How did collective farmers live in the 1930s?

To begin with, it is necessary to separate what period of the “Stalinist collective farms” we are talking about. The first years of the young collective farms are strikingly different from the mature collective farms of the late 1930s, to say nothing of the post-war collective farms of the early 1950s. Even the collective farms of the mid-30s of the twentieth century are already qualitatively different from the collective farms of literally 2-3 years ago.

Kolkhoz 30s. Photo caption by Y. Dolgushin:
The collective farm is collective farming. It works well when people are working in it, but everything works badly when people are idle.

The period of organizing any new business “from scratch” necessarily goes through a very difficult period, which not everyone manages to successfully pass. But so everywhere and always. The same is true everywhere under capitalism. There are so many life stories that, for example, a farmer first lived poorly and starving, and then settled down and began to grow rich quickly. Or an entrepreneur who lived with his family in a miserable apartment with bedbugs and cockroaches, but invested all his money and effort in the development of his business. This topic is constantly sucked up in books and films - how badly he lived at first, then he got rich, so you need to work better, behave correctly and everything will work out. It would be more than strange to throw a tantrum about how badly they lived "then" and on the basis of this blame, for example, America and capitalism. Such a propagandist would rightly be taken for an idiot. The same thing happened to the collective farms, and propaganda tirelessly hysteria for decades, about the difficulties of the organizational period. That which is accepted with puppyish enthusiasm "in countries with a market economy" as a model of reasonable and mastery behavior under capitalism.

Collective farms were not state enterprises, but were associations of private individuals. As in any such organization, a lot depended on the diligence and skills of the workers-owners themselves and, of course, on the leadership they chose. It is obvious that if such an organization will consist of drunkards, loafers and incompetent people, and at the head of it will be a good-for-nothing leader, then the workers-shareholders will live very poorly in any country. But then again, what is enthusiastically accepted as a model of justice in countries from the “highway of civilization” is presented as a model of a nightmare in relation to the USSR, although the reasons for the failure of such an organization are the same. Some insane demands are made on the Soviet Union, invented from the muddy heads of anti-Soviet people, it is understood that absolutely all collective farms should be provided with a paradise, regardless of the efforts of the workers themselves, and all collective farmers, according to their ideas, live not only better than farmers in the warmest, fertile and developed countries, and live better than the best farmers.

In order to compare the life of a collective farmer, one must have a certain model for comparison and the parameters by which such a comparison is made. Anti-Sovietists always compare some speculative worker of incomprehensible qualities from the worst collective farm with a pre-revolutionary kulak or, in extreme cases, a very wealthy peasant, and not at all with the poor man without inventory of tsarist Russia, which would be fair - they compare the lowest income strata. Or there is a comparison of the poorest collective farmers with wealthy hereditary farmers from the United States, and not semi-bankrupts, whose farm is mortgaged for debts. The reasons for this cheap fraud are understandable - after all, then it will be necessary for the lowest stratum of peasants to take into account the benefits that they did not even have close to in the countries from the “highway”, such as free medical care, education, nurseries, kindergartens, access to culture and etc. It will be necessary to take into account natural conditions and the absence of wars and devastation and other factors. If we compare wealthy peasants from capitalist countries, then one should compare their life with rich collective farmers from millionaire collective farms. But then it will immediately become clear that the comparison, even under unfavorable historical conditions for us, will not be in favor of the enemies of the USSR. That is, here, as elsewhere, anti-Soviet people are ordinary swindlers. I emphasize once again that Soviet socialism never promised anyone heavenly life, all that he promised was equality of opportunity and fair pay according to work and ability, as much as possible with the given development of society. The rest is delusional fantasies of inadequate citizens or manipulative propaganda of conscious enemies.

2. Soviet women collective farmers of the Klisheva collective farm (Moscow region)

Selzosartel in the early 30s became the main, and soon the only form collective farms in agriculture - before that, collective farms were often called all forms of joint management. The first Charter of the agricultural artel was adopted in 1930, and its new edition was adopted in 1935 at the All-Union Congress of Collective Farm Shock Workers. The land was assigned to the artel for perpetual use and was not subject to sale or lease. All workers who had reached the age of 16 could become members of the artel, except for former exploiters (kulaks, landlords, etc.), but in certain cases the admission of “former” workers to collective farms was allowed. The chairman and the board were elected by the general vote of the members of the artel. In order to understand how the artel existed, one must understand how it disposed of its products. The products produced by the agricultural artel were distributed as follows:

“Of the harvest and livestock products received by the artel, the artel:

a) fulfills its obligations to the state for the supply and return of seed loans, pays in kind to the machine and tractor station for the work of the MTS in accordance with the concluded contract having the force of law, and fulfills contracting agreements;

b) fills up seeds for sowing and fodder for feeding livestock for the entire annual need, as well as for insurance against crop failure and lack of fodder, creates inviolable, renewable annually seed and fodder funds in the amount of 10-15 percent of the annual need;

c) creates, by decision of the general meeting, funds to help the disabled, the elderly who have temporarily lost their ability to work, needy families of Red Army soldiers, for the maintenance of nurseries and orphans - all this in an amount not exceeding 2 percent of gross output;

d) allocates, in the amount determined by the general meeting of the members of the artel, part of the products for sale to the state or to the market;

e) the artel distributes the rest of the crop of the artel and its livestock products among the members of the artel according to workdays.

Note that everything is absolutely fair and exactly the same mechanism works in enterprises of all countries - first, contractual obligations, taxes, funds aimed at maintaining the functioning of the organization, development funds, social assistance, and the rest can already be divided among shareholders. An indicative fact is the concern for the disabled, orphans, the elderly, etc. lay on agricultural artels, the village perceived this as completely normal - taking care of the weak "with the whole world" (that is, with the community) was fully consistent with the mentality of the Russian peasant. It was precisely on hushing up that the artel took care of the dependents (as, for example, about the nursery) that the hysteria raised during perestroika that “collective farmers in the Stalinist USSR did not receive pensions” was based. They did not receive a state pension, because their native collective farm, which knew them very well, was obliged to take care of them, and abstract payments from pension funds were not issued. Collective farms in the time of Stalin had a very large economic and managerial autonomy, greatly curtailed in the time of Khrushchev. It was then that pensions for collective farmers had to be introduced, because the collective farms, undermined by the administrative dictate, began to experience financial difficulties.

From the history of my family - in the village where my grandmother was from in the Southern Urals in the mid-20s, one of the first collective farms was organized, to be more precise, it was originally a commune, then transformed into a collective farm. My great-grandfather, blinded by the beginning of the 20s after being wounded in the Russo-Japanese War, lived there. Both his sons and son-in-law (my grandfather) fought in the White Army. One son died, the daughter with her family and the other son left the village (by the way, no one did anything to them for the war on the side of the whites), and the great-grandfather was very prosperous (but not a kulak). The collective farm did this - the great-grandfather's house and its plot were transferred by the decision of the "peace" to two poor families (yes, the house was of that size), who lost their breadwinners in the First World War and Civil War, and the great-grandfather was taken by the commune (collective farm) for full life maintenance. In the house he was given a room, every day a collective farm girl came to him to cook and take care of him, whose family was counted for this workdays when they appeared (before that, the products in the agricultural commune were distributed equally). He lived like that until he died from the effects of a wound in the early 30s.

The principle of workdays was very simple and fair. The average workday was regarded as the result of the work of not an average, but a weak worker. In order to standardize the terms of payment in 1933, the People's Commissariat of Agriculture of the USSR issued resolutions that recognized the practice of workdays already established on collective farms as the official form of calculating wages. Once again - workdays were precisely a popular invention, a practice already established in reality, and not a scheme invented by "Stalin's cannibals" to "torture the peasants to the collective farm gulag." Agricultural work was divided into 7 levels with coefficients from 0.5 to 1.5. More skilled or hard work could be paid a maximum of three times more than the lightest and most unskilled. Blacksmiths, machine operators, and the leading staff of the collective farm administration earned the most workdays. Collective farmers earned the least in auxiliary unskilled work, which is quite fair. For work from "dawn to dawn" and increased output, additional workdays were recorded.

3. Issuance of bread for workdays. Ukraine, s.Udachnoe, 1932

A huge amount of lies have been piled up around workdays in recent years. The number of mandatory workdays for "disenfranchised slaves" was 60 (!) -100 (depending on the region) in the 30s. Only during the war, the number of mandatory workdays was increased to 100-150. But this is a mandatory norm, but how many peasants worked in reality? And here's how much: the average output per collective farm household in 1936 was 393 days, in 1937 - 438 (197 workdays per worker), in 1939 the average collective farm household earned 488 workdays.

In order to believe that “they didn’t give anything for workdays,” one must be mentally retarded in a clinical sense - the average peasant worked 2-3 times more than was required by the norm, therefore, payment depended on the quantity and quality of labor and this was sufficient motivation to give multiple output. If they really didn’t give anything for workdays, then no one would work more than the prescribed norm.

It is significant that with the beginning of the destruction of the Stalinist system by Khrushchev in 1956, the number of mandatory workdays was increased to 300-350. The results were not long in coming - the first problems with the products appeared.

What did they do in the "Stalinist collective farms" with those who did not fulfill the norm for workdays? Probably immediately sent to the Gulag or straight to the firing range? It’s even worse - the matter was sorted out by the collective farm commission and if they didn’t find good reasons (for example, a person was sick), then they were shamed at a collective farm meeting and if they systematically violated the standards (usually more than 2 years in a row), by decision of the meeting they could be expelled from the collective farm with the withdrawal of a personal plot . No one could deprive a collective farmer of housing. The human right to housing was guaranteed by the Constitution of the USSR. Naturally, in reality, a person rejected rural community, left the village, as happens everywhere in the world. It is only in the heads of citizens divorced from reality that life in the village community is a popular pastoral, in fact it is very tough with very clear unwritten rules that are better not to be violated.

4. A comradely trial of malingerers on a collective farm. Ukraine, Kyiv region 1933

How much did collective farmers earn on workdays, otherwise for a quarter of a century all sorts of swindlers in the media go into hysterics, talking about “starving collective farmers”, and when swindlers are pressed by facts, the stories of unnamed grandmothers who “remember” that “there is nothing for workdays” are pulled out as an argument didn't give." Even if we exclude completely invented characters, then in order to more or less realistically assess the surrounding reality and directly earn workdays (16 years) in the most difficult period for collective farms in the early 30s, the average storyteller grandmother had to be, at the latest 1918 -1920 years of birth. No matter how you listen to anyone, before the Revolution they all had two cows, a huge house covered with iron, two horses, the most modern equipment and a couple of acres of land. I wonder where all these citizens came from, if before the Revolution in the village there were 65% of the poor, in almost 100% of cases they plowed the plow and 20% of the middle peasants with few land, who could not even talk about two cows? The wealthy middle peasants made up only 10% of the population, and the kulaks 5%. So where did these "grandmother's tales" come from? If we assume her honesty (although not count false information issued by the "grandmothers") and the honesty of retelling her stories even in the 90s, the adequacy of the described picture can hardly be called high. A lot of questions remain unanswered - in what family did the person live, how well did the family work, how many workers were there, how successful was the collective farm itself, what years specifically are we talking about, and so on. Obviously, everyone wants to present their family in a favorable light, because few people will say “dad was an armless lazy person, and the whole family is like that, so we weren’t paid a damn thing”, and “the chairman who was chosen by my parents was a sloppy and drunkard, but he was a sincere man, dad and mom liked to drink with him, "" he himself stole and gave to others, only because of hunger they did not die." In this case, it is obvious that the causes of material difficulties in the family have nothing to do with the collective-farm organization of labor. Although for such citizens, of course, the Soviet Power is to blame for everything. By the way, what is her “fault” is that such citizens generally survived, grew up and often learned. In the God-saved-which-we-lost, the fate of the families of clumsy and lazy people developed, as a rule, in a very sad way. But in Tsarist Russia, this is enthusiastically accepted as a model of justice, and much more better life for the same citizens in the Stalinist collective farms causes fits of hatred.

But there is a lot of testimonies of stories that paint a completely different picture, both from family stories and testimonies of collective farmers of those years, collected by scientists as expected. Here is an example of such testimony about how collective farms lived in the early to mid-30s:

“Most of the Kharlamov peasants considered the collective farm to be a cell of a just social order. The feeling of unity, joint work and the prospects for improving the culture of agriculture, the culture of life in the conditions of the collective farm system inspired. Collective farmers in the evenings went to the reading room, where the hut read newspapers. Lenin's ideas were believed. On revolutionary holidays, the streets were decorated with kumach; on the days of May 1 and November 7, crowded columns of demonstrators from all over Vochkoma with red flags walked from village to village and sang ... At collective farm meetings they spoke passionately, frankly, the meetings ended with the singing of the Internationale. They went to work and from work with songs.

What is indicative is that the excerpt is not from "Stalinist propaganda" - but these are the memories of collective farmers, collected by honest and independent researchers, who are very hostile to the Stalinist period as a whole. I can add that my relatives said the same thing. Now it will seem surprising - but people went to work on a collective farm or factory with joy and sang along the way.

5. Kolkhoz youth. 1932, Shagin

But all personal memories, even those recorded properly, have their limitations - they can be superimposed on the memories of subsequent ones, emotions, superimposed interpretation, selective perception, propaganda from the time of "perestroika", the desire to tell something that does not go beyond public opinion, and so on. Is it possible to objectively assess how collective farmers actually lived? Yes, quite, statistical data and serious scientific research are more than enough to talk about this as an established fact.

6. Amateur peasant brass band in a poor Jewish collective farm. Ukraine 1936, Panin

The gradation of collective farms in terms of wealth and, accordingly, the average standard of living in them obeys, on average, the famous Gaussian distribution, which is not surprising, this was well known back in Stalin's times. Averaged over the years, 5% of the collective farms were rich, successful collective farms, they were joined by about 15% of strong, wealthy collective farms, on the other hand, 5% of poor collective farms, which were adjoined by a slightly more successful 15% of the poor, and about 60% were middle-peasant collective farms. It is probably even a hedgehog of average intelligence that the level of income and life of peasants on rich collective farms was much higher than the standard of living of peasants on poor collective farms, and to talk about how they lived on the average on a collective farm would significantly distort the picture, as in the expression "average temperature in a hospital." The average data will show the standard of living of the average collective farmer in about 60% of the collective farms and no more. Let's see how much higher was the standard of living of the peasants in various collective farms than before the Revolution and why. After all, we are assured that in the USSR there was an equalization and people were "completely uninterested in working." Yeah, “completely uninterested”, but nevertheless, on average in the country, the norm for workdays (50-100) was overfulfilled by 3-5 times.

The average collective farm yard by 1940 was 3.5 people, against 6 in tsarist Russia - the fragmentation of farms began immediately after the Civil after the division of landowners and tsar lands. , and in 1932 the average peasant family consisted of approximately 3.6-3.7 people. The critical edge of hunger in tsarist Russia was approximately 245 kg per person (15.3 pounds) - excluding feed grain for livestock and poultry, but by tsarist standards it was not even considered a hungry line, tsarist Russia reached this level only in a few years at the end of its existence. The brink of mass starvation by the standards of tsarist Russia was 160 kg per person, this is when children began to die from malnutrition. That is, on average, a collective farm peasant in the USSR received about as much bread for workdays in 1932 as it was literally enough not to starve to death (162 kg). However, the royal peasant, apart from grain, grew little else in the grain-growing regions - almost all the land available for sowing grain went under grain, the energy value of wheat in our climate is the highest in relation to productivity. So, the average peasant in tsarist Russia in the most favorable years of 1910-1913 consumed 130 kg of potatoes per capita per year, vegetables and fruits 51.4 kg.

And what about the Soviet collective farmer? In the worst years of 1932-1933, the average peasant economy received from the collective farm 230 kg of potatoes and 50 kg of vegetables, that is, 62 and 13.7 kg per person.

However, the output received by the peasant is by no means exhausted by what he earns from his workdays. The second, and in some cases, the first income of the collective farm peasant in terms of importance is the product of a personal farmstead. However, we are still talking about the "average peasant" of the average collective farm. From personal farming in 1932-1933, collective farm peasants received an average of about 17 kg of grain per capita, potatoes - 197 kg, vegetables - 54 kg, meat and fat - 7 kg, milk - 141 liters. (ibid.)

That is, if we compare Russia in the most prosperous years and the USSR in the most unfavorable years of 1932-1933, then the picture of average food consumption in the countryside will be as follows:

The first column - Klepikov's data on the best years of tsarist Russia, the last column - tsarist Russia of the 20th century, on average, according to data for Russia until 1910, Prince Svyatopolk-Mirsky brought in 212 kg per capita at a meeting of the State Duma.

That is, the peasants of the USSR 1932-1933. began to eat much more potatoes, but less bread, compared to tsarist Russia. The average calorie content of wheat varieties of those years is about 3100 kcal / kg, potatoes 770 kcal / kg, that is, about 1 to 4. If we take the difference between the USSR in 1932 and the best years of tsarist Russia in potato consumption and recalculate into effective calories for grain, then this The average collective farmer would consume just 212 kg of conditional grain - exactly as much as the tsarist peasant of the beginning of the 20th century ate.

Plus, the Soviet peasant received from the collective farm other products and agricultural products - milk, hay, etc., but I could not find data on this for 1932-33. Also, the Soviet collective farmer received an additional 108 rubles for workdays per year, which slightly exceeded the average monthly salary in industry in 1932. The average Soviet collective farmer in 1933 (data not available for 1932) received 280 rubles from seasonal work and other cooperatives. in a year. That is, in total, the average peasant earned about 290 rubles a year - almost a quarter of the annual income of the average worker, and the tsarist peasant, in order to receive money, had to sell part of the crop.

