Economic life of the modern village - Peasant economy before collectivization

1.  Peasant economy before collectivization

Organization of Soviet power in Viryatina.—Nationalization of land and its distribution among consumers. —The class composition of the village in 1918—Committee of the Poor. —Life in the village during the Civil War and Antonovshchina.—The years of NEP in Viryatina.—Gradual cessation of traditional otkhodnichestvo.— The beginning of collectivization. - The first years of the collective farm "Lenin's Way"

The February Revolution of 1917 found many Viryatian men on the fronts of the First World War and in the mines of Donbass. Mostly women, old people and children remained in the village. All public affairs in both Viryatinsky societies were still run by the rich. The small populist-minded group, consisting of peasants (V. Nagornov and others) and teachers, did not play any role in the events and did not set itself the task of fighting the rural bourgeoisie. Essentially, nothing has changed in the social relations of the village. But by the autumn of 1917, soldiers from the front, former miners, began to gradually return to the village, and the course of events in the village took a different direction. The spontaneous ferment, which was waiting only for political leadership, was ready to break out.

The otkhodnik miners were participants in large strikes in the mines, they were witnesses, after the February Revolution, of the struggle of political parties. “In the morning you go out into the street,” recalls S. S. Kalmykov, “there are flags all around, they are everywhere. You look, the black flag is hanging, the anarchists are standing, they say: "Whatever power there is, it is violence." You listen to them, good speakers, as if they are speaking correctly. You will approach the Socialist-Revolutionaries - also against the tsar, but for the Provisional Government ... We listen to everyone, we think " 1. They also listened to the Bolsheviks. But it was not easy for a otkhodnik miner to join a certain party; his class consciousness as a proletarian had not yet been forged: his connection with the peasant allotment was in the way. And not all Viryati residents, former miners who later followed the Bolsheviks and became members of the Communist Party, returned as such from the mines to their village in 1917. Nevertheless, they actively spoke at gatherings, where they "shaken" the rural rich, the largest of whom, Sayapin, was forced to hide and did not appear in Viryatin again.

Soldiers and miners undertook to restore their farms that had been neglected during the war and immediately received practical lessons in political literacy: the world-eaters managed to turn the war into a means of profit, and the soldiers’ wives found themselves entangled in debts and obligations that turned the soldiers’ and miners’ farms into unpaid debtors of wealthy neighbors and local fists. Class relations appeared in such a naked form that it was not difficult for the rural proletarians to understand their essence.

Increasingly, spontaneous rallies and meetings began to take place near the team hut. On the table pulled out of the hut, as if on a podium, speakers spoke. Violent disputes flared up, especially about land and peace. Newspapers were also read aloud here.

When information came to the village that the October Revolution had taken place and the Soviet government had been formed, a village Soviet of peasants, soldiers and workers' deputies was created in Viryatin, declaring itself the power in the village. There was not a single Bolshevik in the village council, and not a single deputy in general who declared his affiliation to any political party: all were non-partisan. This, however, did not mean that the Council did not have a political face. The Council included front-line soldiers, miners: A. N. Sudnitsyn, V. E. Starodubov, M. E. Dyakov, A. I. Dyakov, I. A. Dyakov and other activists who were already under the ideological influence of the Communist parties.

A land committee was created in the Kulevatovskaya volost, and landownership was declared liquidated. The lands of the landlords were taken into account.

On March 29, 1918, the Morshansky Extraordinary Congress of Volost Land Committees and Soviets, together with representatives of rural communities, decided to divide all the land in the county among the peasants, taking as the norm allotment of one tithe of land per eater, in all three fields 2. In carrying out this decision, each volost had to consider the actual population in the villages and redistribute the land fund in accordance with the established norms. Viryatinsky residents had to receive up to the full norm 119 acres, which were allocated in April of the same year 3. Thus, the claims of the Viryati residents for the right to use the remainder of the unallocated lands of the former landowners of the Davydovs disappeared; Viryatino received its entire land fund.

