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In the Soviet Union, collectivisation was a policy introduced in the late 1920s, of consolidation of individual land and labour into co-operatives called collective farms ( Russian: колхоз, kolkhoz) with the goals to increase the agricultural production, to put it under the control of the state, as well as an important political goal, a step towards communism: liquidation of private property of land.
In Imperial Russia, the Stolypin Reform was aimed at the development of capitalism in agriculture by giving incentives for creation of large farms. The World War I and the following Russian Revolution stopped this process in Russia. After the revolution, the agricultural land was repartitioned, according to one of the revolutionary slogan "Land — to Peasants".
Although conditions varied over the vast expanse of the Soviet Union and among ethnic groups and enclaves, farming on the most territory of the European part of the state and in Siberia was carried on by a host of individual small landowners who lived ether at isolated settlements ( khutor s) or in villages. Farmland was characteristically laid out in strips divided by boundary ridges and dead furrows, and could be worked by small horse-drawn equipment, but not by modern tractors. Richer peasants might own 2 or 3 horses, 4 or more cows and work 30 or 40 acres (120,000 or 160,000 m˛) of land with the help of seasonal employees. The poorest peasants often could not afford a single horse.
The World War I, Revolution and subsequent Civil War disrupted farming and food distribution in Russia. Because of the collapse of industrial production and the monetary system, there was little incentive for farmers to sell their products. The money was, in their view, no good, and in any event there was little available to buy. During the Civil War the authorities resorted to the policy of war communism. In agriculture, it amounted to food requisition according to state-defined quotas (продразверстка), with the leaders of a community often held hostage pending delivery of food. The New Economic PolicyThe New Economic Policy or NEP was a system of economic reforms, partly market-oriented, that Vladimir Lenin instituted in the Soviet Union in 1921. The emergency policy of War communism, intoduced during the Russian Civil War, was terminated, and the NEP (NEP) replaced requisitions by a foodstuffs tax (продналог); however, it turned out to favor the capitalistic sector of the peasantry, known as kulakKulaks (from the Russian (kulak, "fist") is a prejorative term extensively used in Soviet propaganda, originally refering to peasants in the Russian Empire who owned larger farms and used hired labor, as a result of the Stolypin reform introduced since 19s, an undesirable outcome from the communist point of view.
" The First TractorVladimir Krikhatsky Vladimir Yelchaninov The First Tractor was the name of several paintings in the style of Socialist realism that portray the beginning of collectivisation in the USSR. Usually they depict the Fordson tractor, the first agricultural trac" by Vladimir Krikhatzkij ( Socialist realismOctober Revolution" by Karp Trokhimenko Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style of realistic art which has as its purpose the furtherance of the goals of Communism. Originating in the aesthetic philosophy of Maxim Gorki, it was from its adopt)
Collectivisation sought to modernise Soviet agriculture, consolidating the land into parcels that could be farmed by modern equipment using the latest scientific methods of agriculture. In fact, an American Fordson tractorFordson by Ford Motors is the first model of an agricultural tractor in mass production. It was a lightweight frameless tractor without cabin with carburetor engine and four metal wheels. The first prototype was built in 1907. Mass production of Fordson m (called "Фордзон" in Russian) was the best propaganda in favor of collectivisation.
Social and ideological goals would also be served though mobilisation of the peasants in a co-operative economic enterprise which could serve a secondary purpose of providing social services to the people.
It was argued that collectivisation would free poor peasants from economic servitude under the kulaks. It was hoped that the goals of collectivisation could be achieved voluntarily, but when the new farms failed to attract the number of peasants hoped, the government blamed the oppression of the kulaks and resorted to forceful implementation of the plan.
Given the goals of the First Five Year Plan, the state sought increased political control of agriculture, hoping to feed the rapidly growing urban areas and to export grain, a source of foreign currency needed to import technologies necessary for heavy industrialisation.