Communist Ideology's Influence on Stalin's Decision to Implement Collectivisation in 1928

Communist Ideology's Influence on Stalin's Decision to Implement Collectivisation in 1928

Collectivisation was the agricultural policy, which Stalin adopted and

began work on in the summer of 1928. The main features included, as

Stalin quoted in Pravda

"The transition from individual peasant farming to collective

socialised farming,"

and the process of De-kulakisation. It was an agricultural policy

necessary to try and combat the problem with the poor provision of

grain by the peasants, a problem that had always been evident in

Russia's agricultural management.

The heavy cost and brutality has led historians to offer a variety of

explanations for why Collectivisation was used. Some pragmatists argue

the original aim was to increase the tempo of industrialisation by

increasing the grain procurement. Others draw emphasis on the process

of De-kulakisation as a way of showing Stalin's commitment to Marxism

and Leninism by ridding the countryside of a 'class enemy.'

Chapter 1 Marxism and feeding the revolution

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Marx argued the need for collective farming to benefit the needs of

the workers therefore the ideology behind Collectivisation is its

importance to the development of a Communist state,

"They [the workers] must demand that the confiscated feudal property

remain state property and be used for workers' colonies, cultivated

collectively by the rural proletariat with all the advantages of

large-scale farming."[1]

However Marx was a German lawyer with little knowledge of the rural

way of life, his references to Collectivisation were sweeping

generalisations and mor...

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...et speech, (1956)

[4] Isaac Deutscher

'Russia after Stalin' (1953)

[5] Das Kapital, Karl Marx (1887)

[6] Stalin, 'On the grain front' (1932)

[7] Harvests of Sorrow, Robert Conquest (1986)

[8] Stalin's Peasants, Sheila Fitzpatrick (1994)

[9] Stalin's Peasants, Sheila Fitzpatrick (1994)

[10] Roy Medvedev, Let History Judge, (1971)

[11] Leszeck Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, (1970)

[12] Leon Trotsky, Miscellaneous quote.

[13] Stalin's Peasants, Sheila Fitzpatrick, (1994)

[14] Pravda Article, Stalin, (1932)

[15] Alan Wood, Stalin and Stalinism (1990)

[16] Leon Trotsky

[17] Party Congress Meeting, Stalin (1928)

[18] Chris Corin & Terry Fiehen, Communist Russia under Lenin and

Stalin (2002)

[19] Even Mawdsley, The Stalin years, (1998)

[20] Bukharin (1931)