, but the issue of grain procurement was a constant topic for discussion behind the scenes. And after the conference, leaders, Stalin included, went to grain producing regions to investigate the matter for themselves. Stalin’s conclusions were clear, the kulaks were hoarding grain and holding the country and the Revolution to ransom and had to be stopped.

But the Right argued that the NEP should continue largely unchanged. The peasantry should not be coerced, the kulaks were not the problem, and an artificial class war in the countryside (pitting poor peasants against the kulaks) should not be encouraged. It would be better to lower the targets of the Five Year Plan than to risk civil war in the countryside. Bukharin, chief editor of Pravda and head of Comintern, Aleksei Rykov, the Chairman of the Central Committee so technically head of the government, and Mikhail Tomsky, the leader of the trade unions, and all of them in the Politburo, led the fight from the Right. They also decried the weakening of collective leadership. Bukharin now came to see Stalin as something of a Genghis Khan who would destroy the Revolution.

But Stalin wasn’t one to have a fight over ideas when he could have a fight over power. As Stalin moved against the kulaks, those who had been too lenient towards them, mainly Bukharinists, were removed from their positions, thus strengthening Stalin’s grip on power even more. Trotsky’s supporters were divided as to how they should respond. Some welcomed the move. Their policies were being adopted and maybe they would be reinstated to the Party. Some even thought that they had been wrong about Stalin and that they should now join forces with him. Even Trotsky thought that the attack on the Right should be encouraged. Since early 1927, he had seen it as a bigger danger to the Revolution than Stalin.

So, economic policy again became an ideological battle as well as the battleground for control of the Party.