The division of land plots in Viryatina was not without clashes, because the rich and prosperous peasants insisted that they be given the land plots that they used to cultivate. The village council decided to make a complete redistribution of land and did it in the same way that was previously used in the community: the land fund was divided into two parts (the former allotment land and Korshunovskaya land), in each of which lands were allocated according to their quality and remoteness from villages. The plots were divided into pens, which were distributed by lot among the peasants in accordance with the number of eaters in the family. When the redistribution was completed, the fields were cut into narrow and long patches, striped and forced crop rotation revived. Three fields again became the only possible system of agriculture on all the lands of the village.

So great was the power of the tradition of communal land tenure among the Russian peasants. This was not unexpected for the Bolsheviks. Speaking to the delegates of the committees of the poor in the Moscow region in November 1918, V. I. Lenin said: “We did not want to impose on the peasantry an alien thought about the worthlessness of an egalitarian division of land. We believed that it would be better if the working peasants themselves saw through their own backbone, on their own skin, that equalizing division was nonsense. Only then would we be able to ask them, where is the way out of that ruin, from that kulak dominance that occurs on the basis of the division of land?

The division was only good for a start. She was supposed to show that the land was moving away from the landowners, that it was passing to the peasants. But this is not enough. The only way out is in the public cultivation of the land” 4 .

The conflicts that arose among the peasants in connection with the allotment of land were resolved by the village councils, but some conflicts went beyond the villages. A similar conflict was also noted in Viryatin. It was a matter of allocating land to the local horse-dealer A.F. Goloveshkin, who had previously rented land from the landowner and then leased it in small plots to peasants at an increased price. The village council of Viryatin refused to grant the land to Goloveshkin; he appealed this decision to the Kulevatovsky volost land committee. Having failed to obtain the consent of the Viryatinsky village council to satisfy Goloveshkin’s demand, the volost Council sent his complaint to the Morshansky district land committee with a request to “explain to the Viryatinsky community about the need to give land to Goloveshkin” 5. Since the lists of households in the village of Viryatina, compiled in the autumn of the same year, already contain the name of A.F. Goloveshkin, it is obvious that the county committee forced the village to provide a land allotment to the hawker.

It can be seen from this correspondence that the policy of the Kulevatovsky Volost Council and the Morshansky Uyezd Land Committee ran counter to the land policy of the Soviet government. In these committees (and in many Soviets) sat saboteurs and wreckers who took every measure to distort Soviet laws. It is known that in the fall of 1918, after the counter-revolutionary uprising of the Morshan kulaks, the Tambov Executive Committee of the Soviets of Deputies had to dissolve a number of local organizations in which anti-Soviet, Socialist-Revolutionary-Menshevik elements had built a nest. Among those dissolved was the executive committee of the Morshansky Soviet.

In order to strengthen the organs of the proletarian dictatorship in the countryside and create a counterbalance to compromising and sometimes simply anti-Soviet elements in the rural Soviets, the Communist Party took a course towards organizing the rural poor. In the Morshansky district of the Tambov province, committees of the poor began to be created on June 18, 1918. In the village of Viryatin, at first, two committees of the poor were created: one of them was part of the Perkinskaya volost, where the community of former state peasants was still included, the second was part of the Kulevatovskaya parish. Information about the activities of the first committee was not found in the archives. The second committee, apparently later becoming a rural united committee, had one hundred members in mid-August 1918; they were representatives of 60-70 poor households. In the list of members of this committee, it is noted that all members of the committee are "Communist-Bolsheviks." This was hardly the case, but it is certain that the committee was under the influence and political control of the Bolsheviks. The chairman of the committee of the poor was V. M. Kabanov, a miner who had worked in the Donbass for 15 years.

According to the information of this committee, in August 1918 there were 380 households in Viryatin with 2760 inhabitants. 6 

By October 1918, there were 375 peasant households in the village.

