Collectivization
- All peasants were to work on collective farms
- Kolkhoz - land pooled together
- Party officials monitored output
- 1932 - 62% of peasants collectivized
- Kulaks - wealthy peasants owned their own farms
- Were either killed or sent to gulags because free enterprise seen as threat
Summary
Collectivization was a huge step in achieving the ultimate communism the leaders were seeking. The hunting down of the Kulaks would also be the first steps in Stalins brutal fear campaign.
“Stalin had developed an interesting new theory: that resistance to socialism increases as its successes mount, because its foes resist with greater desperation as they contemplate their final defeat. Thus any problem in the Soviet Union could be defined as an example of enemy action, and enemy action could be defined as evidence of progress." -p.41 Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
Would it ever be possible to implicate real communism without a cruel dictatorship?