- Agriculture in Russia Before World War II
- Industrialization
- Collectivization
- Collective farms
- Changes in agriculture in the first five-year plan (1928–1933)
- Grain farming
- Crops
- Livestock and poultry
- Collective farm - the idea and its realization
- Reorganization of agriculture after Stalin
- Resource mobilization and its results
Agriculture in Russia Before World War II
In the imperial Russia, the importance of agriculture for the well-being of the population was always stressed. But the state of agriculture and the availability of equipment to facilitate peasants’ work left much to be desired. The produced grain was vastly exported: Russia was the main supplier on the world grain market. However, in terms of the amount of bread per capita, it was one of the last in Western Europe. Industries that required cheap manual labor flourished. These were the production of flax, hemp, oilseeds, and leather. Animal husbandry developed very poorly. Taxes and duties increased together with government expenditures. According to the historian S. G. Pushkarev, back then, the main problems of the peasantry were lack of land, technological backwardness, low productivity. And political parties successfully used these facts, promising to give the landowners’ lands to the villagers.
Many peasants, in order to feed themselves, leased land from the landowner for summer. They were neither interested in the proper care of the leased land, nor did they have the means and resources for this. The cultivation of the land was carried out manually, not all farms even had iron plows, they used wooden tools instead.
Industrialization
After the October Revolution, there was a rapid transition to a system dominated by state and cooperative ownership. The state became the owner of the land, the peasants received only the right to use it. The plots confiscated from landowners were redistributed. The Grain Monopoly Law of March 25, 1917 required that food surpluses be handed over to the state at minimum prices.
By gaining control over the land and crops, the peasants benefited – there was no longer any burden of rent and taxes. But they lost the incentive to hand over the surplus to the domestic market. Difficulties with drawing provisions intensified, the “scarcity economy” appeared – when demand exceeded supply.
Collectivization and Its Results
In the summer of 1928, Stalin decided to charge peasants. According to the professor of Soviet Economic Studies R.U. Davis, this led to three results:
- Transition to a forced procurement system to obtain food surpluses in rural areas. It led to an agricultural crisis, a shortage of fodder, and a huge crop failure in 1932.
- Elimination of the kulaks as a class. The kulaks were small farmers, slightly more successful than the average peasant. Their property was confiscated, and the people were exiled from villages.
- Collectivization. As was expected, during the first five-year plan from 1929 to 1933, not more than 18–20% of farms and sown areas were to go to the collective farms. In fact, as soon as in three months after December 1929, more than half of the peasant households became collective farms. By 1936, 1/10 of households remained outside the collective farm sector.
Collective Farms
The collective farming model was introduced in order to improve the efficiency of previous methods of farming and animal husbandry, and to increase production volumes.
Special features:
- Members of collective farms contribute all resources, including land and livestock, to the collective economy and work together for it. They are allowed to leave a small area for growing grains, vegetables and fruits for their needs.
- Targets are set by the government, products are purchased by the state at fixed, usually low prices.
- If the harvest exceeds the target, the surplus is distributed among the participants or sold at market prices.
- Members pay taxes on rented equipment, products, etc.
- Participants are paid in accordance with the work they do.
Collectivization delivered the completely different results than planned. First, the new procurement system deprived people of grain and animals of fodder. Second, the peasants found themselves among the last claimants for food. In the 1920s, the bulk of the harvest satisfied their own needs, and the surplus was sent to the cities. Between 1927 and 1929, after the misappropriation of more than 10 million tons of grain, the peasants’ part was more than 50 million tons. In 1931–1932, the state took 23 million tons, the peasants were left with 33 million tons.
Changes in Agriculture in The First Five-Year Plan (1928–1933)
In the surviving Soviet reports, information was presented in a completely different way. The USSR is the country with the largest agriculture in the world. Collective and state farms are given tractors, other equipment, fertilizers, etc.
Grain Farming
The main grain regions of the USSR:
- The steppe territory of Ukraine and the North Caucasus — good air humidity and fertile soils give consistently high yields. This zone was collectivized in the first place.
- Trans-Volga region and Western Siberia — conditions are slightly worse due to droughts, but there is a lot of undeveloped land, therefore, more new grain farms can be built.
The plans included an active expansion to the east. Grain crops were revised, with a change in the ratio of the sown areas: less valuable ones gave way to more valuable ones. Thanks to the work of breeders, new varieties of wheat appeared, which could grow even in the northern regions.
Crops:
- Wheat.
- Barley.
- Rye and oats.
- Corn.
- Rice.
- Other grain crops (buckwheat, millet, etc.).
The main regions giving grain to other regions were Ukraine, the North Caucasus, the Central Black Earth Region, the Urals, Western Siberia, the Volga region, and Kazakhstan.
In addition, industrial crops were grown:
- Cotton.
- Linen.
- Hemp.
- Kenaf, kendyr and ramie, new for Russia.
- Sugar beet.