The land was distributed among the peasants by eaters. Capitalist rent was banned, and the use of hired labor in the peasant economy was difficult. The rural poor received allotments of land on which they could work without having to sell their labor power to the kulaks. The Committee of the Rural Poor Peasants took care that the world-eaters did not regain their former economic strength and did not penetrate into the organs of Soviet power. All this helped the former poor peasants to get on their feet and "become middle peasants", but this process was very slow, since the increase in allotment land rations did not have time to affect the state of farms in a short time.

To recover from the devastation that resulted from the First World War was most difficult for the poor farms, which not only did not have draft animals, but were also the most inefficient in terms of labor. After the war and the human losses associated with it, these families became even smaller. They received land from the Soviet government, but they did not have horses and plows to cultivate their allotments; there was no money to buy cows, sheep. 63 farms in Viryatina village (16.8% of all farms) remained without horses and 73 farms (19.4%) without cows. During the outbreak of the civil war, the Soviet government could not issue loans for the purchase of working and productive livestock; therefore the lands of the poor were scarcely sown; only that minimum was sown that was absolutely necessary to protect the family from starvation.

Some of the poor still managed to acquire horses and start livestock, as a result of which their farms entered the category of one-horse. The number of such farms in Viryatina was more than half of all farms (218, or 58.1%). There is no doubt that, along with the former poor peasants, this group also included the middle peasants, who lost part of their horses during the war. For 1918, this was an economically unstable, middle-peasant group of peasants, which had grown significantly in comparison with pre-revolutionary times (see Tables 3 and 4) 7. There are only eight farms that did not have livestock.

There were 86 peasant households with two horses in Viryatin, i.e. 22.9%. These were prosperous farms that managed, despite the devastation of 1916-1918, to maintain economic independence. After the revolution, some wealthy farms, which had previously exploited communal neighbors and rented other people's plots, passed into the category of prosperous farms after the revolution. As the subsequent development of events showed, the capitalist elements in the countryside only temporarily hid and, perhaps, “middle peasants” themselves in order to avoid clashes with the committee of the poor. They sold off part of their livestock and urged their neighbors to do the same. From here, from these farms, the slogans "cut the cattle", "do not expand the crops" spread. More active than the farms of the rural bourgeoisie (which were too visible), these outwardly middle-sized households later became the main force of the kulak uprisings.

Table 3

The presence of working horses in the peasant farms of Viryatin in 1918

farms	The number of working horses in these farms	Number of farms
		Total	in % of the total number
Horseless		63	16.8
With 1 horse	218	218	58.1
With 2 horses	172	86	22.9
From 3"	21	7	1.9
From 4"	4	one	0.3
Total	415	375	100.0

Table 4

The presence of dairy cows in the peasant farms of Viryatin in 1918

farms	Number of dairy cows on these farms	Number of farms
		Total	in % of the total number
Cowless		73	19.4
With 1 cow	266	266	70.9
With 2 cows	58	29	7.7
From 3"	21	7	2.0
Total	345	375	100.0

The history of the kulak uprising that took place in the autumn of the same 1918 in Morshansk uyezd 8  has not yet been studied, and therefore it is difficult to say to what extent the activity of the food authorities in this uyezd influenced the emergence of the uprising. There is reason to believe that the uyezd food commissar caused great confusion and contributed to the spread of panic rumors among the peasants by his incorrect orders 9 .

Some committees of the rural poor, subordinate to the food commissar, while carrying out his orders (on accounting for grain and other products), did not always do what was necessary for the revolution at that moment. However, the activities of the Viryatinsky Committee of the Rural Poor from the very beginning showed a correct understanding of the political line of the Communist Party. He registered the bread of the new crop, did not allow the reduction of crops, and helped the horseless in the cultivation of fields.

In the autumn of 1918, the Viryatinsky otkhodniks, as usual, left for the Donbass, but in those areas where the mines were located, with which the Viryatinsky people were connected (in the modern Voroshilovograd region), a civil war had already begun. Part of the Viryatians joined the ranks of the Red Guard and, together with other Soviet detachments, began to make their way to the Tsaritsyn region through the rebellious Cossack villages 10 . The Germans occupied the Donbass. The mines froze, work stopped. Another part of the otkhodniks returned to Viryatino and strengthened the proletarian backbone that supported the village committee of the poor and, consequently, the Soviet government. Only thanks to the strong and numerous proletarian core, the village of Viryatino during all the subsequent years of the civil war was never a stronghold of the kulak-Socialist-Revolutionary uprisings and did not give shelter to gangs.

