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The mass collectivization began in the USSR
On February 1st, 1930 the Council of the People’s Commissars of the USSR and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR issued a decree ‘On the measures of the agriculture socialist reorganization increase in the regions of the dense collectivization and kulaks’ fighting’.
The document abolished the right for land rent and use of wage labor in the individual farms. The exclusion could be made upon a special mutual decision of the regional and district executive committees only with respect to the peasants of average means.
Local authorities had emergency powers ‘up to the complete confiscation of kulaks’ properties and their eviction outside the certain regions and territories’. The confiscated properties, for the exception of the part which was intended for paying off the kulaks’ duties to the state and cooperation bodies, were to be given over to the indivisible collective farms’ funds as a fee on behalf of poor peasants and farm hands joining them.
The order of kulaks’ dispossession and deportation was detailed in a secret instruction of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of the People’s Commissars of February 4 and in an order of the Committee for the State Security (KGB) of February 2. In the regions of total collectivization it was ordered to confiscate from kulaks the means of production, cattle, household and dwelling constructions, production and trade enterprises, food, forage and seeds reserves, money in cash and surpluses of the homestead.
Taken measures intended to eliminate not only kulaks but any self-employed farmers who, due to their self-sufficiency and autonomy, represented a danger for the state based upon the dictatorship of the proletariat. The realization of the order resulted in the armed revolts all over the country. In order to suppress the risings the troops were sent. Just in 1930 over 2.4 million of villagers took part in 14 thousand of revolts, risings and manifestation. The most violent resistance to the collectivization was offered by the population of the outlying districts of the USSR (Altai, Chechnya, Kazakhstan, Taymyr, etc.).
The protest of peasants, who constituted the majority of the national population, forced the central power to hold back the activeness of the local authorities which hastened to report the results of the party and government’s decisions implementation. On March 2, 1930 ‘Pravda’ published an article of I.V. Stalin ‘Success turning heads’ where he criticized the violation of voluntariness principle for entering the collective farms and suggested to search other forms of collectivization more appropriate for the certain region.
Nevertheless violent methods continued to apply and by July 1, 1930 23.6% of farms were consolidated into collective farms (in comparison to 3.9% by July 1, 1929). The number of the state farms (sovkhoz) also increased. The process of mass dispossession was hold up only when the number of cooperated farms was over 60%.
According to a secret instruction of the Communist Party Central Committee and the People’s Commissars of the USSR of May 8, 1933 ‘To all the Soviet party workers and all the bodies of KGB, court and the prosecutor’s general office’ the kulaks’ dispossession was made individually, not in mass. And from May 24, 1934 under the order of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR ‘On the order of reestablishment of the former kulaks’ civil rights’ began the reestablishment of civil rights of the deprived peasants.
On August 13, 1954 the measures relating to the kulaks class elimination policy were ceased under the order of the Ministers Council of the USSR ‘On ending the restrictions on special deportation of former kulaks’. By this time there were almost no self-employed farms left in the country.
Lit.: Зеленин И. Е. «Революция сверху»: завершение и трагические последствия // Вопросы истории. 1994. № 10; Постановление ЦИК и СНК СССР «О мероприятиях по укреплению социалистического переустройства сельского хозяйства в районах сплошной коллективизации и по борьбе с кулачеством». 1 февраля 1930 г. // Политбюро и крестьянство: высылка, спецпоселение 1930-1940 гг. М., 2005. Т. 1. С. 50-51; Роговин В. Власть и оппозиции. М., 1993. Гл. 15. Первый тур коллективизации; «С подготовительной работой для расселения на постоянное жительство "переселенцев"… обстоит из рук вон плохо…». Документы Госархива общественно-политических движений и формирований Архангельской области о приёме и расселении раскулаченных в Северном крае. 1930 г. // Отечественный архивы. 2005. № 5; Сталин И. Головокружение от успехов // Правда. 1930. 2 марта (№ 60); То же [Электронный ресурс]. URL: http://www.hrono.ru/libris/stalin/12-2.html.
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