Before the October Revolution and the first five-year plan, industrial crops were rarely grown, there was no need for them. The industrial development required raw materials, so from 1927 to 1931, the sown area for flax and sugar beet grew 2.25 times, and 2.5 times for cotton.
In addition, oilseeds, primarily sunflower (sown area increased by a quarter during the first five years) were actively grown. New crops were introduced: soy, sesame, peanuts. Potatoes were grown for food, for livestock feed, for processing into starch and alcohol. Fruit growing and horticulture were developing.
Livestock and Poultry
The livestock industry supplied the country with food (meat, milk, eggs) and raw materials for industry (wool, leather, down). By 1929, compared with 1913, meat consumption increased by 25%, dairy products — by 30% (data from the textbook "Geography of the USSR" by N.N. Baranovsky). According to the forecasts of Soviet analysts, consumer demand was supposed to grow, so it was necessary to increase the number of livestock and revise the cattle management. According to the authorities, the liquidated kulaks destroyed livestock, but in the end, instead of solving the livestock problem, the deprivation of a significant part of the crop from the population led to a shortage of fodder and the forced slaughter of agricultural animals on a huge scale.
Poultry Farming
The rapid growth and fecundity of poultry made it a popular export product in the USSR. While in tsarist Russia this industry was secondary, the Soviet authorities planned to uplift and develop it. Poultry trusts emerged in the grain regions, and incubators were used.
Collective Farm — The Idea and Its Realization
Collective farms were created to control the surplus food for the convenience of government. But there was neither working model nor plan. The size of a collective farm, product distribution, income — all these things had no structure.
Collective farms absorbed assets: land, tools, livestock. The changes even affected the households: canteens and hostels were opened for workers, and nurseries for children. Commercial activity was banned, the handicraft sector was nearly destroyed.
As a result, by the 1930s, the authorities retreated from the original ideas. The collective farm became the norm but was given a Machine and Tractor Station as an organ of technical maintenance and political control. There was a system of jobs with the workers’ right to draw dividends. Participants received the right to sell surplus on the collective farm market. But the system was based on nothing but coercion. In the bad harvest year of 1932, there were repressions and even the death penalty for attempting to steal crops from collective farm fields. The increase in coercion lasted until World War II and into the post-war period. Changes came only after Stalin's death in 1953.
Reorganization of Agriculture After Stalin
In Khrushchev (1956-1964) and Brezhnev (1964-1982) times, the main policy of authorities was outlined. First of all, they were engaged in improving the quality and diversity of the people’s diet, thanks to which agriculture received a high priority. The heads of the collective farms were professional experts in land cultivation, plant growing and animal husbandry. For workers, a minimum income, an old-age pension, and the right to a national passport were introduced. Malenkov changed the agricultural tax rates, bringing them onto correlation with a farm size. As a result, the total amount decreased from 9.5 billion rubles in 1952 to 4.1 billion rubles in 1954. Procurement prices became higher: by 7.4 times for grain, by 5.8 times for meat, compared to 1952. Old debts of collective farms to the state were written off. The peasants had an incentive to work and increased production volumes. For comparison, the annual income of a family from the collective farm fund in 1946 was 105 rubles, in 1953 it was 845 rubles, in 1960 — 3763 rubles (data from the book by V.V. Kazarezov "The Most Famous Reformers of Russia").
Resource Mobilization and Its Results
After World War II, the diet of Soviet people improved significantly. But production still did not satisfy the demand. In the 1970s, the USSR comes back to importing products, primarily meat and fodder. The priority of agriculture continues to be maintained. From 1940 to 1970, the number of agronomists, veterinarians and other specialists increased from 34 thousand to 500 thousand. In the 1950s and 1960s, the growth of agricultural production in the USSR exceeds that of the USA. But efficiency remains low. Khrushchev's economic reforms, such as the corn campaign, the chemicalization of soils, the cumbersome and inflexible state apparatus were faltering. The land was depleted, the harvest was not enough. The country had to import grain from the United States.
Another reason is given by Richard Critchfield in an article for the American newspaper Christian Science Monitor on April 22, 1980: a group of American farmers came to the USSR under an exchange program. The Americans were astounded to see Soviet workers get off the tractor at 5 o'clock, right at the end of their shift, regardless of the weather, the sowing and harvesting program.
The Washington Post of October 4, 1979 writes about grain purchases in the United States. The USSR was allowed to purchase up to 25 million tons of wheat and corn per year, which is about 10% of the total US production. Such a large batch was needed as the Soviet harvest suffered from bad weather.
In the mid-1980s, under Gorbachev, they again began to discuss options for disengaging from the existing agricultural model. Under the influence of Chinese decollectivization and the transition to state leasing, steps were taken towards urban-rural exchange. All forms of management were recognized: state farms, collective farms, multi-unit agricultural enterprises, cooperatives, private farms. Small-scale production was encouraged, the purchasing prices for products were increased by the state. But the measures were chaotic, non-centralized, and ultimately did not have the desired effect up until the collapse of the Soviet Union.