History12 - Russia and the Soviet Union 1914-1945 (WWI-WWII): Economic Change

This Warwick University paper describes the impact of World War 1 on the Russian economy and Bolshevik politics leading to Stalin's collectivisation and industrialisation policies.

Collectivization, policy adopted by the Soviet government, pursued most intensively between 1929 and 1933, to transform traditional agriculture in the Soviet Union and to reduce the economic power of the kulaks (prosperous peasants). Under collectivization the peasantry were forced to give up their individual farms and join large collective farms (kolkhozy).

From mid-1929 decisions on the extent and speed of proposed collectivization were changed almost monthly, becoming ever more extreme. The Five-Year Plan as approved in April–May 1929 envisaged five million peasant households collectivized by 1932–33; this figure was doubled by November and doubled again during December. By the turn of the year it was decreed that collectivization should be completed in Ukraine by the autumn of 1930 and in the other main grain areas by the spring of 1931