In the second half of 1919, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, who considered the political moment the most suitable for a blow in the back of the Red Army, which was repelling Denikin's offensive on the southern front, raised kulak uprisings in the Tambov province. Having created large detachments from kulaks and deserters, subordinate to the joint headquarters of the uprising headed by Antonov, the Socialist-Revolutionaries hoped, by breaking communications between the grain Southeast and Moscow, to deprive the proletarian centers of food. In 1920, the center of the uprising was Kirsanovsky district; but the Antonov gangs moved from village to village in many neighboring counties, including Morshansky. Kulevatovskaya and Perkinskaya volosts also became the scene of actions of these gangs 11. Scattered by units of the Red Army in one place, the bandits again gathered in other places, suddenly attacked Red Army detachments from ambushes, destroyed members of the committees of the poor, village communists, forced the population to maintain a bandit "army". The military measures carried out by the Soviet command in the Tambov region could not quickly ensure the complete elimination of the uprising, because the kulaks and a significant part of the middle peasants, deceived by the SR-kulak demagogy, sheltered the bandits and replenished their detachments. The rural poor, the proletarian elements of the countryside, remained a strong support of Soviet power in the areas engulfed by the uprising. The bloody terror of Antonovism fell upon them. Gangs of Antonov, taking away horses and food from the peasants, threatened with reprisal all those who opposed them. A little more than ten people left Viryatin for the Antonov gangs, and even then secretly, because the village as a whole was and remained hostile to the uprising. A split arose in some middle peasant families, real family tragedies caused by the fact that their members turned out to be political enemies and fought against each other.

In 1920, the inhabitants of Viryatin were terrorized by a small group of village hooligans who ran amok in the streets, beating and even robbing fellow villagers. At the head of this gang was 19-year-old Zhiryakov, who had strayed from his family after the death of his father. During one of the robberies, Zhiryakov was detained, but when he was being escorted to Sosnovka, a gang of Antonovites recaptured him. Zhiryakov joined the gang and organized a raid on Viryatino. Bursting into the village, the bandits began to rob. Zhiryakov himself attacked the peasant I. I. Losev, who exposed him as a thief and robber, and brutally cracked down, cutting off his hands. In the village of Kulevatovo, the gang destroyed the people's house and burned the library: the bandits sought, above all, to destroy political literature. To combat Antonovism, the volost executive committees were replaced by revolutionary committees (revolutionary committees), to which all power was transferred.12 . In the village of Viryatin, a village revolutionary committee was created.

In the spring of 1921, the 10th Congress of the Communist Party met in Moscow, at which V.I. Lenin made a report on the tax in kind. By decision of this congress, the Soviet government abolished the food allocation and replaced it with a food tax. The news of the abolition of the surplus appraisal made an enormous impression on the peasantry; in the Tambov region, the result of these measures of the Soviet government was a decisive departure of the middle peasants from direct or indirect support of the Antonov region. Having lost the support of the peasants, Antonovism found itself without any political prospects. The peasants stopped supplying food to the gangs and refused to give horses. The number of Antonov detachments quickly decreased, as the peasants dispersed in whole groups to their homes. Antonov's days were numbered.

Having defeated the main forces of Antonov in several battles, the Red Army began to encircle the bandits driven into the forests and swamps. It was in the summer of 1921.

On July 5, 1921, the commander of the troops operating in the Tambov province, in an order, noted that the defeat of the bandits and explanatory work "in a significant part of the population created and strengthened the favorable mood of the Soviet authorities"; the terror that began with the bandits embittered the peasants, who began to form local squads for self-defense. In order to resolve the issue of local formations, the commander ordered:

“In settlements recognized by the head of the combat unit and the military commissar as Soviet-minded, where residents are clearly hostile to banditry, under the personal responsibility of the chief of combat training and the military commissar, the formation of volunteer squads from the local population and demobilized Red Army soldiers is allowed” 13 .

