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A fiery mass movement
Once the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party had called for accelerating the collectization, a spontaneous movement developed, brought to the regions by activists, youth, old soldiers of the Red Army and the local apparatuses of the Party.
Early in October, 7.5 per cent of the peasants had already joined kolkhozy and the movement was growing. The Party, which had given the general direction towards collectivization, became conscious of a mass movement, which it was not organizing:
`The main fact of our social-economic life at the present time ..., is the enormous growth of the collective farm movement.
`Now, the kulaks are being expropriated by the masses of poor and middle peasants themselves, by the masses who are putting solid collectivization into practice.'
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Ibid. , pp. 145, 163.
During the ratification of the First Five-Year Plan, in April, the Party had planned on a collectivization level of 10 per cent by 1932-1933. The kolkhozy and the sovkhozy would then produce 15.5 per cent of the grain. That would suffice to oust the kulaks.
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But in June, the Party Secretary in North Caucasus, Andreev, affirmed that already 11.8 per cent of families had entered kolkhozy and that a number of 22 per cent could be reached by the end of 1929.
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Ibid. , p. 121.
On January 1, 1930, 18.1 per cent of the peasant families were members of a kolkhoz. A month later, they accounted for 31.7 per cent.
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Ibid.
`Collectivization quickly assumed a dynamic of its own, achieved largely as a result of the initiative of rural cadres. The center was in peril of losing control of the campaign'.
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The objectives set by the Central Committee in its January 5, 1930 resolution were strongly `corrected' in the upward direction by regional committees. The district committees did the same and set a breath-taking pace. In January 1930, the regions of Ural, Lower Volga and Middle Volga already registered collectivization figures between 39 and 56 per cent. Several regions adopted a plan for complete collectivization within one year, some within a few months.
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Ibid. , pp. 93--94.
A Soviet commentator wrote: `If the centre intended to include 15 per cent of households, the region raised the plan to 25 per cent, the okrug to 40 per cent and the district posed itself the task of reaching 60 per cent'.
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(The okrug was an administrative entity that disappeared in 1930. There were, at the beginning of that year, 13 regions divided into 207 okrugs, subdivided into 2,811 districts and 71,870 village Soviets.)
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Ibid. , p. xx.
Next: The war against Up: The first wave Previous: The kolkhozy surpass
Fri Aug 25 09:03:42 PDT 1995