AFAIU, there were 2 farmer classes in USSR at the time. Collectives getting fixed price for their crops, and Kulak private farmers getting market prices. Famine makes those prices extortionist, and USSR chose to fight extortion.
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RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 1 day agoUSSR leadership absolutely used forced requisition (sometimes leaving nothing to the farmers) as a tool of power and control and to punish the farmers. The leadership in USSR was pretty vitriolic towards the agrarian population and treated them like shit at least until later in the Union’s life.
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 20 hours ago
The farmers needed to buy stuff to keep the farm going and those prices had risen through the roof too. And the state sent in goons to requisition everything, leaving the farmers to starve. Sometimes burning the farms and killing the farmers just on the suspicion of not handing over everything. Real fucked up shit
The state just exacerbated the whole situation and using this opportunity to bolster their power instead of focusing on addressing the famine situation. Attacking and intimidating the farmers just made the situation worse.
Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 13 hours ago
True
Bullshit.
The rapid collectivization of 1929-1934 was a very difficult endeavour, and is the FIRST IN HISTORY successful collectivization of agriculture. There have been many attempts since before the Roman Empire, but never had it been carried our successfully before. Grain requisitions were carried out because the effort of rapid collectivization was kickstarted in order to rapidly industrialize the nation. By introducing tractors into farms and collectivizing them in larger plots, fewer peasants were needed, and people could move to cities to build up an industrial sector. Moving people to cities meant feeding people in cities, and grain requisitions were carried out initially in order to force wealthy exploiter peasants (kulaks) to sell their grain at state mandated prices. Had it not been for the rapid collectivization and industrialization of the 1930s, the Soviets would have been crushed by Nazism, and tens of millions of people more would have been exterminated as it happened in Poland, Belarus or Ukraine. Rapid collectivization wasn’t an ideological decision, it was a pragmatic decision that averted the extermination of Eastern Europe at the hands of Nazism.
This is again bullshit. The region has never before or after seen the level of expenditure in infrastructure, education or healthcare that took place in rural USSR. Since the disappearing of the USSR, many massive rural exodus have taken place all over the eastern block.
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 13 hours ago
Both the horrific ideologically motivated methods to punish peasants and agrarian population and the ideological dislike of agrarian population and the fast collectivization are well documented. I can quote you choice parts from Stalin: A new biography of a dictator by Oleg Khlevniuk when I get home from work, if you want the claims to be sourced.
Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 13 hours ago
Stalin disliking Kulaks or his personal beliefs towards peasants are not evidence of policy, and it’s the only source you will be able to provide. In contrast, I can bring you quotes by Anna Louise Strong, an American journalist (first woman to get a doctorate in Chicago university) who traveled and documented the USSR, proving that peasants generally supported the Bolshevik movement and government during the collectivization, and how most trials against Kulaks were carried out by peasants themselves.
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 12 hours ago
The book has ample evidence for it having been a systemic policy.