Viryatino was recognized as a village clearly hostile to banditry. On July 12, 1921, a combat squad of 11 people was formed here. This squad included: one demobilized Red Army soldier and ten former miners 14 .

Simultaneously with the struggle against Antonov, the Viryatinsky rural revolutionary committee organized the harvesting of bread in the fields of the poor, kept a strict record of bread in the fields of other fellow villagers and took measures to ensure that the bread did not go to support the bandits. At one of the meetings of the Revolutionary Committee, it was decided to take rye into the general fund from the families of bandits 15; 9 farms were recognized as clearly bandit and their crops were confiscated, twofarms were classified as dubious. Therefore, it was decided to detain rye until the issue was resolved in the region. With regard to three more farms associated with bandits, the revolutionary committee acted unusually cautiously and carefully weighed the consequences of its decision: the family of a peasant woman guilty of supporting or harboring bandits had an underage daughter. The Revolutionary Committee appointed a guardian for the child and allocated the bread due to the child's share, and transferred the rest to the general fund. In the other two farms, along with people who had gone to the bandits, there were also people loyal to the Soviet regime: fathers went to Antonov, while sons (among them were Red Army soldiers at that time) remained in the village. The Revolutionary Committee decided to take into the general fund only the bread that fell to the share of the departed.

In the autumn of 1921, the last centers of the uprising were liquidated and the Tambov region switched to a normal economic life.

Back in June 1921, the village council was re-elected in Viryatin, which was engaged in the establishment of economic life, and a month later, the villagers elected a commission to organize a rural consumer society 16 . The peasants were preparing to expand their crops. The rural revolutionary committee registered horses fit for work in the field, helped the poor farms with seeds. Trade in the bazaar in Sosnovka revived.

Thus began the period known in history as the NEP.

During the years of devastation, many fields did not plow up at all and were overgrown with weeds. Therefore, clearing neglected fields took a lot of energy from the peasantry. There were few livestock, there was nothing to fertilize the fields. At that time, the peasantry did not even think about applying on a mass scale any new methods of cultivating the fields - it was in a hurry to sow as much as possible and at the lowest cost. True, some prosperous peasants tried to introduce improved methods of tillage on their lands, to use the simplest machines. But the lack of horses, and most importantly, striped crops and forced crop rotation on the lands of peasant communities significantly interfered with this. The land authorities were not yet well organized at that time and could not provide effective agronomic assistance to the population. As a result, harvests in the first years of NEP were rather low in the Tambov region, and in some counties and volosts in 1924-1925. the peasants harvested almost nothing from their fields due to catastrophic crop failure.

There was a threat of mass starvation. In the Sosnovskaya volost, which since 1924, after the redistribution of the borders of the volosts, included Viryatino, by May 1925 there were 7920 starving people, and a year later, by May 1926, their number rose to 15 384. It was necessary to organize state assistance with food and seeds ; families left without bread were given from a special fund 1 pood of grain per consumer per month 17 .