As we can see from the data presented, there was no universal catastrophe in the countryside in the early years of the collective farms. It was hard, yes. But she lived hard after the Civil and "skillful" royal rule whole country. In general, the situation with food in 1932-1933 in the collective farms was approximately the same as the average for tsarist Russia, but noticeably worse than in Russia in 1913 or the USSR during the best years of the late NEP.

That is, on average, no catastrophic famine looms, despite the "grandmothers' stories" and the tantrums of all sorts of scammers from history. Also wrong are the fans of the USSR of the Stalin period, who claim that everything was fine and serious problems in the countryside - slanders of enemies. This is not true. In the medium-sized collective farms of 1932-1933, they lived from hand to mouth for two years; this is indeed confirmed by a simple analysis. Alas, life from hand to mouth has been commonplace for Russia for the last couple of centuries. The years 1932-1933 cannot be called a good life in the material sense, the same thing can be called a nightmare and poverty. It must not be forgotten at all that the Soviet peasant received free medical care and education, kindergartens and nurseries, about which tsarist times even very wealthy peasants could not dream, and one should not forget about the sharply increased level of culture in the countryside. Morally and spiritually, in terms of social security the village of 1932-1933 began to live simply incomparably better and the royal village and much better Soviet village late NEP times.

7. Meeting of collective farmers, Donetsk region, mid-30s

It is not difficult to guess that teachers in schools, professors in institutes, doctors in hospitals, librarians in libraries and all other workers had to be paid, and moreover, to train them, and not only for free, but also paying a scholarship, as it was in the USSR. It’s just that the Soviet state redistributed the received taxes, surplus value and other funds not among a narrow handful of rich people, but returned them to the people in one form or another, and for those who wanted to appropriate the people’s goods there were GULAG and NKVD. We missed one more "small" detail - the peasants "robbed" by the Soviet Power for the first time in history received absolutely the same rights as other estates or, more correctly, social groups - not to count the peasant children who made not just a dizzying, but a fantastic career under the Soviet Authorities. Some have achieved that in any state beyond fantasy - young peasants have grown to the level of the state elite of the highest level. Absolutely all roads were open for the Soviet peasant - the peasants became doctors, engineers, professors, academicians, military leaders, cosmonauts, writers, artists, artists, singers, musicians, ministers ... By the way, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Chernenko, Gorbachev, Yeltsin - natives of peasants.

If we take into account the sharply increased level of mechanization and the much more reasonable organization of labor, life in the countryside has become somewhat easier than before collectivization, given both the much more reasonable collective-farm organization of labor, as well as the services received on the collective farm for the same workdays, for example, the delivery of building materials or plowing a personal plot. Those who believe that this is a trifle, I strongly recommend that you personally dig up half a hectare of arable land with a shovel for a more adequate perception of reality. The falsifiers who describe the "horrors of the kolkhoz gulag" and "kolkhoz slavery" are trying to make it appear that what they got for workdays was the only source of food for the kolkhoz workers. This is very wrong. We have already shown the great contribution of private farming, which was an integral part of collective farm life. But even that is not all. There were a few other fairly prominent food sources that didn't exist before. Almost everywhere on collective farms during the period of field work, food was organized at the expense of the collective farm for all able-bodied workers - collective farm canteens for teams working in the field. This was very reasonable - the average labor costs for preparing a meal for 50 people are many times less than if everyone cooks individually. There were preferential or free lunches in schools, meals in kindergartens and nurseries were practically free and came from collective farm funds, and in their absence, from district, regional, republican and, further, state funds.

8. Komsomolets and collective farm workers protect seed and insurance funds, p. Olshana, Kharkov region, 1933

Also completely ignored are aid funds that were put in place when the food situation became dangerous. The collective farm was given grain loans or gratuitous assistance, as, by the way, individual farmers were also given food to the collective farm canteens, schools, nurseries and kindergartens. However, at the very beginning of its formation, this system was ineffective in a number of places, for example, in Ukraine in the early 1930s, where local authorities concealed the real catastrophic state of affairs and aid from the state reserve began to be allocated too late. It is to these funds that the famous hysterical “memoirs of grandmothers” on the topic, “they didn’t give out anything,” but the question of how you survived, they answer the question “somehow survived.” This “somehow” refers to the state and inter-collective farm assistance organized by the Soviet Power, which is not noticed point-blank by unworthy people.

9. Collective farm "New Life". 1931. Shagin

In general, if we take into account the sharply increased level of mechanization and a much more reasonable organization of labor (canteens, kindergartens, collective plowing of plots, etc.), then living in the countryside has become noticeably easier than before collectivization, even in 1932-1933.

Requisites

I. General results

Great were the difficulties that the proletariat of the USSR overcame in building socialism in a country devastated by imperialist and civil wars, surrounded by capitalist states and having a vastly predominantly peasant population.

Truly heroic efforts had to be made by the working class in order to successfully lead the country through 15 years of struggle and creativity to initial period socialism. But the greatest difficulties, on which, according to the prophecy of the class enemies, the Bolsheviks had to break their necks, was the task of wresting our many millions of dispersed, uncultured villages from the tenacious clutches of a strong layer of the kulaks 1 and turn it into socialist agriculture.

And now, under the brilliant leadership of Comrade Lenin, and after his death, Comrade Stalin and his leader Central Committee Communist Party, the proletariat led the poor and middle peasant masses, defeated the kulaks, and ensured that by the 15th anniversary the majority of the peasant population (61% in the USSR, and in the main agricultural regions from 2/3 to ) firmly entered the system of socialist (collective) farms, turning into a strong support of Soviet power in the countryside. On the basis of complete collectivization, the kulaks were crushed and the question of "who wins" in our country was finally resolved in favor of socialism.

We can judge how much the social face of our countryside has changed during the 15 years of the dictatorship of the proletariat from the following data on the distribution of gross grain output by social sectors of agriculture (as a percentage of the total):

If before October revolution half of the grain production came from capitalist farms (landlord-kulak farms), already in the 14th year of the revolution we had almost 2/3 of the gross grain production (64.3%), and this year more than 3/4 (77.7% ) from socialist agriculture (state farms + collective farms), while capitalist agriculture has been almost completely eliminated.

From a country of small and tiny agriculture, the USSR has turned into a country of the largest agriculture. Instead of 21 million peasant farms in 1916 and 25 million in 1927, in 1932 there were 211,000 collective farms and only 10 million small individual farms. In addition, we have over 51,000 (5,383 in 1931) state farms and co-opkhozes with an average area of ​​2,100 hectares of crops per farm.

In carrying out the socialist reconstruction of agriculture, the proletariat is supplying it with the latest technical base. Lenin 13 years ago said at the Eighth Party Congress:

“If tomorrow we could supply 100,000 first-class tractors, supply them with gasoline, supply them with drivers (you know perfectly well that this is still a fantasy), then the average peasant would say: “I am for communion, i.e., for communism.”

And as of July 1, 1932, our agriculture already had 147,800 tractors with a capacity of 2,177,000 horsepower. s., 10.8 thousand cars and 11.7 thousand combines. The reality at the present time is one and a half times greater than the "fantasy" about which Lenin spoke thirteen years ago. We have an army of hundreds of thousands of tractor drivers, and 150,000 tractors are provided with the necessary fuel and are successfully working on the fields of the USSR, completely transforming the economic and social face of the countryside.

The technical armament of agriculture represented the following picture on July 1, 1932:

Our factories turn out about three hundred tractors and motor vehicles every day. For example, for 23/9 of the current year, Kharkov and Stalingrad plants produced 245 tractors (of which 72 were understaffed with radiators) and 111 cars were produced by Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod automobile plants. The combine and a number of other improved machines are being introduced into agriculture with the greatest speed. A technical revolution is taking place in the countryside, agriculture is beginning to turn into a branch of industry.

In the summer of 1932, 2,513 machine-tractor and machine-hay mowing stations were already operating, serving almost a million of their metal horses (931,237 l. With.) over 1/3 of collective farms (34.3%).

The mechanization of agriculture (in terms of the mechanization of traction force) over the past 7 years and mainly over the 5 years of the reconstruction period has increased more than 10 times, rising in 1932 to 1/5 .

The gigantic growth over the past three years of socialist forms of agriculture and the latest machine technology has resulted in the fact that in these years the area under crops has significantly outstripped the pre-war level. This is clearly seen from the following diagram.

The above social and technical reconstruction of agriculture was possible only on the basis of those rates of industrialization of the country and the expansion of industry, which were achieved by the heroic efforts of the proletariat under the leadership of the Communist Party. These rates can be judged by the change in the index of the physical volume of industrial production 3

The industry of the USSR, which already in 1931 had tripled in comparison with the pre-war level, is the material base for the grandiose construction that we have in agriculture on the 15th anniversary of the October Revolution.

Successes in the development of industry, especially heavy industry, made possible the rapid growth of agricultural products. mechanical engineering (in million rubles at the prices of 1926/27):

1926	1927	1928	1929	1930	1931

Only having developed their own mechanical engineering and agricultural. in particular, the proletariat of the USSR could supplement the commercial bond with the peasantry (poor-middle peasantry) with a production bond. This created the basis for a full-scale socialist offensive against the kulak in the countryside, as a result of which, by now, the majority of the peasantry has been drawn into the system of socialist (collective) farms.

The party and the working class of the USSR could solve the great problem of the socialist transformation of the countryside only by steadfastly pursuing the correct Leninist general line, inflicting crushing blows on the class enemy, and waging a merciless struggle on two fronts: against the “left”-opportunist deviation, which posed the main danger in the restoration period of the NEP and degenerated into counter-revolutionary Trotskyism, and with kulak agents in the party - a right-wing opportunist deviation, which is the main danger in the reconstructive period of the NEP, as well as in its present stage, when we have already entered the period of socialism.

Let us now dwell on the individual aspects of those world-historic successes achieved by the Party and the working class in the most difficult sector of socialist construction—in agriculture.

II. Fulfillment of Lenin's cooperative plan

Having established its dictatorship 15 years ago, in October 1917, having defended it together with the rural poor and in alliance with the middle peasantry in a fierce bloody struggle against its own and the world bourgeoisie, the proletariat of the USSR, even in the period of war communism, dealt the first cruel blows to capitalism in agriculture, nationalizing the land and expropriating the entire landowner economy and, for the most part, the kulak economy.

When the military struggle was victoriously completed, the working class faced the task of building socialism in our country, the most difficult part of which was the socialist reconstruction of small peasant farming.

In the course of 10 years, this last problem was also largely successfully solved. The reorganization of the bulk of the many millions of small peasant farms into socialist agriculture, which has now been carried out in the USSR, is of world-wide historical significance, because tomorrow, after the world proletariat seizes power, the same grandiose task will be before it, but already on a world scale. From this point of view, the ingenious and at the same time simple co-operative plan for the socialist reconstruction of the countryside, created by Lenin and carried out in its main part by the party under the leadership of Comrade Stalin, is of extraordinary interest.

A characteristic feature of the cooperative plan is that it contains, in the words of Lenin, "the degree of combination of private interests ... the degree of its subordination to the general interests, which used to be a stumbling block for many, many socialists."

In his cooperative plan, Lenin proceeded from the instructions of Marx and Engels.

“Both Marx and I,” wrote Fr. Engels, - we never doubted that in the transition to a communist economy we would need to use cooperative production on a large scale. Only it is necessary to arrange things in such a way that society, i.e., first of all, the state, retains ownership of the means of production, and in this way the private interests of individual cooperatives do not contradict the interests of society as a whole” 4 .

The guidelines for the cooperative plan were well formulated by Engels in his Peasant Question. “Our task,” he says, “in relation to the small peasants is, first of all, to transfer their private production and private property into comradely, but not by force, but by example and by offering public assistance for this purpose” 5

In carrying out Lenin's cooperative plan, the proletariat relies on the leading role of socialist industry.

"A village," wrote Lenin, "cannot be equal to a city; in the historical conditions of this epoch (transitional as well as capitalist), the city inevitably leads the countryside."

“There is no doubt that (the leading role of the socialist city in relation to the small-peasant countryside is great and invaluable. It is precisely on this that the transforming role of industry in relation to agriculture is built,” Comrade Stalin said at a conference of Marxist agrarians.

From this came the need, along with agriculture, also, first of all, to restore the industry destroyed by the imperialist and civil wars, in order then, relying on it, to transfer private production and the private property of small peasants to comrades. Therefore, Lenin, when we made the transition to a new economic policy, wrote in the spring of 1923 about the need “at the cost of the greatest and greatest economy in our state to ensure that every slightest saving is saved for the development of our large machine industry, for the development of electrification, hydropeat, for the completion of Volkhovstroy, etc. In this and only in this will be our hope."

At the same time, it was necessary to ensure the influence of socialist industry on small peasant farming by ousting, with the help of the cooperative organization of peasant trade, the private trade intermediary between them. In carrying out this task, the proletariat created a direct "commercial link" between town and countryside, and thereby gathered the dispersed small individual peasantry into a cooperative system, educating them in practical mass social and economic work, preparing them in this school for the future collective management.

Thus, in Lenin's cooperative plan, the task of the first preparatory stage of its implementation, which corresponded to the restoration period of the New Economic Policy, when industry was still weak and when the main link in the field of relations between the working class and the small peasantry, could only be a commercial bond.

How successful were the results of this preparatory phase of the implementation of the cooperative plan - the following data testify.

By the end of 1926/27, cooperation covered more than half of the entire trade turnover.

Thus, already in 1927, the private trader was pushed aside in the trade turnover by cooperation and state trade to such an extent that his share was reduced to almost 1/3 of the trade turnover and less than 5% of the wholesale. The trade link between the city and the countryside was almost completely implemented.

In 1929, the overall cooperativeness of peasant farms in the area of ​​turnover reached over 80%. Since the same year, mass cooperation began in the field of agriculture. production (collectivization).

The total cooperativeness of peasant farms in 1929 was: in the RSFSR - 88%, in the Ukrainian SSR - 84% and in the BSSR - 78%.

If, however, we take cooperation only along the line of s.-x. turnover (sales, supply and credit), then growth is characterized by the following rates (as a percentage of the total number of peasant farms):

1925	1926	1927	1928	1929	1930

By the period of mass collectivization of page - x. cooperative turnover has embraced the majority of peasant farms, and in recent years the kulak has been more and more pushed aside in cooperatives on last place. For the period from January 1928 to the autumn of 1929, the percentage of peasant farms that entered the rural cooperatives in the field of circulation was expressed in the following figures for each class group:

Along with the restoration of industry, there was a restoration of agriculture, and a growing network of agricultural - x. cooperatives was overgrown with the simplest production associations, these elements of future collective farms (machine and tractor associations, rolling and sluzhnye points, enterprises for processing agricultural products, seed and livestock associations, control unions, etc.).

By the end of the recovery period, the sown area exceeded the pre-war level (105 million ha). ha) and amounted to 110 million in 1926. ha, in 1927 - 112 million hectares and in 1928 - 113 million. ha.

By this time, however, the possibilities of small-scale individual farming had already been exhausted, the rise became more and more slow, and a further increase in sown area occurred already in 1930 and 1931. with the mass transition of individual peasant farms to collective ones.

With regard to cattle breeding, by the end of the restoration period, the pre-war level was somewhat not reached for horses, but for all other types of (productive) livestock it was surpassed.

Restorative success. period were achieved in a merciless struggle against Trotskyism, which did not believe in the possibility of a socialist reorganization of peasant farms, denied the alliance of the proletariat and the rural poor with the middle peasantry, and pushed us to a premature adventurist offensive against the kulak, skipping over the necessary preparatory stage, which threatened to disrupt our entire socialist construction.

2. The number of livestock in the USSR (in million heads)

The defeat of Trotskyism hastened the successful completion of the restoration stage in the development of our economy and the preparations for a full-scale socialist offensive against the capitalist elements in the countryside.

When the recovery period was over, the party (from the 15th Congress) began to reconstruct our entire economy and to fulfill the second and main task of Lenin's cooperative plan, which consisted in cooperating peasant production, that is, in uniting small-scale individual poor-middle peasant farms into collective farms. (socialist) farms. But even during this period of reconstruction, a full-scale offensive along the entire front against the kulaks became possible only when, on the basis of the successful construction of collective farms and state farms, we received a material base for the liquidation of the kulak economy.

“Could we,” said Comrade Stalin in 1930 at a conference of Marxist agrarians, “five or three years ago, launch such an offensive against the kulaks? Could we then count on the success of such an offensive? No, they couldn't. This would be the most dangerous adventurism. That would be the most dangerous offensive game. For we would certainly have failed at this, and if we had failed, we would have strengthened the position of the kulak. Why? Because we did not yet have those strong points in the countryside, in the form of a wide network of state farms and collective farms, on which we could base ourselves in a decisive offensive against the kulaks, because at that time we did not have the opportunity to replace the capitalist production of the kulak with socialist production in the form of collective farms and state farms.

III. Expanded offensive of socialism in the countryside

After the Fifteenth Congress, the party shifted the center of gravity for the implementation of Lenin's cooperative plan from cooperating turnover to cooperating with agricultural workers. production, in other words, the collectivization of peasant farms. This policy of the party, which undermined the very foundation of kulak capitalist agriculture, could not but cause an intensification of the class struggle, resistance of the kulak, and, on the other hand, the deployment of an offensive against him by the proletarian state, expressed in emergency grain procurement measures, intensified limitation of kulak exploitation, and finally from the second half of 1929 and in the direct elimination of kulak farms in areas of complete collectivization.

