Collectivization

The collectivization that began in 1929 was an extraordinary period of bitter and complex class struggles. It decided what force would run the countryside: the rural bourgeoisie or the proletariat. Collectivization destroyed the economic basis for the last bourgeois class in the Soviet Union, the class that was constantly re-emerging out of small-scale production and the rural free markets. Collectivization meant an extraordinary political, economic and cultural upheaval, putting the peasant masses on the road to socialism.
Collectivization

• From rebuilding production to social confrontation
  • Weakness of the party in the countryside
  • The character of the Russian peasant
  • New class differentiation
  • Who controlled the market wheat?
  • Towards confrontation
  • Bukharin's position
  • Betting on the kolkhoz ...
  • ... or betting on the individual peasant?
• The first wave of collectivization
  • The kulak
  • The kolkhozy surpass the kulaks
  • A fiery mass movement
  • The war against the kulak
  • The essential rôle of the most oppressed masses
• The organizational line on collectivization
  • The Party apparatus in the countryside
  • Extraordinary organizational measures
  • The 25,000
  • The 25,000 against the bureaucracy
  • The 25,000 against the kulaks
  • The 25,000 and the organization of agricultural production
• The political direction of collectivization
  • The November 1929 resolution
  • Reject Bukharin's opportunism
  • New difficulties, new tasks
  • The January 5, 1930 resolution
• `Dekulakization'
  • Kulak rumors and indoctrination
  • What should be done with the kulaks?
  • Struggle to the end
  • The resolution on dekulakization
  • The kulak offensive picks up strength
  • Kautsky and the `kulak revolution'
• `Dizzy with success'
  • Stalin corrects
  • Rectify and consolidate
  • Right opportunism rears its head
  • The anti-Communists attack
  • Retreats and advances
  • Remarkable results
• The rise of socialist agriculture
  • The second wave of collectivization
  • Economic and social creativity
  • Investments in the countryside
  • The breakthrough of socialist agriculture
  • `Colossal support'
• The collectivization `genocide'