For Russian peasants, and those of other nationalities as well, the chief experience of Stalinism was collectivization — the enforced bringing together of many small-scale family farms into much larger collective farms called kolhozy. Thus private ownership of land was largely ended, even as the somewhat better-off peasants, known as kulaks, were dispossessed, deported, and sometimes killed. Collectivization was undertaken from the outside, largely by urban Communist Party activists fired with enthusiasm for socialism and modernity and eager to overcome what they saw as the backwardness and “darkness” of the countryside. One such young woman wrote to a friend: “I am off in villages with a group of other brigadiers organizing kolhozy. It is a tremendous job, but we are making amazing progress . . . , draw[ing] the stubborn peasant into collectivization. . . . [O]ur muzhik [peasant] is yielding to persuasion. He is joining the kolhozy, and I am confident that in time not a peasant will remain on his own land. We shall yet smash the last vestiges of capitalism and forever rid ourselves of exploitation. . . . The very air here is afire with a new spirit and a new energy.”1

In seeking to persuade reluctant peasants to join the new collective farms, such enthusiastic young party workers presented an attractive picture of the future. “Just look at yourself,” declared Kostia Lutkov, one of the organizers, to an audience of young villagers, “your coat is all torn; you’re wearing bast shoes [made from tree bark]; and your pants are made from sackcloth. Now in the collective farm, you could make some money, receive your grain ration, and even buy cologne for your evening get-togethers. . . . Just think about it. . . . All the land will be collectivized, so the kolkhoz will have plenty of it; all the horses will be in the same stable in the large collective farm yard; and all the machines — harvesting, sowing, and threshing — will stand next to each other in the same collective farm yard. With all that land and all those horses and machines — if you work hard, you will be well-fed and well dressed.”2

That hopeful and idealized vision of what socialist agriculture could become was expressed in Source 21.2, a Soviet poster from 1930, titled The Day of Harvest and Collectivization.

Questions to consider as you examine the sources:

The Day of Harvest and Collectivization, 1930

Notes