The data presented below testify to the fundamental social and economic changes in our agriculture, carried out by the party in spite of the prophecies and resistance of the right.

State farms. State agricultural enterprises played a decisive role in the socialist reconstruction of our agriculture. enterprises, "Soviet farms", which were the outpost of socialism in the countryside, the backbone of socialist agriculture. They have a twofold meaning: firstly, as a system of economic enterprises, representing a powerful tool in the hands of the proletariat in the matter of resolving grain, livestock, raw materials, and other agricultural production. problems. In solving the grain problem, they have already exerted their decisive influence: in 1932, the grain production of state farms amounted to about 400 million poods. State farms will undoubtedly play an enormous role in solving the livestock problem. Already at the beginning of 1932, the state farms had more than 1 1/2 million heads of cows and 6 million heads of small productive livestock (sheep and pigs). According to the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, within 15 months (by the beginning of 1934), state farms will have to give the state 300 thousand rubles. t meat against 130 thousand. t for the previous 15 months.

At the present time we have a large number of state farm associations that have the task of solving, along with the collective farms, a number of individual problems of agriculture, as is evident from their very name: oilseeds, Glavkonoplevod, Soyuztabak, Soyuzshelk, Lektekhsyre, Soyuzplodoovoshch, Kauchukonos, Soyuzsemenovod, Soyuzkonserv, Glavkhlopkom, Tsikortrest, Teagruziya, Lemon-mandarin, Soyuzvodkhoz.

Having given the state considerable masses of grain production, the state farms, together with the collective farms, made it possible by the end of 1929 to go over to the policy of liquidating kulak farms, since preparations had already been made to replace the output of these capitalist farms with the output of socialist farms.

Another significance of the state farms is that they were for the broad peasant masses a clear proof of the advantages of a large socialist enterprise organized according to last word science and technology, before the small backward individual peasant economy. By 1932, state farms had 62.6 thousand tractors with a capacity of more than 1 million. l. With. and were mechanized (in terms of traction force) on average by almost 3/4 .

The total value of their fixed assets reached more than 2 1/2 billion rubles. and the total number of state farm workers as of June 1, 1932, reached 2,353.7 thousand, including 1,070.9 thousand permanent workers. Completely provided with technical means, state farms, along with the best collective farms and MTS, showing a rational organization of the economy and socialist organization, played a decisive role in turning the attitude of the middle peasant masses of the peasantry towards collectivization in the second half of 1929. amazing speed.

3. Growth indicators of state farms over 5 years

	1928	1929	1930		1932
Number of state farms
sown area. (thousand ha)
Quantity tractors
Their power (thous. l. With.)
Percent fur. thrust. strength
Quantity cows (thousand heads)
Number of sheep and goats (thousand heads)
Quantity Pigs older than 4 months (thousand heads)
The cost of the main funds (in constant prices of 1926/27 in million rubles)
1 In 1932, an unfinished process of disaggregating state farms took place.

At present, state farms have not yet completed their organizational period. The training of sufficiently qualified new cadres and their socialist education, the mastery of new technology, and in general the fulfillment of Comrade Stalin's six conditions as they apply to state farms—all these are urgent tasks. The organizational and economic strengthening of state farms, especially livestock farms, is in full swing. But the very idea of ​​a developed system of state agricultural enterprises have fully justified themselves, their enormous importance is undoubtedly both in the past and in the future solution of the problem of eliminating the antithesis between town and country in the second five-year plan. The creation of a special People's Commissariat for grain and livestock farms will undoubtedly play a decisive role in improving the quality of the work of state farms.

Supplying the surrounding peasant population with the best breeds of animals and varieties of plants, spreading agriculture around them, organizing the first tractor columns and machine and tractor stations (remember the famous Shevchenko MTS), the state farms abundantly scattered the seeds of large collective farms around them, and now these seeds have given rich shoots: the state farms are surrounded collective farm rings. The regions of the greatest development of state farms (the southeast) turned out to be also the regions of the greatest growth of the collective movement.

Collective farms. Summing up the results of collective-farm construction over the 15 years of the dictatorship of the proletariat, it is necessary to emphasize the leading role of the proletariat in this most difficult of all its feats throughout the entire period of the revolution. From this point of view, the history of collectivization is of great interest.

During the period of war communism, we had the first wave of collectivization, which, with the advent of the New Economic Policy, gave way to stagnation. Throughout the restorative period of NEP, we essentially had a stable state of collectivization with a short-term slight upswing in 1925. Only with the transition to the reconstruction period from 1927 did a major upsurge of the collective-farm movement begin.

In the first period, in the era of war communism, the main backbone of the collective farmers were urban elements who had come to the countryside: workers, handicraftsmen, artisans and employees, who in 1918 organized mainly communes on the former landowners' lands, and since 1919 also artels. Associations for the social cultivation of the land were almost completely absent.

4. Composition of collective farms according to statutory forms (as a percentage of the total number of collective farms)

5. The social composition of the first collective farms (in percent to total)

The non-peasant composition of the collective farms reached half of the total number of members of the collective farms, and among them the workers in 1928/29 constituted the most compact mass, accounting for 40% of the number of urban newcomers. As for the peasants, about half of them were horseless, a significant part of them also came from other places. The proletarian and semi-proletarian parts of the collective farms together accounted for at least 40% of the total number of collective farmers and were the most active group of collective farmers. The first collective farms were formed mainly on state lands: according to the NK RKI, as of 1/VIII, 1925, 90% of communes, 60% of artels and 56% of partnerships were organized on state lands.

Thus, the first collective farms of the period of war communism were characterized, firstly, by the fact that they started with workers and groups close to them from among handicraftsmen, farm laborers, etc., and secondly, that they were organized mainly in the form of communes in nationalized former landlord estates. Despite the motley composition of the other participants in the collective farms (including priests and even former landowners who took refuge in the collective farms), the role of the urban proletariat in the foundation of the collective farm movement is quite obvious. Having no experience, material resources, in the context of the civil war, the first collective farms existed in extremely difficult conditions and often perished. However, they played an enormous role, forging the first cadres of collective farmers-organizers and creating models of collective farming that have survived to this day. The proletariat not only created the political prerequisites for the collective-farm movement (the dictatorship of the proletariat, the nationalization of industry and land, etc.), it itself directly organized the first collective farms, drawing into them at first the social elements closest to itself - the laborers and the poor.

With the advent of NEP, with the restoration of factories and plants in the cities and the improvement of the food situation in industrial centers, the proletarian elements for the most part returned from collective farms to industrial enterprises, but the collective farm movement did not die out. Caught up by the rural poor, it was maintained at the same rate until the most favorable time, which came towards the end of the restoration period of the NEP. During this period, the share of communes is constantly decreasing, the number of the simplest collectives-partnerships for the social cultivation of the land is growing, although so far the majority of collective farms are artels that have stabilized in their numbers (Table 6).

6. The ratio of the authorized forms of collective farms during the NEP period (as a percentage of the total)

The number of workers in collective farms is reduced in 1925 to 5%, including urban proletarians to 2.4%. The rural poor began to play the predominant role among the collective farmers (Table 7).

7. The social composition of collective farmers in the RSFSR in 1925

During this period, the main link in the relationship between the city and the countryside was the trade bond, the center of gravity in the implementation of Lenin's cooperative plan lay in cooperating the peasant turnover, industry was restored as a basis for mass collectivization, the private intermediary was ousted from the trade turnover, and the main peasant masses were cooperatively prepared for collectivization. .

The second five years have passed since the October Revolution. Socialist industry has grown stronger and has surpassed the pre-war level in terms of its output. By this time, the discrepancy between large-scale urban socialist industry, which was moving forward at a rapid pace, and small, fragmented peasant agriculture, which had exhausted the possibilities of its development in an individual form, was becoming clear. Taking into account the new situation, the Party at the Fifteenth Congress switched from restoring to reconstructing the entire national economy, agriculture in particular, shifted the center of gravity from the commercial link between the city and the countryside to production, and called on the main peasant masses to build a large-scale collective farm. The period has come for the solution of the most difficult task, the struggle to draw the many millions of middle peasant masses of the peasantry into collectivization.

This period is divided into two parts: the preparatory part, covering almost two years (from 1928 to the autumn of 1929), and the stage of the offensive launched along the entire front against the capitalist elements of the countryside, covering the end of 1929 and the next three years - 1930, 1931 and 1932.

The first stage of the reconstruction period for the collective farm movement is characterized by: a) the expansion of the poor social base; b) the dominance of the "manufactory" type of collective farms, organized on the basis of the addition of simple peasant equipment, manpower, and manual labor; a) the small size of collective farms - 10-15 households; and d) the predominance of the lowest form of collective farm construction - partnerships for public (joint) cultivation of the land.

During this preparatory stage, before the turn of the majority of the middle peasants towards collectivization, the following results were achieved.

1. Collective farms by autumn covered 7% of all peasant farms, and in the southeastern regions (Northern Caucasus, N. Volga, etc.) - 18-19%, and collective farms, together with state farms, exceeded the reduced production of kulak farms in all products ( according to the harvest of 1929).

8. The share of the socialist and capitalist sectors of agriculture in grain production in 1929 (according to 8 main grain regions)

2. The collective farms showed the peasant masses that even on the basis simple addition peasant inventory, due to a more rational formulation, the collective farm yields greater profitability than the sole farm, increasing the size of the sowing by 1 worker and increasing the yield by 1 ha.

So, the average yield of winter rye for 1928 and 1929. on collective farms, compared with the productivity of an individual peasant farm, taken as 100, was expressed in the following figures:

The sown area on July 1, 1929 was the average for 1 yard in the USSR: an individual farmer - 4.59 ha and collective farmer - 5.68 ha.

3. By the autumn of 1929, we already had 35,000 tractors in agriculture, and by the autumn of 1930, 66,000 of them with a capacity of 92,000 l. With. By this time, the best-placed mechanized state farms and cluster associations of collective farms, which had a tractor fleet (the predecessors of the MTS), gave the middle peasant clear proof of the economic advantages of large-scale socialist farming over small peasant farming.

4. Pressure on the increasingly hardened kulaks along the lines of taxation and grain procurements, the struggle against their speculation, and decisive restrictions on exploitative aspirations disorganized the kulaks, weakened their role and influence among the peasant masses.

5. Finally, in the most qualitative content of the prevailing form of collective farms - in partnerships for the social cultivation of the land - there have been significant changes that have brought the partnerships closer to the agricultural level in terms of the level of socialization. artels, as a result of which their socialist quality increased and the general level of socialization increased significantly. This prepared the transition of the majority of partnerships for POPs to the charter of the S.-x. artels.

18. The degree of socialization in collective farms in the USSR (in percent)

All this prepared a turning point in the attitude of the middle peasant to collectivization and was the impetus for its mass entry into the collective farms, starting in the autumn of 1929. The mass movement of the middle peasant into the collective farms radically changed the picture of the collective farm movement.

In terms of social composition, the middle peasant began to predominate in it, as it occupied a central position among the individual peasantry, as a result of which the collectivization of individual groups began to develop into a complete collectivization of the entire peasantry (with the exception of the kulak group).

Instead of small collective farms of 10-15 households, large collective farms, often covering entire settlements, became the dominant type. The change in the average size of collective farms (by number of farms) is shown in Chart 9.

In 1931, collectivization moved to more northern regions with a predominance of small villages, which affected a slight decrease in the average size of the collective farm throughout the USSR. In 1932, when the pace of collectivization slowed down and the main task became the qualitative strengthening of the collective farms, the geographical location of the collective farms changed to a small extent, and the process of amalgamation of the collective farms, taking place mainly in the more northern regions, with the simultaneous disaggregation of the collective farms in some southern regions, again had an effect.

The scope of the collective-farm movement in breadth was accompanied by an increase in its socialist quality and the transition to agricultural production. artel as the main form of collective farm construction. The center of gravity of the economy and labor of the collective farmer was transferred from his individual economy to the collective; The collective farmer has placed both feet on the soil of a socialist economy and has thus become the main and firm support of Soviet power in the countryside.

9. Change in the ratio of collective farm forms (percentage)

Simultaneously with these processes, the process of mechanization of collective farms took place, i.e., their transition from the manufacturing stage to the stage of industrialized agricultural production. enterprises. However, characteristic of this stage of the collective-farm movement is precisely the transitional form from the collective-farm "manufactory" to the industrial collective-farm system, a sign of which is the combination of a tractor and a horse. This combination is in full conformity with the artel form of the collective farm, in which the best way for a given level of development of collective farms, the public interests of the collective and the private interests of the collective farmer are combined. This is still the same principle that Lenin so often pointed out when he spoke of the extent to which the public and private interests of the peasant were combined and of the need to move along with them, without breaking away from the broad peasant masses.

The industrialization of collective farms, i.e., the transition of the collective farm system from the manufacturing stage to the machine stage, is closely connected with the construction of machine and tractor stations, and therefore consideration of the question of the industrialization of collective farms is naturally associated with the interpretation of the problem of machine and tractor stations, which will be discussed below. .

IV. Class struggle and collective farm construction

The first collective farms were born under the roar of the civil war. They were born in the class struggle, and they, in turn, intensified the class struggle. Collective farms, which are a system of socialist industrial relations, came to replace the system of commodity-capitalist production relations inherited from pre-revolutionary Russia. A study of the geography of the collective-farm network over the entire period of collectivization definitely indicates that where capitalist relations were more developed in agriculture, where class stratification reached the greatest levels, there the collective farms developed the earliest and fastest. Where capitalist relations in agriculture reached a greater maturity, where the more formalized capitalist classes already stood against each other, where, consequently, the class struggle was more developed, there the successes of collectivization were greatest. It was in such districts that complete collectivization was created earlier than others, and the liquidation of the kulaks as a class took place earlier.

Complete collectivization made the existence of kulak farms impossible, because it deprived these capitalist farms of objects for their exploitation. Therefore, in areas of continuous collectivization, the question inevitably arose for the kulak: either he must perish as the owner of a capitalist enterprise, or he must destroy the collective-farm movement. The kulak economy, replaced by the socialist economy, had to be liquidated, and the slogan of eliminating the kulak as a class on the basis of complete collectivization was a natural consequence of the success of the socialist offensive in the countryside. The first decisive battles around collectivization took place in such regions as the North Caucasus, the steppe Ukraine, the Volga region, the Urals, etc., i.e., in those regions where we had the greatest capitalist exploitation, which pushed the poor and middle peasant masses, who made up the first collective-farm cadres, for the organization of collective farms. It was in these areas that the main masses of kulak farms were liquidated, and the kulaks as a class received a mortal blow.

The fierce struggle against the kulaks, the merciless struggle against their agents - right opportunism, as the main danger in the reconstructive period of the NEP, as well as at that stage when we entered the period of socialism, were and are the basis of the party's policy in this historical period. The "leftist", Trotskyist in essence, excesses in the practice of a number of regions during the past three years have also caused serious damage to collective farm construction. Their characteristic feature was the violation of the Leninist principle of voluntariness in collectivization, the replacement of ideological and organizational-political leadership by administrative pressure, coercive methods. The most striking examples of these "leftist" excesses were: the forced collectivization of the peasants in a number of regions in February and March 1930, the excesses in the distribution of the grain procurement plan among the collective farms in 1931, mainly in some parts of the Ukraine and the Urals, the forced socialization of cows and small and productive livestock in 1932 also in a number of areas. The vigilant attention of the Central Committee of our Party and its timely intervention averted the disastrous consequences of the work of these Trotskyist smugglers in the localities, but they still managed to inflict serious harm on collective farm construction, giving the kulaks the best trump cards for their struggle against collectivization.

Leaving the stage, the defeated (but still unfinished) kulaks managed to influence the broad masses of individual farmers and collective farmers, captivating them own example and pushing them to the destruction of working and productive livestock. Our animal husbandry has come under the fierce fire of the class struggle.

Favorable conditions for kulak work were unfavorable conditions for creating a fodder base, the lack of qualified personnel for complex organization socialist animal husbandry and the still unfinished period of mastering both new socialist forms and new technical means and tools in our agriculture.

Whereas in the part of the working cattle the gap was basically closed by the growth of the tractor traction, we have not yet eliminated the tangible damage in the part of the productive livestock. A number of measures taken by the Central Committee in 1932 not only halted the decline in the number of livestock, but also showed a tendency to expand it by a noticeable increase in small livestock and young cattle.

At the same time, by 1932, the bases of socialist livestock farms, livestock-breeding state farms and livestock commercial farms of collective farms were created and strengthened.

11. Development of collective farm livestock commercial farms

The strongest stimulus to the development of animal husbandry, both collective and individual (collective farmers and individual farmers), was given by the resolutions of the Central Committee and Council of People's Commissars of 10/V, 1932, on cattle logging and collective farm trade, and of 23/1X, 1932, on meat logging. In order to encourage livestock breeding, the latest decree established firm norms for the yard for the delivery of meat products with their differentiation for individual farmers and collective farmers, separately for collective farms with and without farms, and with differentiation also according to areas of varying degrees of development of animal husbandry.

Thus, animal husbandry, both socialist and individual, has been put on a firm footing and its further development has been ensured. The stake of the fist in this section is just as beaten as in all the others.

