Charles
Bettelheim
Class
Struggles
in the
USSR
Second Period: 1923-1930
[Section 2 -- Part 2]
.GIF)
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Charles Bettelheim Class
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© 1978 by Monthly Review Press
Translated by Brian Pearce
Originally published as
Les Luttes de classes en URSS
© 1977 by Maspero/Seuil, Paris, France
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Contents | |||
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1. |
The social conditions of immediate |
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2. |
The economic and social conditions |
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3. |
The reproduction and transformation of |
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page 7
Key to abbreviations, initials, and Russian
words used in the text
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Artel |
A particular form of producers' cooperative |
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Cadet party |
The Constitutional Democratic Party |
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CLD |
See STO |
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Cheka |
Extraordinary Commission (political police) |
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Glavk |
One of the chief directorates in the Supreme Council of the National Economy or in a people's commissariat |
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Gosplan |
State Planning Commission |
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GPU |
State Political Administration (political police) |
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Kulak |
A rich peasant, often involved in capitalist activities of one kind or another, such as hiring out agricultural machinery, trade, moneylending, etc. |
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Mir |
The village community |
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Narkomtrud |
People's Commissariat of Labor |
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NEP |
New Economic Policy |
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NKhSSSRv |
National Economy of the USSR in (a certain year or period) |
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NKVD |
People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs |
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OGPU |
Unified State Political Administration (political police) |
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Orgburo |
Organization Bureau of the Bolshevik Party |
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Politburo |
Political Bureau of the Bolshevik Party |
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Rabfak |
Workers' Faculty |
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Rabkrin |
See RKI |
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RCP(B) |
Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik): official |
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name of the Bolshevik Party, adopted by the Seventh Party Congress in March 1918 |
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RKI |
Workers' and Peasants' Inspection |
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RSDLP |
Russian Social Democratic Labor Party |
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RSDLP(B) |
Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolshevik) |
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RSFSR |
Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic |
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Skhod |
General assembly of a village |
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Sovkhoz |
State farm |
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Sovnarkhoz |
Regional Economic Council |
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Sovnarkom |
Council of People's Commissars |
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SR |
Socialist Revolutionary |
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STO |
Council of Labor and Defense |
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Uchraspred |
Department in the Bolshevik Party responsible for registering the members and assigning them to different tasks |
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Uyezd |
County |
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Volost |
Rural district |
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VSNKh |
Supreme Economic Council |
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VTsIK |
All-Russia Central Executive Committee (organ derived from the Congress of soviets) |
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Zemstvo |
Administrative body in country areas before the Revolution |
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page 83
The analyses offered in the following pages relate to the economic and social structure of the Soviet countryside toward the end of the NEP. Their purpose is to throw light on the conditions governing the articulation of class relations and class struggles in the villages with agricultural policy and to show how these relations and struggles led to the final crisis of the NEP.
It was the articulation of class struggles with agricultural policy that determined the changes which the Soviet countryside underwent between 1924 and 1929. These changes cannot be seen as an "autonomous process," dominated exclusively by some ineluctable "internal necessity." They cannot be divorced from the policy followed toward the peasantry and its various strata. In its turn, this policy needs to be related to the development of the contradictions within the urban sector and the way with which these were dealt -- problems that will be considered later.
page 84 [blank]
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During the NEP[1] the bulk of agricultural production was due essentially to the activity of peasants working on their own individual farms. These produced partly for the peasants' own needs and partly in order to exchange the peasants' products on the market. The state farms and kolkhozes played only a minor role. The number of peasants and craftsmen engaged in collective forms of production was only 1.3 percent of the total in 1924 and 2.9 percent in 1928.[2]
Commodity production of grain (the branch of production that was of decisive importance for relations between town and country and in connection with the crisis that began at the end of 1927) was contributed mainly by the individual peasant farms: in 1927 they provided 92.4 percent, while the sovkhozes provided only 5.7 percent and the kolkhozes 1.9 percent.[3]
The "individual peasant farms" constituted a heterogeneous "social category." Hidden behind this expression was the great complexity of production relations characteristic of agriculture in the NEP period. To this complexity corresponded the social differentiation of the Soviet peasantry and the class contradictions which resulted.