By this time, one of the leading peasants of the village of Viryatina, A.P. Kolesnikov, whose son graduated from an agronomic college in 1924 and returned to the village, tried to transfer the experience of growing high yields of winter wheat to the Viryatinsky fields. The young agronomist persuaded his father to sow wheat in an ordinary way on an area of ​​about one hectare. The peasants reacted ironically to this idea, confident that nothing good would come of it. Sowing was carried out on well-cultivated soil in several separate plots. The seedlings appeared friendly, the development of winter crops was good, with strong tillering, and the strips of wheat especially stood out among the other crops made by hand “under the plow”. In a word, the appearance of seedlings in autumn promised a good harvest, and even skeptics were forced to change their minds. However, it rained in December and January, on the plots of ordinary sowing, a continuous thick ice crust formed, and since Kolesnikov did not take any measures to combat glaciation, the plants died from lack of air. The scattered sowing of winter rye under the plow overwintered more successfully, since ice formed between the coulter ridges, and the tops of the ridges, free from glaciation, gave air access to the plants. In addition, the rye variety was winter-hardy and acclimatized for this area. This failure compromised ordinary sowing and strengthened the conviction of the peasants that it was impossible to sow wheat on Viryatinsky lands. The young agronomist, unable to endure the constant ridicule in the village, went to work in the Donbass The scattered sowing of winter rye under the plow overwintered more successfully, since ice formed between the coulter ridges, and the tops of the ridges, free from glaciation, gave air access to the plants. In addition, the rye variety was winter-hardy and acclimatized for this area. This failure compromised ordinary sowing and strengthened the conviction of the peasants that it was impossible to sow wheat on Viryatinsky lands. The young agronomist, unable to endure the constant ridicule in the village, went to work in the Donbass. The scattered sowing of winter rye under the plow overwintered more successfully, since ice formed between the coulter ridges, and the tops of the ridges, free from glaciation, gave air access to the plants. In addition, the rye variety was winter-hardy and acclimatized for this area. This failure compromised ordinary sowing and strengthened the conviction of the peasants that it was impossible to sow wheat on Viryatinsky lands. The young agronomist, unable to endure the constant ridicule in the village, went to work in the Donbass. 18

Beginning in the autumn of 1922, retreat to the mines resumed in Viryatina.

In the first years after the end of the civil war, when flooded and dilapidated mines were being restored, they had to put up with the seasonal nature of the work of otkhodniks. When the mines of Donbass began to work at full capacity, the summer outflow of labor became a phenomenon that had to be actively combated. A number of measures were taken to secure the working cadres: wages were increased, a 6-hour working day was introduced for underground work, new hostels were built, houses for family workers began to be built, permanent holidays were introduced, etc. The social legislation of the Soviet government created such conditions for miners that the pull in the Donbass should have increased. But the peasants-otkhodniks, who had not yet broken with the land, who, in the old-fashioned way, considered agriculture to be an "original" trade, and work in the mining industry to be an "auxiliary" one, it was not easy to make a choice, which was to determine the whole future way of life. That is why a strange, at first glance, situation was created in the villages that supplied otkhodniks for mines: in the first years of the NEP, the influx of workers for seasonal work increased, and in 1926-1927  began to decrease.

We can talk about the gradual cessation from the end of the 1920s of traditional otkhodnichestvo from many villages, including Viryatin. His connection with the Donbass did not stop, but took on other forms - an annual and rather significant outflow of a certain part of the labor force from the countryside to industry. These were no longer otkhodnik miners, but professional miners who, after working for a number of years in the Donbass, sometimes transported their families there as well.

Meanwhile, the process of economic development was slowly but steadily going on in the village - the growth of sown areas, the restoration of livestock, the development of private and cooperative trade.

In 1924, the XIII Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks recognized that “two lines of development are outlined in the economic development of the countryside: one line of development is capitalist, when capital accumulates at one pole, wage labor and poverty at the other. Another line of development is through the most understandable, easy and accessible methods of cooperation for the peasantry - towards socialism .

The revival of economic life in the village of Viryatino was accompanied by some temporary growth of the rural bourgeoisie. The food tax was levied taking into account the property status of peasant farms, but previously prosperous families were in better conditions than the poor; they had more working and productive livestock, they had the best agricultural implements and, as a rule, were more numerous than the poor. As a result, the results of their management were more successful. In addition, first in a hidden form, then clearly began to revive the lease of land and the use of hired labor. Significant commodity stocks of grain were created and brought to the market. These farms began to grow rich and exploit their fellow villagers. The kulaks revived.

