The goal of collectivization in the Soviet Union was to consolidate individual land and labors into collective farms. Stalin stated collectivization was politically necessary, Stalin also stated that collectivization needed to be gradual and voluntary, two things it was not. The landless peasants were meant to benefit the most form collectivization, since they were to be given an equal share of the profits. The problem was most peasants were not landless and they did not want to have to give up their lands and sell their harvest at the minimal price, and most peasants were forced into collectivization against their will. Collectivization also created many social changes, which lead to even more discontent and resistance among the peasants. When it first began collectivization was successful in harvesting enough to feed the urban population, this success lead the Central Committee to expand collectivization, ignoring Stalin’s earlier statement that collectivization should be gradual.
Tag Archives: pesants
18th Century Serfdom
Something that stood out to me in this chapter was the quote by Sumner at the beginning of the reading. He states that serfdom lasted longer in Russia than in the West because “humanitarian and other ideas of the value of the individual spirit were little developed.” It is strange to attempt to reconcile that fact that Catherine the Great set up a Noble Wardship and a Bureau of Public Welfare for the peasants but that she was also the monarch responsible for entrenching serfdom the most. I understand that there was a division between peasants and serfs, but I do not agree with Sumner’s statement. I think that in Russia, at least on a theoretical level, there was a conception of individual rights and social duty. In the “Charter to the Towns” for example, the merchants were granted private property based on their individual right and under law. Obviously the concept of individual rights applied more to the upper classes than to the peasants, but I would go as far to say that serfdom became so important because of the new Enlightenment value placed on the individual. The serfs became the patrimony of the nobles and the merchants because the upper classes were entitled to them by virtue of being a human with an inalienable right to property. It is hard to apply humanitarian and spiritual concerns to a group of people barely considered human by law.
On a related note, I was surprised to learn that merchant run factories had the ability to own their own peasants as “industrial serfs.” I do not think of Russian factories at this time period to be mechanized enough to support unskilled labor and had assumed that there would be more unindustrialized craft involved.