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Social differentiation among the Soviet peasantry was still relatively limited toward the end of the NEP period. On the one hand, the division of the land realized thanks to the October Revolution (which was in some cases still going on so late as 1923-1924) had resulted in its more equal distribution. On the other, the process of social differentiation which developed during the NEP period possessed special features which have often been pointed out. This process resulted in a reduction in the proportion of poor peasants in the total peasant population and an increase in the proportion of middle peasants, while the economic importance of the kulaks grew only slightly.
The slow transformation of the structure of the Soviet peasantry was based mainly on a twofold process affecting the poor peasants, whereas one section of them joined the proletariat, another entered the ranks of the middle peasantry and strengthened this stratum.[4]
From 1925 on the specific character of this differentiation was demonstrated by investigations sponsored by Rabkrin, by the Commissariat of Finance, and by other administrative bodies.[5] These investigations refuted the claims of the Left opposition which alleged that Soviet agriculture was undergoing a process of capitalist differentiation leading to polarization, with the proletariat being strengthened at one end, and the rural bourgeoisie at the other.
The theses put before the Fifteenth Party Congress explicitly recognized these distinctive features:
The peculiarities of that differentiation are a result of the altered social conditions. These peculiarities consist in the fact that, in contradiction to the capitalist type of development, which is expressed in the weakening of the middle peasantry, while the two extremes (the poor and the rich farmers) grow, in our country it is the reverse. We have a process of strengthening the middle peasant group, accompanied, so far, by a certain growth of the
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rich peasants from among the more well-to-do middle peasants and a diminution of the poor groups, of which some become proletarianised while others -- the greater part -- are gradually transferring to the middle group.[6]
This presentation was, nevertheless, inadequate, since it referred to "social conditions" in general, and lead the reader to suppose that these sufficed to account for the type of differentiation noted, whereas this was not the case.
True, the type of differentiation noted was taking place within the general conditions of Soviet power, with nationalization of the land and the functioning of the mir given new life by the Agrarian Code of 1922.[7]
However, within the setting of these general conditions, the form taken by the differentiation of the Soviet peasantry was due to the political line that was followed (characterized in particular by the tax abatements enjoyed by the poor and middle peasants) and also, and especially, to the struggles waged by the poor and middle peasants themselves with a view to better equipping and organizing themselves.[8]
A great variety of statistics have been produced concerning class differentiation in the Soviet peasantry. Here I shall use the ones calculated by S. G. Strumilin. This Soviet economist and statistician tried to classify peasant farms in accordance with the criteria proposed by Lenin at the Second Comintern Congress.[9] By these criteria the poor peasants were those who could get from their farms only what they needed to live on, or who even needed to take on additional paid work in order to survive. The middle peasants were those who had a small surplus which, when the harvest was good, enabled them to accumulate a little. The rich peasants were those whose surplus was sufficiently large and regular to enable them to accumulate and to exploit the other rural strata by employing wage labor, practicing usury, and so on.
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These definitions, as applied by Strumilin and the Central Statistical Board, gave the following table[10] showing the social divisions of the Soviet peasantry in 1926-1927:
Social divisions
percent
Poor peasants
29.4
Middle peasants
67.5
Rich peasants
3.1
These figures were necessarily only approximate.[11] Nevertheless, it is clear that the kulaks were few in number, and, especially, that their share in the sale of produce outside the village was a minor one, as is proved by statistics which, though of different origin, agree on this point.
According to the statistics quoted by Grosskopf, in 1925 it was the poor and middle peasants who provided most of the grain that came on to the market -- over 88 percent, as against 11.8 percent provided by the rich peasants.[12]
The importance of the sales of grain effected by the poor and middle peasants (despite the relatively small size of the harvest calculated per head ) was due to the fact that they were obliged to sell their crops (for lack of liquid assets) in order to pay their debts and their taxes (which fell due in the autumn) and to make indispensable purchases of manufactured goods, including the equipment their farms lacked, and acquisition of which would enable them to reduce their dependence on the kulaks. The poor and middle peasants played an even bigger role in the provisioning of the towns, for the greater part of the grain they sold found its way there toward the end of the summer and in the autumn, whereas the rich peasants, in the course of the year, sold part of their surplus on the village market.[13]
These facts show clearly the erroneousness of the oversimplified thesis of a "kulak strike" which Kamenev put forward
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starting in 1925 to explain the procurement difficulties of 1925-1926.[14] At that time, Kamenev, relying on figures from the Central Statistical Board which were based not on peasants' incomes but on area of land possessed,[15] declared that kulak farms made up 12 percent of all peasant farms and held 61 percent of the "grain surplus."[16] From these figures Kamenev drew the mistaken conclusion that the rich peasants received most of the money that was made in the countryside, and were the principal buyers of the consumer goods, and industrially made means of production bought there. This thesis tended to give backing to the ideas of Preobrazhensky, who claimed that to fix high prices for industrial products and low prices for agricultural products would not hurt the mass of the peasantry -- since the poor and middle peasants were supposed not to participate to any great extent in commercial exchanges -- while it would enable the state to achieve a higher rate of accumulation by levying a "tribute" from the richest peasants.
