In 1929 farming in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) changed forever. For centuries peasants had worked the land in the mir, overseen by village councils and religious authorities. Families would be assigned, by these authorities, to work certain strips of land. Very rarely did this system of agriculture produce more than the village needed, but each family usually had enough to survive.
The Bolshevik takeover of the Soviet government, led by Vladimir Lenin, after the 1917 October Revolution precipitated the change away from the agricultural system of the mir. Long held traditions in Russia and the surrounding nations, former imperial possessions turned Soviet republics, began to fall away. The royal family had been murdered, and a centuries long system of monarchy abolished. The Bolsheviks attacked the Russian Orthodox Church, the religious tradition shared by most in the former Russian Empire, taking away its money, its buildings, its church bells, and ridiculing clergymen. The country that had relied on its rural population to drive the economy began to focus on urbanization, industry, and a new proletarian work force. As urban industrial work became the priority for the new Soviet government, rural agricultural work became a target for scrutiny and reform. Rural agriculture was seen as a mere means to provide resources to the new industries and urban workforce, not as an equal part of the Communist project. Thus, the Soviet collectivization policy was drafted and implemented full scale in 1929.
There are two major perspectives on the success of the policy and its implementation that must be considered in any study of Soviet collectivization of agriculture. The first is that of the Soviet government, led by Josef Stalin at the time of collectivization. In fact, collectivization represented a major facet of his First Five Year Plan, a plan that that laid out steps for the USSR to achieve economic success. The Soviet government saw collectivization as a way to tear down class distinctions in the countryside, to impose equality between wealthier and poorer peasants, and as a way to educate the peasants in the Communist system of production. The strips of land in the mir were replaced with large kolkhozy, where farmers shared their land, their livestock, their tools, and their new government issue tractors.
The second perspective is that of those who experienced collectivization the most directly; the peasants of the Soviet Union. The peasant reaction was mixed, with some seeing collectivization as an opportunity to become more educated and successful, and others seeing it as an intrusion. They felt confused about why changes were needed, why traditions needed to be forgotten and replaced. Peasants engaged in protests, attacks on government officials, and outright sabotage against the kolkhozy.
The following documents will inform both perspectives, through government propaganda, statistics, and peasant accounts. The task laid out for you is the task of any historian presented with this knowledge and the following documents: come to an evidence-based conclusion about the success of collectivization. You will also speak to the larger question of the relationship between power and reality. Can power, in this case the Soviet government, create reality for the population it resides over?