In Viryatino, in the very first years of NEP, the kulak farms of I. G. Kabanov and the Sleptsovs managed to rise again, then the “strong” farms of D. S. Dyakov, P. D. Matrokhin, V. M. Kabanov, merchants - I. T. Matrokhina, I. A. Krikov, M. I. Starodubov and others (about ten families were engaged in trade in the village). They got threshers, seeders, sorting. The communal mill was again taken over by the tenant kulaks. They also took over local markets. At the volost congress of the Sosnovka volost in the spring of 1925, the deputies said that the market in Sosnovka had been rented out to several rich people (obviously former merchants, of whom there were many in Sosnovka before the revolution). They set a fee for places for trading, and if the peasants who came to the market refused to buy places, they took away their arcs, took off their fur coats, mittens, etc. 20 .

The new economic policy of the Soviet government helped restore the national economy and contributed to the development of the country's productive forces, but the growth of capitalist elements, who used the new economic conditions to infiltrate production and trade, was now becoming dangerous for the socialist economy. In 1928, despite the fact that the country had a large amount of marketable grain, the urban centers were under threat of a reduction in their supply; the village rich, in whose bins accumulated huge reserves of grain, did not sell it to the state and the cooperatives, seeking to increase purchase prices. In the cities, a tense situation with food was created.

It was no longer possible to regulate the growth of capitalist elements in the countryside by measures of taxation alone. It was necessary to provide the socialist industry with raw materials, administrative and cultural centers with bread, create for them a food base that would supply the population completely and without fail. The small-scale peasant commodity economy, with its low production technology and economic instability, which served as a breeding ground for the cultivation of capitalist elements, was not suitable for this purpose. And the party took a course towards the mass collectivization of the rural peasant economy, towards the liquidation of capitalist elements in the countryside.

At the beginning of 1929, nine peasant households of Viryatin united into a partnership for the joint cultivation of the land (TOZ). The association did not last long: having harvested the crops, the peasants left it. This experience has shown that dwarf associations are uneconomical and that larger organizations must also be created on a different basis, with the socialization of the main means of production.

In August 1930, 460 peasant households (out of 492 in the village) united into a collective farm, which was given the name "Lenin's Way". S. S. Kalmykov was chosen as the first chairman of the collective farm.

In 1931, 21 more farms joined this collective farm, and only six farms of handicraftsmen and artisans remained sole proprietors. The remaining five farms were recognized as kulak ones, their owners were evicted from the village, and the land was transferred to the general fund. The "Put Lenina" collective farm, which socialized the main means of production of 481 peasant farms, owned a land mass of 4,261 hectares and was at that time one of the largest collective farms in the Tambov region.

Collectivization in Viryatin was carried out in a fierce class struggle. As soon as meetings began, in ten-yards, at which the question of organizing a collective farm was raised, the kulaks set fires, usually setting fire to some barn, sennitsa or barn. Fearing to come out openly, the kulaks carried on anti-kolkhoz agitation through their wives, sisters and mothers. At the meetings, the Viryatino women at first spoke out against the organization of the collective farm, responding with a cry of “we do not want” calls to join the collective farm; after a lot of explanatory work, the mood in the village changed, and even the women who had previously opposed the collective farm most actively voted at the general meeting of the village for joining the collective farm.

Having become collective farmers, the inhabitants of Viryatin did not immediately turn into real collectivists; the habits of individual peasants were still very strong, and the leaders of the collective farm had to show a lot of perseverance in order to overcome the skills of small proprietors among the members of the Put Lenina agricultural artel. Collective farmers were reluctant to take care of "foreign" horses, and there was a real danger that socialized cattle would be treated worse than before in peasant households. In the collective farms adjacent to the village, the farm managers went down the wrong path, depersonalizing the care of livestock. Working cattle overworked, emaciated, then cases began. And this played into the hands of the enemies of the collective farm system, who gloated and created public opinion in the villages against collectivization. Enemies of the collective farm system convinced the collective farmers that it is not worth taking special care of horses, since they are being replaced by a steel horse - a tractor. There were quite a few collective-farm activists who succumbed to this agitation; they were sure that the horse had outlived its life. In reality, the underestimation of the horse was a real "leftist" bend: even at the present time, when tractors do most of the field work, the horse retains its importance both in the cultivation of fields and in collective farm transport. For the very first years of collectivization, the importance of the horse was exceptionally great. The horse retains its importance both in the cultivation of fields and in collective farm transport. 