Contrary to these claims, about three-quarters of the grain sent to the towns came at that time from the farms of the poor and middle peasants, and they bought more than 80 percent of the manufactured goods sold in the villages,[17] especially with a view to providing better equipment for their farms, which were gravely lacking in instruments of production.
The proportions given above for the origin of the grain put on the market are confirmed by the figures Stalin mentioned in his speech of May 28, 1928, to the students of the Sverdlov University. He showed that in 1926-1927 the kulaks provided 20 percent of this grain, as against 74 percent provided by the poor and middle peasants and 6 percent by the collective and state farms.[18]
It would, of course, be a grave mistake to deduce from these facts that the social and political role played at that time by the kulaks was negligible. On the contrary, it was very important.
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But its importance lay not in the sphere of production but elsewhere: it lay in the sphere of circulation, in the commercial relations the kulaks maintained with the poor and middle peasants; in the sphere of ideology, in the illusion they offered of possible future individual enrichment on a substantial scale, an illusion to which a certain number of middle peasants succumbed, consequently turning away from collective forms of production; in the sphere of politics, especially through the influence the rich peasants could exercise in the peasants' assemblies (the skhod ).[19]
The important role played by the rich peasants was rooted in the nature of the social relations that reproduced themselves under the NEP: wage labor, leasing of land, hiring out of agricultural implements, and capitalist trade. These relations enabled the kulaks to wield great influence -- out of all proportion with the number of their farms or their share in production. It was on the basis of these social relations that there developed the struggle of the rich peasants to exert increasing domination over the poor and middle peasants.
However, it was one thing to recognize these facts but quite another to conclude from them that the kulaks possessed decisive economic influence in production and in the provision of supplies for the towns, as the Trotskyist-Zinovievist opposition mistakenly did conclude.[20] Although the conclusions drawn by this opposition were rejected by the Bolshevik Party, its "analyses" left in circulation a distorted picture of the social relations existing in the Soviet countryside. Despite the ultimate political defeat of the opposition, the essential elements of its analyses were present, in barely modified form, in the interpretation that the Party leadership gave in 1928 and 1929 to the procurement crisis (when it tried to explain this crisis by a "kulaks' strike") and in the way that it sought to "deal with" the contradictions among the peasants and the contradictions that opposed the peasantry as a whole to the Soviet power.
We must now examine successively the role of the different strata of the peasantry in the procurement crisis of 1927-1928, and the role that these strata were in a position to play in
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future increases in agricultural production, especially grain production.
In order to reveal the class foundations of the procurement crisis of 1927-1928 it is necessary to study the way in which this crisis proceeded. This I shall try to do in the following pages, relying again upon the analyses made by S. Grosskopf who has demolished many of the "accepted ideas" on the matter.
During the first quarter (July to September) of the agricultural campaign of 1927-1928 the quantities of grain procured by the state and cooperative organs were, as we have seen,[21] greater than those procured in the very good year 1926-1927. This increase was all the more remarkable because the harvest of 1927 was smaller than that of the previous year,[22] and the distribution of grain production was unfavorable: the regions most affected by the fall in production were those described as "having a surplus," because their production normally served to meet some of the grain needs of the less favored regions (those described as "having a deficit").
