Collectivization

Collectivization 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. Kulaks was the label give to prosperous peasants. Under collectivization the peasantry were forced to give up their individual farms and join large collective farms or kolkhozy. The process was ultimately undertaken in conjunction with the campaign to industrialize the Soviet Union rapidly. But before …

…it needed to acquire the capital for industrial investment; this caused a major famine in the countryside from 1932-33 and the deaths of millions of peasants. Despite these great costs, the forced collectivization achieved the final establishment of Soviet power in the countryside. Through collectivization agriculture was integrated with the rest of the state-controlled economy, and the state was supplied with the capital it required to transform the Soviet Union into a major industrial power