Machine and tractor stations. The form of industrialization of collective farms, their transfer from the “manufactory” stage to the stage of mechanized agricultural production. enterprises is their combination with state-owned machine and tractor stations.

MTS are a form of "the organization by the Soviet state of large-scale collective agriculture on a high technical basis, in which the amateur activity of the collective farm masses in the construction of their collective farms is most fully combined with organizational and technical assistance and leadership of the proletarian state" 8

The MTS is a powerful tool for the proletarian leadership of the collective-farm peasantry along the paths of socialist reconstruction and drawing the broad masses of the peasantry into collectivization.

MTS developed with astonishing speed, which blocked all expectations and calculations. Here is a table of some indicators on the dynamics of MTS for 3 years of their existence (Table 12).

12. Dynamics of the MTS network by directions (Number of MTS in the USSR participating in the spring sowing campaign of the corresponding year )

In 1929, the first grain (Shevchenko) MTS was organized. In 1930, there were only 158 MTSs that belonged to the Tractor Center and represented 3 directions (besides them, there were several dozen less organized grain MTSs that belonged to cooperative organizations). In the spring of 1932, there were already 2,115 MTSs operating, specializing in more than 12 areas.

The sown area covered by the MTS (on collective farms served by the MTS) grew as follows (in million ha):

	1931	1932
including spring sowing

MTS were born from state farm tractor columns, through which state farms provided technical assistance surrounding peasantry. For the creation of machine and tractor stations, the soil was prepared by the so-called cluster associations of collective farms, which united to organize powerful enough machine and tractor columns, beyond the strength of individual collective farms, and servicing them workshops and garages.

The power of the energy system of the MTS system can be judged by comparing it in this respect with the system of state farms, which is given in Diagr. 10th.

In the present year of 1932 (by 1/6), the MTS had a tractor fleet that exceeded the fleet of state farms by 10,000 tractors, but in terms of its capacity they were inferior to state farms by 140,000 horsepower. While the tractor fleet of state farms in terms of its capacity exceeded 72 thousand 1 million. l. With., MTS tractor fleet has not yet reached 1 million per 68 thousand l. With. This shows that the state farms have more powerful brands of tractors, but in terms of the total capacity of the entire tractor fleet, both systems approximately balanced each other, since in addition to the MTS, some collective farms had a small number of their own tractors (for 1/V 1932, 9.5 thousand tractors with a capacity of 98 thousand hp). Consequently, a total of 1,029 mechanical workers worked on collective farm fields in the summer of 1932. l. With.

We consider the percentage of mechanization of traction force to be an indicator of the degree of mechanization of agriculture. labor because the replacement of the traction force of draft animals by the motive force of the tractor means a transition to a system of working machines (tractor tractor implements, combine harvesters, etc.) instead of elementary agricultural production. tools with extensive use of direct manual labor.

Mechanization of agricultural the labor of collective farmers, turning it into a variety of industrial labor - is the first task of the MTS.

The second task of the MTS is to draw the broad masses of the peasantry into the collective farms and consolidate them, especially in their powerful influence on the masses of the middle peasants. By bringing improved mechanized equipment under the collective-farm economy, significantly increasing labor productivity in it, the MTS are the last and most compelling argument for the middle peasant in favor of the obvious advantages of large-scale collective farming over small individual peasant farming.

Plowing up hard virgin lands, covering with their tractors wider areas than human traction power could cover, the MTS contributed to the expansion of collective farm crops. In 1931, the size of the sown area per yard in the MTS areas increased, for example, in the southeast of the European part of the USSR by 8-10%, while on collective farms outside the MTS areas this increase was 5%. In the areas of the MTS, we also received higher yields due to better and more timely cultivation of the land, and it is clear that here we had both a higher profitability of the collective farms and collective farmers and a greater marketability of the collective farm.

In the table below, compiled on the basis of materials annual reports collective farms, shows the dependence in the MTS areas of the growth of "net output" (gross income) of the collective farm per 1 worker on the degree of armament of its means of production, expressed in the amount of material costs per 1 worker. The data are given as a percentage of the corresponding indicators outside the MTS areas.

This little table shows a very important fact- the effectiveness of our investments in agriculture and the expediency of the form of these investments used, namely the mechanization of socialist farms: the higher the collective farms in the MTS areas rise above other collective farms in terms of armament, the more they surpass them in terms of profitability, and this also speaks of another circumstance, - that the MTSs are indeed a sure tool for the organizational and economic strengthening of the collective farms.

If, however, we take that part of the income of the collective farm which is converted into the income of the collective farmer, and add here the income of the latter from his individual farm, then the total income of the collective farmer in the MTS districts exceeds the income of the individual farmer to a greater extent than outside the MTS districts. To confirm what has been said, let us cite a table compiled on the basis of more than 300 budget descriptions of collective farmers and individual farmers, carried out by TsUNKhU in 1930 for the main regions of the USSR (Table 13).

13. Income of a collective farmer

It is clear that the increase in the profitability of the peasant from joining the collective farm, and then from servicing the MTS collective farm is a simple and clear reason why the MTS played such a role. important role in a change in the attitude of the middle peasant masses towards collectivization and in the consolidation of their new attitude towards the collective farms.

Arming the collective farms with advanced machine technology, which is a product of heavy industry enterprises, the MTS at the same time play the role of intermediaries in the return supply of industry with the products of the collective farms. Thus, MTS represent a genuine form of direct industrial linkage between city and countryside, the closest practical business contact between the proletariat and the collective farm peasantry. best condition for concrete leadership of this collective-farm peasantry by the working class. Therefore, the holding of grain procurements by the machine and tractor stations on the collective farms they serve is of great importance from the point of view of the development of planning in relations between town and countryside and the socialist influence of the proletariat on the collective farm peasantry.

So, MTS is not only energy center for the collective farms, the MTS is also the organizer of the collective farm production itself and the sale of products to the state, the most important factor in the organizational and economic strengthening of the collective farms and the development of collectivization.

As the coverage of collective farms by MTS increases, the share of state means of production in the form of MTS among all those means to which the labor of the collective farmer is attached grows more and more. Until now, this share, if we take into account all collective farms, including those not connected with the MTS, has grown throughout the USSR annually at the following rates (in value terms):

1929	1930	1931	1932

This indicator is the most important for measuring the extent to which collective farms have grown into enterprises of a consistently socialist type. As the industrialization of the collective farm economy develops, i.e., as it moves from the “manufactory” stage to the stage of fully mechanized agricultural production. production, the MTS centralizes more and more of the means of production, to which the labor of the collective farmer is attached. And at a certain stage of this development, the labor of the collective farmer will for the most part be combined with the means of production that already belong to the proletarian state, and this will necessary condition to classify such enterprises (MTS together with the collective farms it serves) as a consistently socialist type. “Completion of the main mechanization of agricultural production on the basis of the MTS means that the state means of production in the total mass of the technical equipment of collective farms will occupy an overwhelming share. This means that the collective farms will work not only on state land, but also with the means of production, the bulk of which will belong to the state” 9 .

The collective farm peasantry, participating together with the proletariat in the creation of a material and technical base in the form of MTS for agriculture as a branch of industry, coming into ever closer contact in the very manufacturing process with the working class guiding it, adopts from it a new, communist attitude to work, develops socialist amateur activity under the leadership of the proletariat and is thus reeducated and transformed into a member of a classless society. This is the third task of MTS.

This process of growing collective farms into consistently socialist enterprises, the process of creating a classless society does not take place by itself, but in an intensified class struggle against the remnants of the already defeated kulaks, in an atmosphere of overcoming many difficulties, in a constant struggle against deviations in collective farm construction from the general line of the Party: as with the "left" bend, as well as with the right deviationist practice of gravity and underestimation of the proletarian leadership (in particular in the form of the MTS), which is the main danger at this stage.

V. Economic results and immediate tasks in agriculture

The first huge problem in agriculture, which was basically solved by the Soviet government, is the grain and grain problem, which underlies all other problems in agriculture. This problem has been basically solved precisely because the overwhelming majority of grain (more than 3/4) has already become the product of socialist enterprises (state farms and collective farms). In place of the small peasant farms, which, becoming smaller and smaller, could no longer support expanded reproduction and were increasingly lagging behind the rapid growth of industry, especially in their marketable output, were large socialist enterprises. It is precisely because of this that we have so much exceeded the pre-war level of both the total sown area and grain. Taking as 100 the sown area of ​​all grain crops in 1913, we will have the following growth curve for sown areas:

The decrease in the area under crops in 1922 was caused by the civil war and the crop shortages of 1921. During the recovery period of the NEP, there was an upsurge in grain farming as a result of the development by the peasantry of the lands conquered by the October Revolution. Beginning in 1926, as a result of the exhaustion of opportunities for the development of small-scale peasant farming, the growth of sown areas again stopped, but since 1930 the growth of grain areas resumed, in which grain state farms, grain MTSs, and in general the growth of socialist agricultural crops played an important role. enterprises.

Some reduction in the grain area in 1932 was caused by a significant increase in industrial crops.

Despite the decrease specific gravity grain crops from 87.7% in 1913 and 88.4% in 1921 to 76.3% in 1931; 1931 rose to 134 million. ha in 1931

In terms of yield, the success of our agriculture is much less, but there were some successes in this less fortunate area. Comparing the yield of grain crops for the Soviet period from 1920 to 1931 with their yield for the same duration of the period of pre-war Russia from 1900 to 1911, we find that during the Soviet period the average trend (flattened curve) gave an increase from 6.7 to 8 .0 c, while during the tsarist period this curve did not give almost any increase - 6.7 and 6.9 c.

We find the same difference, in general, in the tendencies of changes in yields in the pre-war period and in the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat for individual grain crops; this trend is especially pronounced for rye.

On the diag. 13 shows the gross grain harvest as a percentage of the pre-war harvest, calculated on the sown area in 1913 and the average harvest of the five-year period 1909-1913.

Even more important is the marketable output of grain (Diagram 14), which grew more intensively than its gross harvest due to the increase in the share of socialist farms, which significantly exceeded small peasant farms in their marketability.

Nevertheless, the gigantic growth of urban industry, despite the resolution of the grain problem in the main, maintains a certain tension in the grain balance. The reason for this is that, having achieved great success in terms of growing acreage, we have lagged far behind in terms of productivity. This circumstance prompted the Central Committee and the Council of People's Commissars, in a special decree (dated 29/9/1932), to outline a number of measures to increase productivity. "The sown area," the resolution says, "has been expanded sufficiently, and the goal of the first stage of the rise of agriculture - the greatest expansion of the area - has already been achieved." “The time has come when, from expanding the economy in breadth, by increasing the area under crops, it is necessary to turn to the struggle for better cultivation of the land, to the struggle for increasing productivity, as the main and central task in the field of agriculture at this stage of development.”

Suspending the further expansion of the areas of industrial and tilled crops, this resolution allows a slight expansion of spring sowing by the spring of 1933 (by 1 million hectares). ha) with so that the area under wheat, oats and barley will increase by 2 1/2 million hectares. ha, of which 1 million ha- due to the general increase in area in 1933, and 1 1/2 million sq. ha- by crowding out other less important crops.

Such is the position we have with the main problem of agriculture - grain. The solution of it basically enabled us to solve another important problem within the very first five-year plan - industrial crops. As a result of a decisive improvement in the structure of sown areas, the expansion of the most valuable old technical ones and the inclusion in it of a number of new industrial and tilled crops, the area under these crops increased in 1931 in relation to the pre-war level by three times. Taking the sown areas in 1913 as 100, we have the following increase in areas in 1931: cotton - 310.7, sugar beet - 214, flax - 175, hemp - 188.5, sunflower - 380.6 and tobacco - 315.6 .

The curve for the overall growth of industrial crops (diagram 15) shows that a particularly large rise in industrial crops took place during the years of the full-scale socialist offensive against the kulak and the development of complete collectivization, i.e., in 1929-1931.

The brilliant successes in expanding the area of ​​industrial crops, which have created our economic independence from foreign states (in cotton, essential oil plants, etc.), must be followed by a struggle to increase the yield of these crops.

So far, we have not yet solved the problem of animal husbandry. But we have already come close to solving this problem, firstly, because we have already solved in the main the problems of grain and industrial crops, secondly, because we have created the basis for socialist animal husbandry, and thirdly, because we have given strong incentives for breeding livestock in the individual livestock farm of the collective farmer and individual farmer. All this fully ensures the solution of the livestock problem.

In conclusion, let us dwell on the characteristics of the jubilee year of the 15-year era of the dictatorship of the proletariat, a characteristic feature of which is a comprehensive turn from quantitative achievements and indicators to qualitative ones.

We have covered the vast majority (over 13 million) of peasant farms with collective farms. We have developed state farms colossally. But we are confronted with the still unresolved problem of achieving the same success in qualitative indicators on state farms and collective farms, in the organizational and economic strengthening of these two types of our socialist enterprises, and ultimately in raising the productivity of labor in them. The organization of labor is still a topical task both on the state farms and, in particular, on the collective farms.

The year 1932 is marked by the assimilation of colossal gains - new socialist forms and new technical achievements, overcoming numerous obstacles along the way. That is why this year the development of collectivization goes mainly in depth, and not in breadth, along the path of organizing the means of production, labor, creating personnel, etc. Under the leadership of the Central Committee, persistent systematic efforts are aimed at solving the problem of the quality of work of the socialized sector.

From this point of view, it is of great importance to strengthen the main form of collective farm construction at this stage, namely the artel, in which we find the easiest and most understandable for the peasants combination of the public interest of the collective farm with the private personal interest of the collective farmer, which is an essential feature of Lenin's cooperative plan, and which therefore " more accessible to the consciousness of the broad peasant masses” 10 . One of the most important tasks of the resolutions of the Central Committee and the Council of People's Commissars over the past year was to strengthen precisely the artel form of collective farms - the development of not only collective, but also individual animal husbandry of collective farmers, gardening, etc.; the development of collective-farm trade not only in collective-farm products, but also in the products of the collective farmer's individual farm. Of great importance is also the elimination of leveling and depersonalization in the collective farms, raising the productivity of collective farm labor not only by the growth of socialist consciousness, but also by stimulating the personal interest of the collective farmer (piecework, bonuses).

At the present stage of socialist construction in agriculture, along with achievements of world-historical significance, we have a number of serious difficulties, which are the difficulties of growth, the difficulties of mastering advanced machine technology and advanced large-scale socialist organizations in agriculture. One of the most important problems here is the problem of cadres capable of concretely directing socialist construction in the countryside with real knowledge of the matter. Decree of the Central Committee on the organization of higher communist agricultural institutions. schools will undoubtedly help the speedy resolution of the problem of page - x. frames.

In the last year of the first five-year plan and for the second five-year plan, the main task in the field of agriculture is the organizational and economic strengthening of collective farms and state farms, which means the application of Comrade Stalin's six historical conditions to agriculture. Only by successfully solving it can we move forward along the path of further expanding the socialist sector in agriculture, further deepening the socialist quality of the collective farms, along the path of fulfilling the tasks set by the 17th All-Union Party Conference for the second five-year plan - the elimination of the antithesis between town and country and the building of a classless socialist society.

________________________________________________________

1 By the beginning of the 20th century. and Russia had about 8 million kulak farms (Lenin. The agrarian question in Russia to late XIX in., vol. IX, 1st ed., p. 666). By the beginning of the October Revolution, the number of kulak farms had increased. During the period of war communism, the kulaks were liquidated by more than half, but by the end of the restoration period of the NEP "a reached almost 1 million farms, that is, 3.9% of all peasant farms. By the summer of 1931, most of the kulak farms had already been liquidated and the kulaks as a class were finally crushed.

2 Lenin, Sobr. cit., vol. XVI, p. 151

3 Art. v. Minaev No. 3-4 of the journal "National Economy of the USSR"

4 Engels, Political Testament, ed. Krasnaya Nov, pp. 16-17.

5 Engels, The Peasant Question in France and Germany, ed. 1920, p. 87.

6 Lenin, Sobr. cit., vol. XVI, p. 472 (st. ed.).

7 Lenin, Sobr. cit., vol. XVIII, part 2, art. about Rabkrin, 1st ed.

9 See Pravda editorial dated 3/II 1932.

10 Stalin, Questions of Leninism, p. 200.

Collective farm(from count lective household yaystvo) - a legal entity created for agricultural production on the basis of production cooperation, in which the means of production (land, equipment, livestock, seeds, etc.) were jointly owned and under the public control of its participants and the results of labor were also distributed by a common decision participants. They became widespread in the USSR, there were also fishing collective farms.

Analogues of collective farms in other countries: kibbutz(Israel), " people's communes» (China during the Great Leap Forward).

Story

The first collective farms

Collective farms in the countryside in Soviet Russia began to emerge from 1918. At the same time, there were three forms of such farms:

• Agricultural commune (unitary enterprise), in which all means of production (buildings, small implements, livestock) and land use were combined. The consumption and household services of the members of the commune were entirely based on the public economy; distribution was egalitarian: not according to work, but according to consumers. Members of the commune did not have their own personal subsidiary plots. Communes were organized mainly on former landowners and monasteries.

• An agricultural artel (production cooperative), in which land use, labor and the main means of production were socialized - draft animals, machinery, equipment, productive livestock, outbuildings, etc. cattle), the size of which was limited by the charter of the artel. Incomes were distributed according to the quantity and quality of labor (by workdays).

• Partnerships for joint cultivation land (TOZ), in which land use and labor were socialized. Cattle, cars, inventory, buildings remained in the personal property of the peasants. Incomes were distributed not only according to the amount of labor, but also depending on the size of share contributions and the value of the means of production provided to the partnership by each of its members.