Analysis shows that the increase in procurement during July-September 1927 came mainly from the rich peasants. On the one hand, it was they who had priority as regards means of production and transport, since a big proportion of these means belonged to them; on the other, they were in a hurry to sell before the month of October, the time when the poor and middle peasants usually brought their grain to market, thereby lowering the obtainable price. Furthermore, since the policy followed by the Soviet authorities in 1926-1927 had pre-
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vented grain prices from rising in the spring of 1927, the rich peasants had no hope of a price-rise in the spring of 1928, and this gave them an extra incentive for getting rid of their produce quickly -- hence the increase in procurement in July-September 1927.[23]
The accelerated delivery of grain by the rich peasants during the summer of 1927 does not mean, of course, that they had not stocked up a certain amount of grain. It does show, however, that in the autumn of 1927 the bulk of the "reserves" held in the countryside was not concentrated in their hands.[24]
Thus, from autumn on it was usually the poor and middle peasants who supplied the grain procured. In the autumn of 1927 these supplies failed to materialize.
Two immediate reasons account for what happened. First, the fall in the supply of manufactured goods to the rural areas in the second half of 1927. Part of the selling of grain done by the poor and middle peasants was intended to secure the cash they needed to buy manufactured goods, in particular the small-scale instruments of production which they lacked. In so far as in the autumn of 1927 there was also a decline in the supply of these products, there was as well a decline in sales of grain. The tax reductions which had been granted to the poor and middle peasants also meant that the "constraint to sell" imposed on them by their fiscal obligations was now less acute.
Another immediate reason for the fall in procurement from the autumn of 1927 on is connected with a certain degree of negligence on the part of the state and cooperative organs, which in 1927 showed particular passivity. This was due to the fact that the official organs were now less afraid of competition from private traders, who had been subjected to more severe restrictions than previously. Their passivity also resulted from the contradictory directives issued by the central authority to
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the official procurement agencies: whereas Gosplan called on them actively to encourage the peasants to sell their crops, at the same time directives from the Party and the government warned them against possible competition among themselves. The Soviet authorities were indeed concerned to prevent such competition among the procurement organs from bringing about a rise in the price of grain. One of the consequences of these directives was that most of the buyers on behalf of the procurement organs waited for the peasants to come on their own initiative to offer them grain -- which the peasants did not do.[25]
The shortage of industrial goods available in the countryside, the reduction in taxation and the greater passivity of the procurement organs do not, however, furnish more than a partial explanation of the fall in grain sales. To complete the explanation we need to examine more closely the conditions under which the poor and middle peasants carried out most of their selling of grain,
It can be seen already from the facts given above (those that show the high proportion of grain sold from farms where the smallest amount was available per head) that marketing of grain did not correspond, broadly speaking, to the existence of a "surplus" of grain held by the peasants. Such a "surplus" would imply that the basic needs of the poor and middle peasants for grain (for their own food, for feeding their animals, and for building up reserves adequate to enable them to wait for the next harvest without anxiety) had been largely covered by their production. That was far from being the true situation.
Actually, in 1927-1928, when weather conditions were generally poor, the bulk of the peasants, who lacked adequate means of production, harvested only a poor crop. To be sure, these peasants, taken as a whole, sold large quantities of grain, but they did so only to the extent that they were obliged to, in order to pay their taxes or to buy industrial goods, if these were to be had.[26] When this constraint or this possibility ceased to be present, they sold as little grain as they could, for, in the case of most of the poor and middle peasants, such sales
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entailed serious hardship. They therefore preferred to improve their level of personal consumption, and of consumption by their underfed animals, and also, if possible, to keep at least a minimum of reserve stocks. For the peasants, having such reserves at their disposal meant limiting the risk that they might be compelled to buy grain from the rich peasants before the next harvest became available, and, since such purchases usually had to be made on credit, to become ever more dependent on the rich peasants.
Investigations carried out in 1926-1927, a year of good harvest, showed that even in the so-called surplus zones, the needs of agriculture itself were not being adequately met, as regards personal consumption by most of the peasants, feeding of their animals, and maintenance of stocks of seed-corn and reserve supplies.[27] This applied even more in 1927, when the harvest was considerably smaller. And it was just at that moment that the supply of industrial goods to the rural areas declined sharply and that taxes were reduced. Under those conditions for the poor and middle peasants to have brought to the procurement agencies the same amount of grain as in the previous year would have necessitated a political willingness on their part which did not exist at that time, and which had hardly been prepared for by the history of the Party's relations with the peasant masses.[28]
The problem of the procurement crisis cannot be isolated from the low standard of living of the bulk of the peasantry,[29] the inadequacy of the means of production at their disposal, and the struggle of the poor and middle peasants to avoid falling into increasing dependence on the rich peasants.
