Collectivization and the War on Peasantry in the USSR, 1930-41

Between the years 1928-41 Joseph Stalin was determined to eliminate peasants as a class from history and to develop new classless society. The war with peasantry has begun. Stalin used collectivization to suppress and eliminate peasants.

Stalin addressed richer peasants as kulaks. Kulaks did not agree to the regime and collectivization. The objective for Stalin was to eliminate kulaks that they will never raise as a class. The process, also called "war on the countryside", begun in the year 1928 along with collectivization.

The statistics about the consumption of foodstuffs and the numbers of livestock suggest that among Stalin's rule, the collectivization of food has become rapid. By the year 1932, 61,5% of peasants food stockings were collectivized (source: Stalin and Khrushchev: The USSR 1924-64 by Michael Lynch, London 1998 (10th edition)) This means that peasants were living under starvation, majority of their belongings were confiscated by the authorities to fulfill the ideology and redistribute food for other people equally. Peasants were living in hunger; they suffered from shortage and military oppression.

In the year 1941 nearly all food belongings were collectivized from peasants. This suggests that Stalin, by the year 1941 has executed the plan of communism that no peasant should have any private food stocks.

The idea of collectivization was deliberately imposed to eliminate peasant class. But Stalin used collectivization as a benefit to the new socialistic society too like he said it himself: "there are tons of surplus gain per farm, so this surplus will be distributed among the poor and less well-off peasants" (source: Stalin by Dmitri Volkogonov, originally published in Russian, Moscow 1989; English edition, London 2004.)

Because of the new ideology, Stalin used to needed to create a new man, born in the regime and he tried to do so with collectivization: "Collectivization also destroyed - forever - rural Russia's continuity with the past" (source: Gulag by Anne Applebaum, London 2003). Stalin needed to erase the memory of an old, non-communist Russia.

Collectivization was intended for both political and ideological reasons and to achieve communism in the country. The war on the countryside did not exist officially but through collectivization Stalin was in a battle with countryside and it left it huge scars and suffering.