As of June 1929, communes accounted for 6.2% of all collective farms in the country, TOZs - 60.2%, agricultural artels - 33.6%.

In parallel with the collective farms, since 1918, state farms were created on the basis of specialized farms (for example, stud farms), in which the state acted as the owner of the means of production and land. State farm workers were paid wages according to the standards and in cash, they were employees, not co-owners.

Mass collectivization

Since the spring of 1929, measures were taken in the countryside aimed at increasing the number of collective farms - in particular, Komsomol campaigns "for collectivization". Basically, the use of administrative measures managed to achieve a significant increase in collective farms (mainly in the form of TOZs).

This provoked sharp resistance from the peasantry. According to data from various sources cited by O. V. Khlevnyuk, in January 1930, 346 mass demonstrations were registered, in which 125 thousand people took part, in February - 736 (220 thousand), in the first two weeks of March - 595 ( about 230 thousand), not counting Ukraine, where 500 settlements were covered by unrest. In March 1930, in general, in Belarus, the Central Black Earth region, in the Lower and Middle Volga regions, in the North Caucasus, in Siberia, in the Urals, in the Leningrad, Moscow, Western, Ivanovo-Voznesensk regions, in the Crimea and Central Asia 1642 mass peasant uprisings were registered, in which at least 750-800 thousand people took part. In Ukraine, at that time, more than a thousand settlements were already covered by unrest.

Fighting kinks

On March 2, 1930, Stalin's letter "Dizziness from Success" was published in the Soviet press, in which the blame for the "excesses" during the collectivization was laid on local leaders.

On March 14, 1930, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution "On the fight against distortions of the party line in the collective farm movement." A government directive was sent to the localities to soften the course in connection with the threat of a "wide wave of insurgent peasant uprisings" and the destruction of "half of the grass-roots workers." After a sharp article by Stalin and bringing individual leaders to justice, the pace of collectivization slowed down, and the artificially created collective farms and communes began to fall apart.

Collective farm charter

Most communes and TOZs in the early 1930s switched to Charter of the agricultural artel. Artel became the main, and then the only form of collective farms in agriculture. In the future, the name "agricultural artel" lost its meaning, and the name "collective farm" was used in the current legislation, party and government documents.

The distribution of products was carried out in the following sequence: the sale of products to the state at fixed, extremely low purchase prices, the return of seed and other loans to the state, the settlement with the MTS for the work of machine operators, then the filling of seeds and fodder for collective farm livestock, the creation of an insurance seed and fodder fund. Everything else could be divided among the collective farmers in accordance with the number of workdays they worked out. One day worked on a collective farm could be counted as two or as half a day, given the varying severity and importance of the work performed and the qualifications of the collective farmers. Blacksmiths, machine operators, and the leading staff of the collective farm administration earned the most workdays [ ] . Collective farmers earned the least in auxiliary work.

In order to stimulate collective farm work, in 1939 a mandatory minimum of workdays was established (from 60 to 100 for each able-bodied collective farmer). Those who did not work it out dropped out of the collective farm and lost all rights, including the right to a personal plot.

The state constantly monitored the use by the collective farms of the land fund allocated to them and the observance of the livestock quota. Periodic checks of the size of personal plots were arranged and excess land was seized. Only in 1939, 2.5 million hectares of land were cut off from the peasants, after which all the remnants of farmsteads resettled in collective farm settlements were liquidated.

As a rule, collective farmers did not need a passport for registration. Moreover, peasants had the right to live without registration in cases where other categories of citizens were required to register. For example, Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated September 10, 1940 No. 1667 “On Approving the Regulations on Passports” established that collective farmers, individual farmers and other persons living in rural areas where the passport system has not been introduced, arriving in the cities of their region for up to 5 days, live without registration (other citizens, except for military personnel who also did not have passports, were required to register within 24 hours). The same decree exempted collective farmers and individual farmers temporarily working during the sowing or harvesting campaign in state farms and MTS within their district, even if the passport system was introduced there, from the obligation to reside with a passport.

According to the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 2193 dated September 19, 1934 "On the registration of passports of collective farmers-otkhodniks entering work in enterprises without contracts with economic agencies", in the areas provided for by the Instruction on the issuance to citizens USSR passports: in Moscow, Leningrad and Kharkov, as well as in a 100-kilometer strip around Moscow and Leningrad and in a 50-kilometer strip around Kharkov, a collective farmer-otkhodnik (a peasant who went to work at industrial enterprises, construction sites, etc., but retains membership in a collective farm) could not be hired without an agreement registered with the collective farm board with the economic agency, otherwise than in the presence of a passport (it was already noted above that in these areas collective farmers were issued passports) and a certificate from the collective farm board about his consent to the departure of the collective farmer. Registration in this case was made for a three-month period.

It should be noted that the Decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of March 17, 1933 “On the procedure for seasonal work from collective farms” established that a collective farmer, without an agreement registered with the collective farm board with a “hozorgan” - an enterprise where he got a job, who left the collective farm, subject to exclusion from the collective farm.

Thus, a peasant could leave the collective farm, retaining the status of a collective farmer, only by notifying the management of the collective farm.

At the same time, the obstacle on the part of local authorities, collective farm organizations to the departure of peasants entailed criminal liability for the relevant leaders [ ] .

In the “Instructions on the procedure for registration and discharge of citizens by the executive committees of rural and settlement Soviets of Workers’ Deputies”, adopted in 1970, approved by the Order of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, it was stated that “as an exception, it is allowed to issue passports to residents of rural areas working at enterprises and institutions, and also to citizens who, due to the nature of the work performed, require identification documents” [ ] .

Finally, in 1974, a new “Regulation on the Passport System in the USSR” was adopted (approved by the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of August 28, 1974 N 677), according to which passports began to be issued to all citizens of the USSR from the age of 16, for the first time including villagers, collective farmers. Full passportization began on January 1, 1976 and ended on December 31, 1981. In six years, 50 million passports have been issued in rural areas.

Collective farms after Stalin's death

Most of the collective farms in the 1990s ceased to exist or were transformed into economic companies, production cooperatives, partnerships or peasant (farm) enterprises (an analogue of a private unitary enterprise).

In the current Russian legislation(Federal Law No. 193-FZ On Agricultural Cooperation) the term "collective farm" is used as a synonym for the term "agricultural (fishing) artel" - a type of agricultural production cooperative, which is characterized by the combination of property contributions with their transfer to the share fund of the cooperative and personal labor participation . At the same time, in everyday life the word "collective farm" is often still used to refer to any agricultural commodity producers - legal entities, regardless of their organizational and legal form, and often even to refer to rural areas in general.

The project for the revival of collective farms, as a tool for eliminating unemployment and raising the village, was discussed back in 2008 within the framework of global program Self-sufficient Russia, but the initiative was postponed until "better times" due to the economic crisis of 2008.

May 27, 2016 Governor Irkutsk region Sergei Levchenko announced plans to revive collective farms in the remote northern territories of the region. Farms will be created in remote northern areas to bring together local farmers and entrepreneurs. .

Collective farm and collective farm life in art

In the 1930s-1960s, many songs, films and books promoted life on collective farms, told about the good and friendly work of collective farmers, where the characters were satisfied with their lives and work.

In cinema

• Kuban Cossacks (1949) - the life of collective farmers is shown embellished, parade
• Guest from Kuban (1955) - shows the life of the collective farm, harvesting, the work of MTS machine operators
• Ivan Brovkin on virgin lands (1958) - the life of a virgin sovkhoz is shown
• Upturned virgin soil (1959) - shows the process of formation of collective farms, collectivization
• Quarrel in Lukash (1959) - shows the life of the collective farm in the late 50s.
• A simple story (1960) - shows the life of a collective farm at the turn of the 1950s - 1960s.
• Chairman (1964) - shows the life of the collective farm in the difficult post-war years
• Kalina red (1973) - shows the work of collective farmers (driver, machine operator)
• Farewell, Gyulsary! (2008) - collective farm drama in Soviet Kazakhstan of the 50s

In literature

• "Virgin Soil Upturned" (1932/1959) - a novel by M. A. Sholokhov
• "Prokhor XVII and others" (1954) - a collection of satirical stories

The NEP, which replaced "war communism", created the conditions for the rapid restoration of the productive forces of the Russian countryside, undermined by the revolutionary upheavals of 1917 and the civil war.

So if in the 1921/22 economic year agricultural production was only 46.8% of the level of 1913, then by 1926/27. the level of 1913 was practically reached. Nonetheless, the development of the Russian village during the NEP period was very controversial.

The country's population grew faster than the gross grain harvest.. Thus, in 1928/29, only 484.4 kg of bread per capita, compared to 584 kg before the war.

There was a drop in the marketability of agriculture. If before the war half of the grain was collected in the landowners and kulak farms, and the grown bread went to the domestic and foreign markets, then the "middle farming" of the countryside contributed to decrease in the share of grain produced for sale. The middle peasants collected 85% of all grain, most of which (70%) they themselves consumed. In 1927/28 the state was able to procure only 630 million poods. grain against the pre-war 1,300.6 million. Bread exports decreased 20 times. “Eating most of their grain harvest ...,” wrote the Western historian M. Levin in his book “Russian Peasants and Soviet Power,” the peasants, without realizing it, tightened the noose around the neck of the regime and tightened it more and more, as the situation developed from a bad to the worse."

The country is constantly facing grain crises, the reasons for which were the naturalization of the peasant economy and low grain prices. The grain procurement crisis of 1927/28 turned out to be especially acute. The party leadership was taken by surprise: despite a good harvest, the peasants, due to lower purchase prices, supplied the state with only 300 million poods of grain (instead of 430 million, as in the previous year). There was nothing to export. The country found itself without the currency necessary for industrialization.

To get out of this situation, the leadership of the USSR resorted to urgent measures, reminiscent of a surplus appraisal. Top party leaders went to regions that produce high grain yields: I.V. Stalin - to Siberia, A.A. Andreev, N.M. Shvernik, A.I. Mikoyan, P.P. Postyshev and S.V. Kosior - to the Volga, the Urals and the North Caucasus. The party sent "security officers" and "working detachments" to the village, who were instructed to purge the village councils and party cells and, with the support of the poor, find hidden surpluses and punish those responsible.

The authorities declared the kulaks to be the culprits of the current situation, refusing to hand over the grain needed by the country for industrialization. However, emergency measures (above all, the forcible seizure of grain) affected not only the kulaks, but the middle peasantry.

Soviet poster

The following year, the situation with grain procurements was repeated, forcing the top party leadership to draw a number of conclusions. In his speeches in May-June 1928 I.V. Stalin, he declared the need to create in the countryside "pillars of socialism" - collective farms and machine and tractor stations (MTS) capable, according to the leader, to give the state 250 million poods of grain. The absence of mass protests by the peasantry during the period of emergency measures convinced I.V. Stalin and his entourage is that the village will not resolutely resist breaking the traditional foundations of its economic life and way of life.

In addition, the use of emergency measures to confiscate bread and other products from peasants made it possible to solve the problem of lack of money for industrialization.

In this way, The NEP was recognized by the country's leadership as exhausted. The completion of industrialization, which was impossible without the transfer of funds from agriculture to industry, required a break in the former relations of power with the peasantry.

In December 1927 took place XV Congress of the CPSU (b), where the need for a further attack on the kulaks was proclaimed and the task of the creation in the countryside of collective production enterprises - collective farms.

"The attack on the kulaks" was expressed in an increase in the tax burden on a wealthy peasant, in the seizure of his land surpluses etc. In the summer of 1929, a resolution was issued "On the inexpediency of accepting a kulak into the collective farms and the need for systematic work to cleanse the collective farms of kulak elements who are trying to decompose the collective farms from the inside." The very entry of kulaks into collective farms was regarded as a criminal act, and the collective farms created with their participation were qualified as pseudo-collective farms.

However, the main direction of the party course was the creation in the village of large industrial farms. In the spring of 1928, the People's Commissariat of Agriculture and the Kolkhoz Center of the RSFSR drafted a five-year plan for the collectivization of peasant farms, according to which, by the end of the five-year plan, i.e. by 1933, it was envisaged to involve 1.1 million households in collective farms (4% of their total number in the republic). In the summer of the same year, the Union of Agricultural Cooperation Unions increased this figure to 3 million farms (12%). And in the five-year plan approved in the spring of 1929, it was planned to collectivize already 4-4.5 million farms, i.e. 16-18% of their total number.

In real the pace of collectivization turned out to be different: by June 1929 there were already more than a million peasant farms in the collective farms (that is, as much as was originally planned only by 1933); by October of the same year - 1.9 million. The number of collective farms in grain areas grew especially rapidly - the North Caucasus, the Lower and Middle Volga regions.

At the end of July 1929, the Chkalovsky district of the Middle Volga Territory took the initiative to declare it a district complete collectivization. By September 1929, 500 collective farms were created in the region, which included 6441 farms (about 64% of their total number) and socialized 131 thousand hectares of land (out of 220 thousand hectares). A similar movement that arose in some other regions of the republic received the approval of the department of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks for work in the countryside. The idea of ​​complete collectivization of the grain regions began to be actively promoted in the press and put into practice.

Areas of continuous collectivization began to appear in many regions and regions of the country. However, such "successes" in the organization of collective farms in the countryside were explained not so much by the enthusiasm of the peasants as use of methods of administration and violence by the authorities.

Collective farm construction acquired an accelerated character in late 1929 - early 1930, thanks to the publication in Pravda November 7, 1929 article by I.V. Stalin "The Year of the Great Break". It stated that the party succeeded in turning the bulk of the peasantry towards a new, socialist path of development, "it was possible to organize a radical change in the bowels of the peasantry itself and lead the broad masses of the poor and middle peasants."

The leader gave out wishful thinking. By October 1929, only 7.6% of the total number of peasant households were united in collective farms in the USSR. However, the article by I.V. Stalin had a direct impact on the decisions of the November (1929) Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. From the rostrum of the Plenum of the Central Committee, it was stated that the transition "to the collective rails of the rest of the mass of peasants" would be a matter of several months, not several years. Thus, in fact, the party leadership proclaimed complete collectivization - 100% inclusion of poor and middle peasant households in collective farms.

The impetus for collectivization, according to the unanimous decision of the Plenum of the Central Committee, was to be sent to the village 25 thousand industrial workers with organizational and political experience. The latter, according to A.A. Andreev, is required because "organizing a large collective farm is almost as difficult a task as organizing a large industrial enterprise." "Twenty-five thousand people" (mainly communists and Komsomol members) were to create and lead collective farms in the grain regions.

In the decisions of the Plenum, there was a place for kulaks, whom the party members qualified as the main class force interested in disrupting collective farm construction. Local party organizations were advised to step on the kulak more resolutely and stop all his attempts to creep into the collective farms.

Soviet poster

Thus, the transition to a policy of complete collectivization meant the expansion of dispossession -forcible deprivation of wealthy peasants of the means of production, buildings, property, etc.. I.V. Stalin in December 1929. Speaking at a conference of Marxist agrarians, he noted that "from the policy of limiting the exploitative tendencies of the kulaks," power passes "towards a policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class".

After the November Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which decided on complete collectivization, the country's leadership carried out some organizational and technical preparations for the implementation of this decision. First, the collective-farm-cooperative system was reoriented to predominantly serve collective farms, rather than individual farms. Secondly, during 1929, for the needs of collective farms, training of leading personnel and rural specialists was carried out: chairmen of collective farms, bookkeepers, tractor drivers, etc. organize Machine and Tractor Stations (MTS) and columns.

For more effective implementation of continuous collectivization, two special commissions were created: one - under the leadership of the People's Commissar of Agriculture A. Yakovlev - was supposed to develop a collectivization schedule; the other - chaired by V. Molotov - decide the fate of the fist.

The result of the work of A. Yakovlev’s commission was the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of January 5, 1930 “On the pace of collectivization and measures of state assistance to collective farm construction”, which determined the timing of the completion of collectivization: for the North Caucasus, the Lower and Middle Volga - autumn 1930. or spring 1931, for the rest of the grain regions - autumn 1931 or spring 1932. The resolution called the agricultural artel, which was defined as "a form of economy transitional to the commune," the main form of collective farm construction.

The resolution of the Central Committee of the party spurred the activity of local authorities in carrying out collectivization. The directives of the center, as well as the constant threat of being accused of "right deviation" due to indecisive actions, pushed local workers to use violence against peasants who did not want to join collective farms.

The expansion of the pace of collectivization required the authorities to clearly define their position regarding the future fate of the kulaks. In January 1930, at the insistence of I.V. Stalin issued a decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, which indicated signs of kulak farms: annual income per consumer over 300 rubles. (more than 1,500 rubles per family), engaging in trade, renting out cars, premises, using hired labor; the presence of a mill, an oil mill, a grain mill, a fruit or vegetable dryer, etc. The presence of any of the above signs gave the local authorities the opportunity to classify the peasant as a kulak.

On January 30, 1930, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a secret resolution prepared by V. Molotov's commission "On measures to eliminate kulak farms in areas of complete collectivization." According to this document, in areas of complete collectivization, it was ordered to confiscate from the kulaks the means of production, livestock, household and residential buildings, food, fodder and seed stocks.

All the kulaks were divided into three categories: the first (“counter-revolutionary asset”) was subject to imprisonment in concentration camps and, in a number of cases, to execution; the second (“individual elements of a kulak asset”) was sentenced to deportation to remote areas of the country or to remote areas of a given region; the third group (“loyal to the Soviet regime”) was subject to resettlement in new plots allocated outside the collective farms.