The board of the collective farm "Lenin's Way" approached the matter differently. In order to create better conditions for the preservation and use of working livestock, their former owners were assigned to ride horses sent to work. Pitying "his" horse, the rider tried not to overload it, and even if there was a lack of food on the collective farm, he allocated hay and oats from his personal stocks. This went on for the first few years of the existence of the collective farm, until the skills of collectivism were strengthened. During this period, working cattle in the agricultural artel were always in good condition. The kulak agitation aimed at the destruction of horses did not find a response on the collective farm. Successful management of the public economy and assistance to neighboring collective farms created great prestige for the Viryatians and promoted the Put Lenina collective farm to the ranks of the advanced collective farms of the Tambov region.

In the Sosnovsky district, kulak agitation produced a particularly strong effect in the villages located along the Stekensky tract. In the summer of 1933, the peasants began to take away collective farm property, take away their livestock and harness. It even went so far that those who went out to work in the field were threatened with reprisals. The collective farm crops remained neglected, the harvest could die in the bud. The Sosnovsky district committee of the party then turned to the party organization of the collective farm "Lenin's Way" with a proposal to help the activists of the villages of the Stezhensky tract to save the harvest. 250 members of the "Way of Lenin" agricultural artel, led by a group of communists, went to the Malopupsky village council and started weeding millet. Most of them were women and girls. They had to live for two weeks in the fields, because the villages were restless. They worked all daylight hours, without rest days,

In 1933-1934 the collective farms of the Savinsko-Karpelsky and Verkhne-Gryaznovsky village councils neighboring the Viryatinsky collective farm were found to be without seeds and without taxes due to crop failure. At the call of the district party organization, the agricultural artel "Lenin's Way" also came to the aid of its neighbors, cultivated their fields with its tax and equipment, and sowed hundreds of hectares with selected seeds.

In the autumn of 1932, the collective farm decided to resume the previously unsuccessful experiments in growing wheat. Winter wheat was sown on a plot of 20 hectares. The yield was higher than that of rye. In the autumn of 1933, 100 hectares were already sown - the yield was 57% higher than the yield of rye, and in 1935 winter wheat yielded a yield of 19.9 centners per hectare, while rye on these lands gave 9.9 centners. Thus, it was proved that it was possible to grow wheat on Viryatinsky fields and that it was economically profitable; at the same time, it turned out to be a clear example of how the scientific methods of agronomy are higher than the traditional peasant skills in agriculture. In 1935, spring wheat was also sown for the first time, which gave a good harvest. Thus, a new grain crop took root in the Viryatinsky fields, and wheat flour firmly occupied a prominent place in the diet of the Viryatinsky families.

In 1935, 4281.35 hectares of land were permanently assigned to the collective farm. From year to year the agricultural artel "Lenin's Way" expanded and strengthened its economy. So, it was before the attack of fascist Germany on the Soviet Union. The outbreak of war suspended the economic development of the collective farm. Hundreds of horses and vehicles were allocated to serve the army. Most of the men went to war, leaving the elderly, women, and children. The whole burden of fieldwork, work on farms fell on their shoulders. It must be said that women worked heroically and were helped by teenagers, but they were unable to cope with such a large and complex household. Yields have declined, livestock and poultry numbers have halved, and livestock productivity has also fallen. The "Put Lenina" collective farm has become one of the lagging behind in the Sosnovsky district. The new inexperienced management of the collective farm was also to blame for this, which allowed the decline of labor discipline, the increase in personal plots in excess of the norm (under the guise of fictitious family divisions). And, nevertheless, even in such a neglected form, the collective farm helped the families of front-line soldiers, left without male workers, to survive the difficult years, protecting them from poverty and starvation.

After the end of the Great Patriotic War, the front-line soldiers who returned home set about restoring normal life on the collective farm; I had to work hard to establish production discipline, strengthen the team and create conditions for a prosperous life. It took almost three years.