The resolution also indicated the approximate number of liquidated kulak farms - 3-5%. The figure was clearly overestimated: in the fall of 1929, the share of kulak farms in the USSR was 2.3%. In 9 regions of the country, it was planned to send 60 thousand kulaks to concentration camps, and 150 thousand kulaks to be evicted. The decree also stated that family members of those imprisoned in concentration camps and deportees could, with the consent of the district executive committees, remain in the former area. However, in reality, family members of the repressed kulaks were deported along with the accused. The property confiscated from the kulaks was to be transferred to the collective farm funds as entry fees for the poor peasants and farm laborers.

Soviet poster

Specially created “troikas”, consisting of the first secretary of the party committee, the chairman of the executive committee and the head of the local department of the GPU, were called upon to liquidate the kulaks in the localities. The lists of kulaks of the first category were drawn up only by the organs of the GPU, the lists of the rich of the second and third categories were compiled by representatives of local authorities and rural "activists".

The release of the resolution was a signal to action for local authorities. At the same time, the criteria for kulak farms specified in the January decision of the Council of People's Commissars of 1930 were often ignored. Denunciations became the main document exposing the kulaks. According to the OGPU, only for 1930-1931. 381,026 families were evicted to a special settlement (in Siberia, Kazakhstan and the North) total strength 1 803 392 people Part peasant families(200-250 thousand) "self-dispossessed" - they sold or abandoned their property and fled to the city and to industrial construction sites. Most of those 400-450 thousand dispossessed families, classified in the third category, who were originally supposed to be settled in separate villages within their areas of residence, also turned out to be there. In 1932-1936. the number of dispossessed farms decreased and amounted to about 100 thousand people. Thus, over the entire period of collectivization, about 1,100,000 households, or 5-6 million people, were repressed. Share of dispossessed total mass peasant farms amounted to 4-5%, which turned out to be almost twice more number kulak farms in 1929. There was nothing surprising in this - most of the middle peasants who did not want to join the collective farm were recorded as kulaks.

The dispossession campaign further accelerated the pace of collectivization. Only in February 1930, the number of farms that joined the collective farm increased from 32.5% to 56%, and in the Russian Federation from 34.7% to 57.6%. The highest figures were observed in Siberia, the Nizhny Novgorod region and the Moscow region. There, the percentage of collectivized farms doubled.

The violence that accompanied the process of collectivization could not but arouse resistance (including armed resistance). According to the OGPU of the USSR for January-April 1930, 6117 performances took place in the village, in which 1755 thousand participants participated. The peasants opposed both forced collectivization and dispossession of kulaks, as well as other lawlessness - the closure and desecration of churches and mosques, the arrest and persecution of clergy, the closure of bazaars, etc. However, more often the peasants practiced passive resistance: they refused to carry out grain procurements, slaughtered livestock, not wanting to hand it over to the collective farm, did not go to collective farm work or worked “in a slipshod manner”, etc.

Admission of new members to the collective farm near Moscow. Photograph 1930

In an effort to reduce the growing tension in the countryside, the party leadership resorted to a tactical maneuver. March 2, 1930 was published in the Pravda newspaper article by I.V. Stalin "Dizzy with success", wherein blame for the "excesses" in collectivization was assigned to some representatives of local authorities who "often try to replace the preparatory work for the organization of collective farms with bureaucratic decreeing of the collective farm movement."

The reaction of the peasantry to the article by I.V. Stalin. Referring to "Truth" many of the peasants began to leave the collective farms into which they had recently been driven by force. As a result of these "withdrawals", the level of collectivization at the end of the summer of 1930 in the country as a whole fell to the level of January 1930.

After the mass withdrawal of peasants from the collective farms, a short-term “calm” occurred in the countryside: the peasants who left the collective farms did not voluntarily return there, and the confused local authorities were afraid to force them to do so. Such a course of events is supreme Soviet leadership did not suit. In September 1930, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks sent a letter to local party organizations, in which it demanded energetic work "to achieve a powerful upsurge of the collective-farm movement".

Soviet poster

The bet in the case of re-collectivization was made on propaganda of the advantages of collective farms among individual farmers. A special role in persuading the opponents of the collective farms was to be played by recruitment brigades and initiative groups created from rural activists, the poor and middle peasants. In December 1930, 5,625 recruiting brigades operated in the RSFSR, and in the spring of 1931, over 21,000 recruiting brigades were operating in the main grain regions alone.

The party and state leadership of the USSR also took measures to stimulate the entry of peasants into collective farms. So on December 29, 1930, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks approved the annual the program for the construction of 1,400 machine and tractor stations (MTS) and canceled it as an untimely decision on the purchase of equipment by collective farms. By spring sowing, the number of MTS reached 1228, and the number of tractors in them increased from 7102 in 1930 to 50114. By the end of 1931, the MTS construction program was completed.

Another incentive for individual farmers to join the collective farm was provision of credits and tax incentives to collective organizations. The state also promised to streamline the organization and payment of labor in the collective farms and to guarantee the collective farmer the conduct of personal subsidiary plots.

However, in addition to the “carrot”, the “stick” continued to be used. In the autumn of 1930, the mass eviction of dispossessed peasants conducted by the OGPU. Former kulaks were exiled to Siberia, the Urals, the Northern Territory and Kazakhstan. Life was no better for that part of the kulaks, who were assigned to the third category and allowed to populate non-kolkhoz (usually bad) lands. These peasants were crushed by taxes. The tax pressure for ordinary individual peasants also intensified. So, if in 1931 there were about 3 rubles per 1 collective farm household. agricultural tax, then for one individual farmer - more than 30 rubles, and for a kulak - almost 314 rubles. With such a tax policy, the state unequivocally pushed the peasants to join the collective farm. By June 1931, the level of collectivization in the country reached 52.7% of the total number of peasant farms.

However, the emerging rise soon ended. This circumstance caused further concessions to the peasantry from the authorities. On March 26, 1932, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks issued a resolution “On the forced socialization of livestock”, which explained that “the practice of forcibly taking cows and small livestock from collective farmers has nothing to do with the policy of the party” and that “the task of the party is to so that each collective farmer has his own cow, small livestock, and poultry.

In May of the same year, joint resolutions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR were adopted, according to which after the implementation of the state plan for the procurement of bread and meat, the collective farms were allowed to trade the remaining products at market prices.

However, the reality was completely different. During the grain procurement period of 1931, significant stocks of grain were confiscated from thousands of collective farms (up to 80% in some farms). The existence of any surplus was out of the question. The confiscation of grain led to sad consequences: There is a real threat of famine in Ukraine.

Under these conditions, the authorities decided to reduce the procurement plan compared to last year. All republican and local taxes and fees from the trade of collective farms and collective farmers were abolished, and no more than 30% of their income from trade was levied from individual farmers. But the reduction of the grain procurement plan could not improve the situation. Grain procurement tasks were not fulfilled. The peasants went to all sorts of tricks to save part of the crop. In reply the party leadership again used the "whip". On August 7, 1932, the law "On the protection of property of state enterprises, collective farms and cooperation and the strengthening of public (socialist) property" was adopted, nicknamed by the people law "on five spikelets". Per theft of collective farm and cooperative property the document provided for capital punishment - execution. Under mitigating circumstances, the exceptional measure of punishment could be replaced by imprisonment for 10 years. By February 1933, 103,000 people had been convicted under the “five ears of corn” law, of which 6.2% were shot.

Another act of intimidation was the direction in October-November 1932 to the North Caucasus, Ukraine and the Volga region Extraordinary Commissions for Grain Procurement. By using mass repression the resistance of the peasants was broken and bread (including the seed supply) was seized. The result of these actions was terrible famine, which killed, mainly in Ukraine, about 5 million people. The authorities carefully concealed information about the crop failure not only from the world community, but also from the citizens of their country. All attempts by the starving to leave their villages were resolutely suppressed by the troops.

The catastrophe forced the government to somewhat change its policy towards the peasants. By May 1933, in connection with the “new favorable environment» it was decided stop the use of mass evictions and "acute forms of repression". On January 19, 1933, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution "On the mandatory supply of grain to the state by collective farms and individual farms." Collective farms and individual farms received firm, taxable obligations to deliver grain within a certain period of time and at prices established by the state. All the remaining grain after the obligatory delivery was recognized as being at the full disposal of producers. Local Authorities authorities and procurement institutions were forbidden to impose obligations on the delivery of grain that exceeded the norms established by law. Theoretically, this measure was supposed to protect collective farms from repeated taxation by local authorities, but in practice this decree did not improve the lot of the peasants at all. In addition, in addition to the established tax, the collective farmers had to pay in kind for the services provided by the MTS.

A year later, a new decree was issued, according to which the government's overplanned purchase of grain from collective farms, state farms and individual farmers should be carried out on the basis of complete voluntariness at prices 20-25% higher than procurement prices. Farms that sold bread at purchase prices could purchase scarce manufactured goods for an amount three times the cost of the sold bread. However "recycling" system, which was supposed to be the main incentive for purchases, did not justify itself, since the state did not have the goods necessary for the village, and the purchase prices were too low. Having existed for a little more than six months, the "commodification" was canceled. On August 31, 1931, by the directive of I.V. Stalin and V.M. Molotov, a new procurement procedure was introduced: the collective farms that fulfilled the plans for grain deliveries and payments in kind were obliged to create a reserve before paying off the collective farmers to fulfill the procurement plan. In this way, purchases turned into a mandatory system for the delivery of additional products to the state.

Alternating "carrot" and "stick", the government managed in 1933-1935. achieve the fulfillment of the supply of bread throughout the country. The growth in procurement allowed the state to cancel the rationing system for flour, bread and cereals from January 1935, and at the end of the year for meat, fish, sugar, fats and potatoes.

There was also some relief to the peasantry. In February 1935, at the Second Congress of Collective Farmers-Shock Workers, an exemplary charter for an agricultural artel was adopted, providing for the opportunity for a collective farmer to run a personal subsidiary plot. Depending on the region, the peasant was allowed to have from 0.25 to 0.5 (in some areas - up to 1) hectares of land, from one to 2-3 cows and an unlimited number of poultry.

These "concessions" to the peasantry played a significant role in meeting the agricultural needs of the rural population and the country as a whole. Personal subsidiary plots accounted for 20.6% of the country's gross livestock output. By the end of the second five-year period, this farm produced 52.1% of potatoes and vegetables, 56.6% of fruit crops, 71.4% of milk, 70.9% of meat, etc. Most of the production was for personal consumption, but about 1/4 of livestock products and up to 1/2 of potatoes and vegetables were sold on the market. The turnover of market collective-farm trade increased 2.4 times during the second five-year plan.

Collectivization was completed by the end of the second five-year plan. Her total was the creation by 1937 of 243.7 thousand collective farms, in which 93.9% of the farms remaining by that time in the village were involved. A completely different type of economy was established in the countryside. Formally he was listed as a special kind of cooperative economy, with collective ownership of the main means of production(except for land, which was considered public property, handed over to collective farms for free and indefinite use). However in fact, the new type of economy was semi-state. It was distinguished by rigid centralization, directiveness and planning.

Demonstration. Photo from the 1930s

The transformation of a small peasant economy into a large collective economy allowed the state seize the necessary amount of grain from the peasantry at a symbolic purchase price and uncontrollably dispose of the harvested crops. Such a simple settlement system allowed the authorities to easily redistribute financial flows and, withdrawing money from agriculture, invest in the industrialization of the country.

The relationship between the collective farms and the state meant the predominantly non-economic nature of forcing the rural worker to work, as a result of which he lost interest in raising the economy of his artel. This coercion was backed up and legally with the help of the implementation in late 1932 - early 1933. passportization of the country's population. In rural areas, passports were issued only in state farms and in territories declared "regime" (border zones, metropolitan cities with adjacent areas, large industrial centers and defense facilities). It was not easy for collective farmers to obtain a passport. A joke appeared among the peasantry: How is the name of the VKP(b) party deciphered? The second serfdom of the Bolsheviks.

Like many activities, collectivization was carried out through direct administration and violence. Millions of wealthy peasants and middle peasants were declared kulaks and made up a huge army of the Gulag, which worked for free on the great construction sites of the country.

The establishment of the collective farm system meant a qualitatively new frontier not only in the life of the native village, but also in the country as a whole. Two uniform forms of ownership - state and collective-farm-cooperative have become all-encompassing in society.

Collectivization fulfilled its main goal - it ensured the accelerated transfer of funds from agriculture to industry and freed up the labor force necessary for the industrialization of the country (15-20 million people). However, contrary to official propaganda, agricultural production indicators have not improved much compared to the NEP period. The only difference was that if by the end of the NEP this product was produced by 50-55 million individual peasants, then in the prewar years - 30-35 million collective farmers and state farm workers, i.e. one-third fewer workers.

At the same time, the negative aspects of collectivization became quite obvious. With some expansion of sown areas, the grain yield per hectare decreased; the food of the peasants has deteriorated; the number of livestock decreased due to mass slaughter on the eve of the entry of peasants into the collective farm and the inability to dispose of cattle on the farm itself. Due to the massive selection of grain, famine became a frequent occurrence in the Soviet countryside.

For all its cruelty, the agricultural policy of forced collectivization included elements of a sober socio-economic calculation. The creation of collective farms ensured the transfer of funds from agriculture to industry and released the workers necessary for the industrialization of the country. The Stalinist regime solved the task set by uniting 61.8% of peasant farms and about 80% of the sown area in collective farms.

4.4.3. Cultural life of the country in the 1920s - 1930s.

The inconsistency of the Bolshevik policy and its results nowhere manifested itself with such force as in the field of cultural construction. Its origins are rooted in the doctrinal principles of Bolshevism, which sharply demarcated the new culture from the culture of the old, "bourgeois" society.

Although V. I. Lenin rejected a purely class approach to culture, characteristic of initial stage of the Russian Revolution and preached by supporters of the proletcult, however, he believed that it was impossible to build a new society on the basis of the entire existing culture. Such an approach inevitably confronted the architects of the new system with the question of cultural selection: what to adopt and what to discard as useless rubbish. The methodological basis of such selection was initially Marxism as a value system ideological matrix, on the basis of which the authorities tried to create a new culture, play and broadcast it. Therefore, the political technologies of Bolshevism in this area inevitably created instrumental approach to culture as one of the means to achieve their political goals.

Soviet poster

It is noteworthy that this approach was the complete opposite of the position on this issue of the European social democracy. Its main provisions were clearly formulated by K. Kautsky, who believed that under socialism there can be no guiding influence on the processes of scientific and artistic creativity. “Communism in material production, anarchism in intellectual production – such is the type of the socialist mode of production,” he declared, strongly protesting against any dogmatic and doctrinal interference in this most complex process.

cultural revolution, according to the plan of the Bolsheviks, was supposed to make a revolution in the cultural sphere. It involved the solution of two blocks of tasks subordinate to the main strategic task - the construction of socialism.

First block represented a program to prepare the population for its participation in the industrialization of the country. That is, what each country needs in the industrial phase of its development. According to Lenin, it was necessary for the working people to master the basics of knowledge and professional skills. In Russia, where the bulk of the population could neither read nor write, the first task was eradication of illiteracy. Therefore, it is no coincidence the most important direction in this area was the creation, restoration and expansion of the system of public education. Actually, there was nothing revolutionary in this, except for the total ideological interference in this area of ​​culture.

Back in October 1918, the regulation of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee "On a unified labor school" was issued. Instead of the various types of schools that previously existed in Russia, a single labor school was created, which was divided into two stages: the first for children from 8 to 13 years old and the second for children from 13 to 17 years old. The new school was declared secular, that is, free from the influence of religion. It was a free and compulsory labor school of joint education. However, practice showed that such a school did not meet the requirements of life, and at the end of the 20s. there has been a return to traditional forms of education.

The question of eliminating illiteracy and creating an education system that met the needs of ongoing industrialization arose in the late 1920s and early 1930s with particular urgency. In the summer of 1930, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution “On universal mandatory primary education". Having soon received the force of law, it provided for the introduction of universal universal education in the USSR from the 1930-1931 academic year. compulsory education children aged 8-10 years in the amount of at least four years of primary school. In this regard, work has been underway to prepare teaching staff. Universal elementary education in the country was introduced within three years. As early as September 5, 1931, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, in its resolution “On Primary and Secondary Schools,” pointed out the need for immediate organization of work on the Marxist revision of programs with a precisely defined range of necessary information. With this decree, preparations began for the transition to universal seven-year education, which was introduced in the cities by the end of the 30s.

Educational classes. Photograph 1928

With all the difficulties and costs, the broad masses of the people in the period of the 20-30s managed to join the book, the printed word. To be fair, it should be noted great job states on creation of national schools on the former outskirts of the Russian Empire. Many nations did not even have their own written language. In many republics, an alphabet based on the Cyrillic alphabet was created, in particular, it was acquired by the peoples of Central Asia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Far North. It is also important to note that teaching in the national regions was conducted in the mother tongue.

Specialists were needed to build factories and factories and manage production. However, the Bolsheviks did not have their own personnel, therefore, in the first decade after the revolution, the Bolsheviks used the so-called "bourgeois specialists", or "specialists".

Meanwhile, in the second half of the 1920s created in the country higher education system.For the first time universities were created in Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and in all the republics of Central Asia. In Leningrad, the Institute of the Peoples of the North, unique for that time, was opened, which gave a ticket to science and literature to many representatives of the northern peoples of the USSR. The preferential right to enter new universities had people from the working classes, Red Army soldiers who had served a valid military service. It was then that the first generation of the Soviet intelligentsia was born.

During the years of the first five-year plans, the country formed scientific schools and personnel, a wide network of research institutes, which are predominantly applied in nature, is being created.

In those areas of cultural construction where there was a need to train specialists with technical knowledge and certain production skills, undeniable progress was made. The higher school performed an important function of a forge of personnel. The scientific and technical intelligentsia was necessary for the regime to solve the problems of industrialization and defense of the country.

The Bolsheviks managed to win over the founder of the aircraft industry N.E. Zhukovsky, creator of geochemistry and biochemistry V.I. Vernadsky, chemist N.D. Zelinsky, biologist A.N. Bach, the father of astronautics K.E. Tsiolkovsky, physiologist I.P. Pavlov, test agronomist I.V. Michurin, plant growing specialist K.A. Timiryazev.

The October Revolution revived cultural life countries. Until the mid 1920s. in various branches of art there was a search for new forms. Triumphed in literature and art revolutionary vanguard. Colorful festive processions, large-scale performances, exhibitions of avant-garde artists, constructivist architects, poetry evenings of futurists were not uncommon at that time.

The cobblestone is the weapon of the proletariat. Sculptor I.D. Shadr

The proclamation of the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat brought to life new form culture - proletcult. The country encouraged art studios, clubs, theaters of working youth, designed to promote the development of amateur creative activity of the proletariat.

Worker and collective farmer. Sculptor V.I. Mukhina

The favorite theme of the figures of Soviet culture was the depiction of the revolution and the Civil War, usually in apologetic or romantic forms. This was clearly manifested in the literary works of I.E. Babel (“Cavalry”), A.S. Serafimovich ("Iron Stream"), M.A. Sholokhov (“Don stories”, “Quiet Don”), D.A. Furmanov ("Chapaev").

The worker and the Red Army soldier became the main characters of paintings, posters, and sculptures. 1920-1930s became the time of the birth of Soviet cinema. Films by S.M. Eisenstein "Battleship Potemkin and Oktyabr". In 1931, the first sound film by N.V. Eck's Road to Life. The films of G.N. and S.D. Vasiliev "Chapaev", G. Alexandrov "Volga-Volga", "Merry Fellows", etc.

Frame from the film "Chapaev"

Shot from the film "Jolly Fellows"

Images from the film "Volga-Volga"

However, gradually in the field of humanitarian knowledge, literature, artistic creativity became more and more evident ideological press and dictatorship, which mangled and nullified the goals that the regime itself proclaimed.

Has been installed total censorship. The initial criteria for evaluating certain works of literature and art was their compliance with the requirements of revolutionary Marxism and the goals of Bolshevism. The principle of "socialist realism" became the ideological template. He demanded from works of art an unconditional criticism of the pre-revolutionary order in Russia and life in the capitalist countries, while unconditionally praising the Soviet order and glorifying the merits of the Bolshevik Party and its leaders, showing the advantages of the Soviet public and political system. The monopoly on truth has become the principle of the attitude of the ruling regime to the creative process.

At the same time, the same principle of socialist realism led to the fact that often truly gifted cultural figures were forced to create works of art that were undoubtedly talented in form, but deceitful in content. Among them were writers and artists, directors and composers, playwrights and sculptors.

Moreover, this principle opened the way for numerous cultural artisans who produced low-grade one-day crafts that had nothing to do with real works of art.

In order to make it more convenient for the Bolshevik leadership to "graze" the creative intelligentsia, in the early 30s. Unions were created that united cultural workers according to the nature of their activities: Union of Writers, Union of Composers, Union of Architects, Union of Theater Workers etc. Membership in these unions was voluntary-compulsory.

These Unions strictly followed the "ideological consistency" of their members. If their works did not fit the established patterns, their authors were criticized or even expelled from the membership of the Union. This threatened the expelled person with the most serious consequences - he was deprived of the opportunity to publish his creations in the Soviet Union.

Such contradictory results were due to methods subordinated to the super-task that was the core of the cultural revolution - re-education of people on the principles of Marxism-Leninism, the creation of people with a new system of spiritual values, a new psychology and mentality, deeply integrated into the social system of the new system. The solution of such a problem would allow achieving the goals proclaimed by the regime, strengthening its position within the country, revealing the advantages of the new system and proving the need for social reorganization on a global scale.

The monopoly of Marxist ideology, identified with scientific truth, was not only the guiding principle of cultural construction: in the hands of the Bolshevik leadership, ideology turned into a value in itself, into a kind of new religion militant atheism.This dangerous trend in development Soviet society noted A. Toynbee, who wrote: “We see how Marxism is turning into an emotional and intellectual replacement for Orthodox Christianity, with Marx instead of Moses, Lenin instead of the Messiah, and collections of their writings instead of the scriptures of this new atheistic church.” It should be added to this that there was a certain transformation of the ideology itself, which was Marxist only in form. In fact, in the context of the struggle for power, she became the core of a totalitarian ideology, with its characteristic cult of personality, leaderism, absolute militant intolerance of any dissent. This ideology has become not only integral part culture of the new society - it permeated the whole culture, gave it a specific character. In the hands of the ruling regime, it turned into a powerful means of social engineering, which was far from humanitarian in nature.

Soviet poster

The results of the "cultural revolution" difficult to assess unambiguously. If they are compared with achievements in other areas of society, they look somewhat preferable; moreover, they can even be considered successful. Art, literature and education have become more accessible to the masses. This is an undeniable fact. However the Bolsheviks drove culture into a Procrustean bed of ideological demands which sharply limited the freedom of creativity. From the Soviet people were cut off major achievements world culture.

The curtailment of the market inevitably led to the strengthening of the command-administrative principles in the management of the national economy and the growth of bureaucracy. The dominance of "chiefs" has become the universal form of existence of the bureaucracy, and technocracy - the core of its consciousness. Culture has become the servant of politics.

4.5. USSR ON THE EVE AND DURING THE GREAT PATRIOTIC

4.5.1 Foreign relations and Soviet foreign policy

In 1932, the National Socialist Workers' Party of Germany, headed by A. Hitler, won the elections to the Reichstag. Soon its leader formed a new government, and then concentrated all state power in his hands. One of the most brutal dictatorships in the history of human civilization was established in Germany

A. Hitler. Photo from the 1930s

The victory of Nazism in Germany was one of the decisive factors in international life in the 1930s. XX century.

Its first goal foreign policy The Nazis proclaimed the destruction of "world communism". To do this, they were going to organize a "crusade" against the Soviet Union. Preparing for an anti-Soviet campaign, the fascist Germany in 1936 concluded with Japan so-called Anti-Comintern Pact, which he joined a year later Italy. This is how a bloc of three aggressive states was formed, which bears the main blame for the preparation and unleashing of the Second World War.

The Nazis did not hide the ultimate goal of its foreign policy: the establishment of German domination over the rest of the world. To justify their claims to world domination, they developed a racist theory, according to which the Germans should rule all of humanity as representatives of the superior, Aryan race.

Already in the summer of 1933 fascist rulers demanded the return of Germany to its former colonies in Africa, which she lost under the Treaty of Versailles. And soon began openly violate the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Contrary to this treaty, the country was introduced universal conscription, and the created multi-million dollar the army entered the Rhineland bordering France where she was forbidden to keep any military forces.

The victorious countries in the First World War turned a blind eye to these daring steps of the Nazis. Of the major Western European countries, the threat of fascist aggression hung over France most of all, which predetermined its well-known rapprochement with the Soviet Union. In 1934, these two countries jointly proposed to all European states, including Germany, to sign an agreement on the collective repulse of possible aggression. However, this idea was not supported by England and Poland, which did not allow putting a barrier on the way to the Second World War.

Under the circumstances, the Soviet leadership in 1935 concluded tripartite treaty of mutual assistance with France and Czechoslovakia. In accordance with this agreement, in the event of aggression, the USSR was obliged to provide armed assistance to the Czechoslovak Republic, but only on the condition that France would provide such assistance to it, and Czechoslovakia itself would organize an armed rebuff to the aggressor country.

The pre-storm peals of the approaching new world war thundered in different parts of the globe in the mid-1930s.

A. Hitler and B. Mussolini. Photo from the 1930s

Autumn 1935 Italy, where the fascist dictator B. Mussolini ruled, occupied Ethiopia. In 1936 Germany and Italy intervened in the Spanish Civil War, on the side of the pro-fascist General B. Franco. England, France and the United States proclaimed a policy of non-intervention in the affairs of Spain, which deprived the legal republican government of this country of the opportunity to receive the necessary economic and military support from them. The Soviet Union acted differently. He provided the Republicans with all possible assistance with food, military equipment, weapons and military personnel. But, despite the heroic resistance of the Republican army, the Francoists won, after which a regime of fascist dictatorship was also established in Spain.

Summer 1937 Japan continued started in 1931 takeover of China. Already at the end of 1938, the Japanese managed to occupy the eastern part of the country, where the main industrial centers and the most important railway lines of China were located.

In the spring of 1938 German troops occupied Austria, turning the country into the German Reich. The USSR suggested that other countries of the world immediately convene an international conference to take effective measures against fascist aggression. However, the disappearance of the Austrian state from the map of Europe went unnoticed by the League of Nations.

Entry German- fascist troops to Austria. Photograph 1938

The Nazis chose as their second victim Czechoslovakia. As a pretext for their claims to the territory of this country, the Nazis used the fact that in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, the Germans made up the majority of the population. Under pressure from A. Hitler, an ultimatum from Czechoslovakia about the return of the Sudetenland to the Germans was presented by England and France. In their note, they promised the Czechoslovak leadership, in the event that German territorial claims were satisfied, international guarantees of independence. In September 1938, to discuss this problem international conference held in Munich. It was attended by delegations from four countries: Germany, Italy, England and France. Czechoslovakia, whose fate was being decided, was not even invited to the meeting.

Deciding to "appease the aggressor" and avert the threat from their own countries, the leaders of England and France agreed to annex the Sudetenland to Germany. At the same time, Czechoslovakia lost not just a large part of its territory, it lost its main industrial potential and the main fortified areas along the German border. US leaders who did not participate in the "Munich agreement" approved this decision.

However, the receipt of the Sudetenland only whetted the appetite of A. Hitler. Returning to Berlin after the conference, the Fuhrer and German Foreign Minister I. Ribbentrop exchanged views on its participants and results. Describing the Prime Minister of England N. Chamberlain, J. Ribbentrop said cynically: "Today this old man signed the death sentence of the British Empire, giving us the right to put under it the date of its execution." An exceptionally apt assessment of the Munich Conference was given in his memoirs by the Prime Minister of England in the 1940s. W. Churchill. “In Munich,” he wrote, “we had to choose between disgrace and war. We chose shame and got war."

At the end of 1938, fascist Germany sent its troops into the Sudetenland, and in March of the following year it occupied all of Czechoslovakia.

In order to calm the public opinion alarmed by these events, the ruling circles of England and France decided to enter into negotiations with the Soviet Union. They started in the spring 1939 in Moscow. But since the Western countries offered options for an agreement under which they did not take on any specific obligations in the event of a war with Germany, the Moscow negotiations reached an impasse. In addition, the British and French delegations did not have the authority to sign any official documents.

V.M. Molotov. Photo of the first half of the 20th century

Under such conditions, the Soviet leadership accepted A. Hitler's proposal to sign a non-aggression pact. German Foreign Minister I. Ribbentrop urgently flew to Moscow. August 23, 1939 he and the head of the Soviet government and People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR V.M. Molotov signed non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany for a period of 10 years, which went down in history under the name "Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact".

V.M. Molotov and I. Ribbentrop. Photograph 1939

Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. Frames from the chronicle.

The conclusion of the Soviet-German pact led to the termination of all diplomatic contacts between Britain, France and the USSR, the withdrawal of the British and French delegations from Moscow, although the leadership of our country offered to continue negotiations.

Some regard it as forced but necessary step Soviet leadership. Others define the pact as gross foreign policy mistake I.V. Stalin and his inner circle. Still others claim that this document appeared betrayal of the interests of our country. Many foreign and domestic authors argue that the Soviet-German pact allowed A. Hitler to soon attack Poland and, thereby, start the Second World War.

In our opinion, in the specific conditions of the late 30s. the signing of a non-aggression pact with Germany was a legitimate step on the part of the Soviet leadership. The treaty itself, from a legal point of view, did not go beyond the agreements adopted at that time, did not violate the internal legislation and international obligations of the Soviet Union.

As for the claim that the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact opened the way for the fascists to attack Poland and start the Second World War, some important circumstances should not be overlooked here. Namely, similar non-aggression pacts were signed by Germany with a number of European countries, including England, France and Poland even earlier. A reasonable question arises why exactly the Soviet-German non-aggression pact, and not other similar documents, untied Hitler's hands. And one more important circumstance: it became known from the archives that the German leadership made its decision to attack Poland on April 3, 1939, that is, several months before the signing of the Soviet-German pact.

In this case, the fault of the Soviet rulers was different. Attached to the non-aggression pact secret protocols. And if the pact itself was lawful and, therefore, justified, then the protocols were illegal and immoral. According to these documents Germany and the Soviet Union divided Europe into zones of their influence. Eastern Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Bessarabia and Finland fell into the sphere of the USSR. Into sphere of influence Nazi Germany included the rest of Europe.

These documents really made it easier for A. Hitler to further aggressive seizures of neighboring countries, and hence the drawing of humanity into a new world war. Having embarked on the path of sharing "prey" with the fascist predator, I.V. Stalin began to speak the language of ultimatums and threats with neighboring states, especially with small countries.

Soviet soldiers-border guards at the parade. Photo from the 1930s

In the summer of 1940, the Soviet Union, based on the division of spheres of influence with Germany, achieved establishment of Soviet power in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and the subsequent "voluntary" entry of these countries into the USSR. In all respects, this was an unwise move. If before the population of the Baltic states condemned the pro-German policy of their rulers, then after the deployment of Soviet troops they began to look at Germany as their potential liberator and savior.

Almost simultaneously with these events, in the summer of 1940, as a result of diplomatic pressure on Romania Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina were included in the USSR. This act also had profoundly negative consequences for our country. Royal Romania, which had previously pursued a pro-English and pro-French policy during the Great Patriotic War, also found itself among the allies of Nazi Germany.

I.V. Stalin did not consider it shameful to use weapons in a dispute over the border with Finland. The Soviet leadership offered Finland to cede part of its territory to our country in exchange for a much larger piece of land in South Karelia. The motives for this proposal were put forward by the fact that on the Karelian Isthmus the Soviet-Finnish border passed only three dozen kilometers from Leningrad, and in the north it came too close to the Kirov railway, which connects the center of our country with Murmansk - its only non-freezing port in the Arctic. These motives had an undoubted reason. Moreover, the USSR offered twice as much territory in exchange. However, the Finns refused such a "barter", and both sides began to prepare for hostilities. Finland - to the defensive, the Soviet Union - to the offensive.

The active troops of the Red Army outnumbered the forces of Finland by the number of personnel by 3 times, by the number of guns and mortars - by 5 times, by the number of aircraft - by 6 and tanks - by 35 times. With such an overwhelming superiority of the Soviet forces in Finland, it was impossible to avoid defeat. However Soviet-Finnish war turned out to be more difficult than expected in Moscow. Due to the inept actions of Soviet commanders, in 105 days of the war, Soviet troops lost only 127 thousand people killed and missing, while the Finns lost 48 thousand, that is, almost three times less. The halo of the Red Army has been thoroughly dimmed.

The Soviet-Finnish war came back to haunt our country in 1941: Finland, which had previously pursued a policy of neutrality, entered the war against the USSR on the side of Nazi Germany.

Thus, the imperial policy of I.V. Stalin and his entourage in the prewar years multiplied the number of enemies of our country and undermined the already low prestige of the Soviet Union in the eyes of the international community.

The division of spheres of influence in Europe with the USSR untied Germany's hands in the implementation of its aggressive plans and served as a prologue to the beginning of Second World War.

At various times, Italy, Romania, Finland, Slovakia, and Japan entered the war on the side of Germany, and were opposed by England, France, the USSR, the USA, and other countries. In total, 72 countries participated in the Second World War to one degree or another, the population of which, in aggregate, was about 80 % all inhabitants of the world. Under arms during this war in total 110 million people were delivered.

In addition to Europe, the Second World War covered vast expanses of Asia, Africa and Oceania. The naval forces were fighting in the waters of all four oceans of our planet: the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Arctic.

The start date for World War II is September 1, 1939. On this day Nazi Germany, in accordance with the previously developed Weiss plan, attacked Poland. During the first week of the war, the Wehrmacht inflicted a series of crushing blows on the Polish army. Poland turned to England and France for help. Those two days later declared war on Germany, but they did not take any real steps to help Poland in trouble, hoping that Germany, after the completion of the Polish campaign, would strike its new blow not at Western Europe, but at the Soviet Union.

After the invasion of fascist troops into Poland, Germany began to put pressure on the Soviet government, insisting on the entry of the USSR into the war against Poland. Under this pressure, but rather based on their imperial plans, the Stalinist leadership ordered the troops to cross the Soviet-Polish border, which was done by the Red Army September 17. The invasion of foreign territory was covered by a plausible purpose - liberation of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus included in Poland after Soviet-Polish war 1920 But if the goal was plausible, then the way to achieve it is very unseemly. The "liberation" campaign of the Red Army was actually a stab in the back for Poland. And it was inflicted in violation of the Soviet-Polish non-aggression pact, signed in 1932 and extended in 1937. Thus, the Soviet Union practically became an ally of the Nazi aggressors.

On September 28, the command of the Warsaw garrison, having exhausted all the forces and means for the defense of the city, was forced to sign an act of surrender. Under attack from the west and east Poland as a state ceased to exist. This “success” was marked by the fascist and Soviet troops with a joint parade in Brest-Litovsk.

At the same time, the Soviet leadership took another shameful step. On the day of the capitulation of Warsaw, September 28, 1939, V.M. Molotov and I. Ribbentrop signed Soviet-German Treaty "On Friendship and Border". The leaders of the USSR, who at one time organized many years of furious anti-fascist propaganda, now publicly declared their friendship with the aggressor country that unleashed a new world war. In secret annexes to the new treaty the spheres of influence of the Soviet Union and Germany were specified. Territory of Lithuania now was included in the zone of influence of the USSR in exchange for Lublin and part of the Warsaw Voivodeship, which, in a change in the previous division, went to the sphere of influence of Nazi Germany.

V.M. Molotov and A. Hitler. Photo 1940

From the moment of the German attack on Poland until the spring of 1940, England and France, on the one hand, and Germany, on the other, essentially did not conduct combat operations on the Western Front. French and British soldiers and officers mainly played football and volleyball, visited entertainment establishments. That is why this period of the Second World War went down in history under the name "strange war".

In September and October 1939, Hitler publicly stated more than once that he did not intend to fight with the Western countries, that the border with France was inviolable, and that the Germans only expected the return of the former German colonies from England.

In fact, with these assurances, the Fuhrer only lulled the vigilance of his opponents. Already at the end of September 1939, he issued a directive to immediately begin preparing a major strategic offensive in the west. In the prepared secret documents, the Wehrmacht was tasked with achieving victory over these countries in the course of one lightning campaign.

In April 1940 Nazi German troops occupied Denmark and Norway, and then, in May of the same year, bypassing the famous French defensive "Maginot Line", through the territory of Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg, launched a powerful blow to the Anglo-French army. It took Germany less than four weeks to defeat the main forces of France and England.

June 14, 1940 the Germans occupied Paris, and on June 22, France signed an armistice agreement, which actually meant its surrender. This procedure was arranged in a form that was humiliating for the French. It took place in the Compiègne Forest, in the same place and in the same saloon car delivered by the Germans from the museum, in which in 1918 the French Marshal F. Foch accepted the surrender of Germany.

Hitler with associates in Paris. Photograph 1940

Under the terms of the armistice, France was divided into two zones. The most developed and wealthy northern regions of the country were subject to German occupation. French armed forces demobilized and disbanded.

These days, the British expeditionary forces, having been defeated and abandoned their military equipment, evacuated through the port of Dunkirk to their native islands. Only the insular position then saved ancient Albion from complete defeat. The defeat of France and England in 1940 was the result of their policy of condoning Nazi Germany.

In the autumn of 1940, the flames of World War II spread to the Balkan Peninsula. On September 29, the troops of fascist Italy from the territory of Albania, captured by the Italians back in 1939, invaded Greece. Its army and people - the descendants of the legendary and proud Hellenes - offered heroic resistance to the invaders. A few months later, on April 6, 1941, the Nazi and Hungarian troops attacked Yugoslavia. A week later they occupied its capital - the city of Be

A collective farm (collective farm) is a cooperative organization of voluntarily united peasants for the joint conduct of large-scale socialist agricultural production on the basis of social means of production and collective labor. Collective farms in our country were created in accordance with the cooperative plan worked out by V. I. Lenin, in the process of the collectivization of agriculture (see Cooperative plan).

Collective farms in the countryside began to be created immediately after the victory of the October Revolution. The peasants united for the joint production of agricultural products in agricultural communes, partnerships for the joint cultivation of the land (TOZs), and agricultural artels. These were different forms of cooperation, differing in the level of socialization of the means of production and the distribution of income among the participating peasants.

In the early 30s. All-round collectivization was carried out throughout the country, and the agricultural artel (collective farm) became the main form of collective farming. Its advantages are that it socializes the main means of production - land, working and productive livestock, machinery, inventory, outbuildings; the public and private interests of the members of the artel are correctly combined. Collective farmers own residential buildings, part of the productive livestock, etc., they use small household plots. These basic provisions were reflected in the Exemplary Charter of the Agricultural Artel, adopted by the Second All-Union Congress of Collective Farmers-Shock Workers (1935).

During the years of Soviet power in collective farm life there were big changes. Collective farms have accumulated rich experience in managing large-scale collective farming. The political consciousness of the peasants increased. The alliance of workers and peasants became even stronger under leadership working class. A new material and technical base of production has been created, which has made it possible to develop agriculture on a modern industrial basis. The material and cultural standard of living of collective farmers has risen. They actively participate in the construction of a communist society. Kolkhoz system not only delivered the working peasantry from exploitation and poverty, but also made it possible to establish in the countryside a new system of social relations that would lead to the complete overcoming of class differences in Soviet society.

The changes that had taken place were taken into account in the new Model Charter of the Collective Farm, adopted by the Third All-Union Congress of Collective Farmers in November 1969. The name “agricultural artel” was omitted from it, because the word “collective farm” acquired an international meaning and in any language means a large collective socialist agricultural enterprise.

The collective farm is a large mechanized socialist agricultural enterprise whose main activity is the production of crop and livestock products. The collective farm organizes the production of products on land that is state property and is assigned to the collective farm for free and indefinite use. The collective farm is fully responsible to the state for correct use land, increasing the level of its fertility in order to increase the production of agricultural products.

The collective farm may create and have auxiliary enterprises and trades, but not to the detriment of agriculture.

There are 25.9 thousand collective farms in the USSR (1981). On average, the collective farm has 6.5 thousand hectares of agricultural land (including 3.8 thousand hectares of arable land), 41 physical tractors, 12 combines, 20 trucks. Many collective farms have built modern greenhouses and livestock complexes, and are organizing production on an industrial basis.

Collective farms are guided in all their activities by the Collective Farm Rules, which are adopted in each farm by the general meeting of collective farmers on the basis of the new Model Collective Farm Rules.

The economic basis of the collective farm is the collective-farm cooperative ownership of the means of production.

The collective farm organizes agricultural production and the work of collective farmers, using various forms for this - tractor-field-growing and complex brigades, livestock farms, various units and production sites. The activities of production units are organized on the basis of cost accounting.

As in state farms, a new, progressive form of labor organization is being used more and more widely - according to a single line with lump-sum bonus payment (see State Farm).

Citizens who have reached the age of 16 and who have expressed a desire to participate in social production by their labor can be members of a collective farm. Each member of the collective farm has the right to receive work in the social economy and is obliged to participate in social production. The collective farm has guaranteed wages. In addition, additional payment is applied for the quality of products and work, various forms of material and moral incentives. Collective farmers receive pensions for old age, disability, in case of loss of a breadwinner, vouchers to sanatoriums and rest homes at the expense of social insurance and security funds created in collective farms.

The supreme governing body for all the affairs of the collective farm is the general meeting of collective farmers (in large farms, the meeting of delegates). Collective-farm democracy forms the basis for organizing the management of the collective economy. This means that all production and social issues related to the development of a given collective farm are decided by the members of this farm. General meetings of collective farmers (meetings of representatives) must be held, in accordance with the Model Rules of the collective farm, at least 4 times a year. The governing bodies of the collective farm and its production subdivisions are elected by open or secret ballot.

For the permanent management of the affairs of the collective farm, the general meeting elects the chairman of the collective farm for a period of 3 years and the board of the collective farm. Control over the activities of the board and all officials is carried out by the audit commission of the collective farm, which is also elected at the general meeting and accountable to him.

In order to further development Collective-farm democracy, collective discussion of the most important issues in the life and activities of collective farms created Soviets of collective farms - Union, republican, regional and district.

Planned management of collective-farm production is carried out by socialist society by establishing a state plan for the purchase of agricultural products for each collective farm. The state, on the other hand, provides the collective farms with modern machinery, fertilizers and other material resources.

The main tasks of the collective farms are: to develop and strengthen the social economy in every possible way, to increase the production and sale of agricultural products to the state, to steadily increase labor productivity and the efficiency of social production, to carry out work on the communist education of collective farmers under the leadership of the party organization, to gradually transform villages and villages into modern comfortable settlements. In many collective farms, modern residential buildings have been built, gasification has been carried out. All collective farmers use electricity from state networks. The modern collective-farm village has excellent cultural centers - clubs, libraries, its own art galleries, museums, etc. are being created here. The difference between a city dweller and a collective farmer in terms of education is practically erased.

At the 26th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, it was pointed out that it was necessary to further strengthen and develop the material and technical base of the collective farms and improve the cultural and welfare services for their workers (see Agriculture).

The Constitution of the USSR states: "The state promotes the development of collective-farm and cooperative property and its convergence with the state."

Sovkhoz (Soviet economy) is a state agricultural enterprise. It, like any industrial enterprise - a plant, a factory, is state property, the property of all the people.

The creation of state farms was an integral part of Lenin's cooperative plan. They were called upon to serve as a school for large-scale collective agricultural production for the working peasantry.

The economic basis of state farms is public, state ownership of land and other means of production. Them economic activity aimed at the production of products for the population and raw materials for industry. All state farms have a charter. They carry out their activities on the basis of the Regulations on the Socialist State Production Enterprise.

There are 21,600 state farms in the system of the Ministry of Agriculture (1981). On average, one state farm has 16.3 thousand hectares of agricultural land, including 5.3 thousand hectares of arable land, 57 tractors.

State farms and other state farms account for up to 60% of grain procurements, up to 33% of raw cotton, up to 59% of vegetables, up to 49% of livestock and poultry, and up to 87% of eggs.

State farms organize their production depending on natural and economic conditions, taking into account state plans, on the basis of cost accounting. A distinctive feature of the production activity of state farms is a higher level of specialization.

When creating any state farm, the main agricultural sector is determined for it, according to which it receives its main production direction - grain, poultry, cotton, pig breeding, etc. In order to best use state farm land, agricultural machinery and labor resources, additional agricultural sectors are created - crop production is combined with animal husbandry and vice versa.

State farms play a large role in raising common culture agriculture in our country. They produce seeds of high-quality varieties of agricultural crops, highly productive breeds of animals and sell them to collective farms and other farms.

Various auxiliary enterprises and trades can be created on state farms - repair shops, oil mills, cheese-making shops, the production of building materials, etc.

Planned management of state farms is based on the principle of democratic centralism. The higher organizations (trust, association of state farms, etc.) determine for each state farm a state plan for the purchase of agricultural products for a five-year period and distribute it for each year. Production planning (area under crops, number of animals, timing of work) is carried out directly at the state farms themselves. Every year, economic and social development plans are drawn up here, in which activities for the coming (planned) year are determined.

The organizational and production structure of the state farm is determined by the specialization of the economy, its size in terms of land area and gross output. The main form of labor organization is the production team (tractor, complex, livestock, etc.) - the team of such a team consists of permanent workers.

Depending on the size of the state farm, various forms of management organization are used. For the most part, this is a three-stage structure: a state farm - a department - a brigade (farm). At the head of each subdivision is the corresponding leader: the director of the state farm - the manager of the department - the foreman.

The development of specialization processes and the increase in production volumes have created conditions on state farms for the application of a sectoral structure for the organization of production and management. In this case, instead of departments, corresponding workshops are created (plant growing, animal husbandry, mechanization, construction, etc.). Then the management structure looks like this: the director of the state farm - the head of the shop - the foreman. Shops are headed, as a rule, by the chief specialists of the state farm. It is also possible to use a mixed (combined) structure for the organization of production and management. This option is used in cases where one branch of the economy has a higher level of development. With such a scheme, an industry division is created for this industry (a greenhouse vegetable growing workshop, a dairy cattle breeding workshop, a fodder production workshop), and all other industries operate in departments.

In all state farms, as well as in industrial enterprises, the work of workers is paid in the form of wages. Its size is determined by the norms of output for a 7-hour working day and the prices for each unit of work and output. In addition to the basic salary, there is a material incentive for overfulfillment of planned targets, for obtaining high-quality products, for saving money and materials.

Increasingly, mechanized units, detachments, brigades and farms are working on a single outfit with lump-sum bonus pay. Such a collective contract is based on cost accounting. Payment does not depend on the total amount of work performed, not on the number of cultivated hectares, but on the final result of the work of the farmer - the harvest. Livestock breeders receive material incentives not for a head of livestock, but for high milk yields and weight gain. This allows you to more closely link the interests of each employee and the entire team, to increase their responsibility for obtaining the final high results with minimal labor and funds.

Collective contracting is being introduced more and more widely on state farms and collective farms. It is successfully used in the Yampolsky district of the Vinnitsa region, regional agro-industrial associations of Estonia, Latvia, Georgia, and other republics.

The party, trade union and Komsomol organizations render great assistance to the management of the state farm in solving its production and social problems. The public of the state farm takes part in the discussion and implementation of measures to fulfill the planned targets for the production and sale of products to the state, improve the working and living conditions of all workers of the state farm.

Modern state farms in terms of production are the largest agricultural enterprises in the world. The introduction of the achievements of scientific and technological progress, the transfer of agricultural production to an industrial basis contribute to their transformation into real factories of grain, milk, eggs, meat, fruits, etc.

The widespread use of new methods of organizing production also changes the qualifications of state farm workers, new professions appear, for example: machine milking operator, livestock farm fitter, etc. Among the engineering and technical personnel of state farms are electronic equipment engineers, engineers and technicians. for control and measuring equipment and instruments, heat engineering engineers, process engineers for the processing of agricultural products and many other specialists.

co-op plan- this is a plan for the socialist reorganization of the countryside through the gradual voluntary amalgamation of small private peasant farms into large collective farms, in which the achievements of scientific and technological progress are widely used and wide scope is opened for the socialization of production and labor.

There are 25,900 collective farms in the USSR. Each farm is a large highly mechanized enterprise with qualified personnel. Collective farms annually supply the state with a significant amount of grain, potatoes, raw cotton, milk, meat and other products. Every year the culture of the village grows, the life of collective farmers improves.

Let's remember history. What did the village look like in pre-revolutionary Russia? Before the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, there were over 20 million small peasant farms, of which 65% were poor, 30% were horseless, and 34% had no inventory. The “equipment” of peasant households consisted of 7.8 million plows and roe deer, 6.4 million plows, and 17.7 million wooden harrows. Need, darkness, ignorance were the lot of millions of peasants. V. I. Lenin, who studied in detail the difficult and disenfranchised situation of the villagers, wrote: “The peasant was brought to a beggarly standard of living: he was placed with cattle, dressed in rags, fed on swan ... The peasants starved chronically and tens of thousands died of starvation and epidemics during crop failures, which returned more and more often.

The socialist transformation of agriculture was the most difficult task after the conquest of power by the working class. V. I. Lenin worked out the principles of the policy of the Communist Party on the agrarian question. The great genius of mankind clearly saw the socialist future of the peasantry and the paths along which it was necessary to go to this future. V. I. Lenin outlined the plan for the socialist reconstruction of the countryside in his articles “On Cooperation”, “On the Food Tax” and some other works. These works entered the history of our state as the cooperative plan of V. I. Lenin. In it, Vladimir Ilyich outlined the basic principles of cooperation: the voluntary entry of peasants into the collective farm; gradual transition from lower to higher forms of cooperation; material interest in joint production cooperation; combination of personal and public interests; the establishment of a strong link between town and country; the strengthening of the fraternal alliance of workers and peasants and the formation of socialist consciousness among the inhabitants of the countryside.

V. I. Lenin believed that at first it was necessary to widely involve the peasants in simple cooperative associations: consumer associations, for the sale of agricultural products, the supply of goods, etc. Later, when the peasants are convinced by experience of their great advantage, it is possible to move on to production co-operation. It was a simple and accessible path for many millions of peasants to move from small individual farms to large socialist enterprises, the path of drawing the peasant masses into the building of socialism.

The Great October Socialist Revolution put an end forever to the oppression of the capitalists and landlords in our country. On October 25, 1917, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, following the report of V. I. Lenin, adopted the Decrees on Peace and Land. The Decree on Land announced the confiscation of all landlord and church land and its transfer to state ownership. The nationalization of the land and its transformation into public property became an important prerequisite for the further transition of agriculture to the socialist path of development.

In the very first years of Soviet power, societies began to be created for the joint cultivation of the land, agricultural artels. Part of the landowners' estates turned into state Soviet farms - state farms. But all these were only the first steps of collectivization. That is why in 1927, at the XV Congress of the CPSU(b), a program of complete collectivization was adopted. Work on the socialization of agricultural production, unprecedented in its scale, began in the country. Collective farms were organized everywhere, the foundations of a new life in the countryside were laid. The Soviet government accepted everything necessary measures to provide the village with equipment. Already in 1923-1925. the village received about 7 thousand domestic tractors.

In 1927, the first state machine and tractor station (MTS) was organized. Subsequently, their mass construction began. MTS served the collective farms with a variety of equipment. MTS became strongholds Soviet state in the countryside, active promoters of party policy. With the help of the MTS, the greatest technological revolution in agriculture in the USSR was carried out. At the call of the party, about 35,000 of the best representatives of the working class went to the countryside and headed the collective farms.