For the poor and middle peasants the chief purpose of their sales of produce was to acquire the means needed to increase
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their production, and thereby to reduce their dependence on the rich peasants who owned a large proportion of the means of cultivation and of transport.
On the morrow of the division of the land, which was generally not accompanied by a share-out of the other means of production,[30] the poor and middle peasants were the ones worse off in this respect. Subsequently, therefore, it was they who suffered most from the meagerness of the supply of instruments of labor to agriculture. In 1927 the total number of machines and implements possessed by Soviet agriculture was only two-thirds the prewar figure. A very large proportion of the implements and machines that were available were held by the rich peasants, who hired them out at high rates to the poor and middle peasants.
Investigations carried out in 1924 -- and in 1927 the situation had hardly begun to change -- showed that scythes were in short supply and most of the peasants had to do their reaping with sickles. Iron ploughs were also lacking. Industry supplied very few, just as it supplied little steel to the village craftsmen. Most of the peasants had to do their ploughing with a sokha -- a wooden swing-plough. The other tools needed for cultivation were also largely unavailable, as were axes and saws.[31] As for reapers and threshers, these were mostly possessed by the rich peasants.
The inadequate provision of instruments of labor to the poor and middle peasants was the underlying factor in the development of specific forms of dependence by the mass of the peasants upon the rich peasants, and the specific forms of exploitation to which the latter subjected the working peasants. This inadequacy explains the extreme fragility of the economy of the poor and middle peasants and the close interdependence between the supply of means of production to the rural areas and the amount of produce the poor and middle peasants were able and willing to supply for procurement. What happened in the agricultural year 1925-1926 is extremely instructive from this standpoint, as it was a sort of "dress rehearsal" for the crisis of 1927-1928, resulting, however, in different solutions.
In 1925-1926 the harvest was a good one. During the first
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quarter of the agricultural year (July to September), off-village sales by the peasants were considerably bigger than in the previous year, but then, as was to happen again in 1927-1928, these sales fell sharply during the second quarter (October-December). It was in this connection that Kamenev spoke of a "kulaks' strike." Now, not only does analysis of the farms which sold grain at different phases of the year show that this formulation of Kamenev's was wrong, but, above all, the subsequent progress of sales shows clearly that it was not a matter of a "strike" by a minority of peasants but of a mass phenomenon mainly connected with a poor state of supply to the rural areas of the manufactured goods purchased by the poor and middle peasants. The immediate origin of this crisis lay in a mistake in the Soviet government's policy toward the peasant masses. The situation could then be quickly redressed by a simple conjunctural measure, namely, improved supply of manufactured goods to the rural areas. Eventually the government's plan for acquiring grain was fulfilled in 1925-1926 to the extent of 97 percent, without any need to resort to "emergency measures."
It was thus demonstrated that unless there was a very poor harvest the level of grain "surplus" and of procurement was decided mainly by the policy of the Soviet state itself -- its price policy, the organization of grain purchases, and the supply of manufactured goods to the peasant masses.[32]
The supply of instruments of production to the poor and middle peasants (gravely inadequate in 1927-1928)[33] was, moreover, a decisive factor not only in relation to procurement but also in connection with the support rendered by the Soviet government to the struggle of the peasant masses to resist the pressure exerted upon them by the kulaks.
The lack of equipment from which the poor and middle peasants suffered meant that, in many cases, they were obliged to lease part (or sometimes all) of their land to the rich peasants, to sell them their labor power, or to hire from them the means of labor (including draught animals). Thus, in 1926, in more than 72 percent of the cases where land was leased out, this was done by peasants who lacked means of
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production. Again, more than 52 percent of the wage earners employed in agriculture were poor, or even middle, peasants who were unable to cultivate their land because they had not enough implements. Very often, too, as we know, poor and middle peasants were compelled to "employ" the owner of a horse or of a plough, who preferred to figure as an "agricultural worker."
A Rabkrin report dated 1927 acknowledged that "up to now, we have . . . given little attention to the social relations engendered by the practice of lending and borrowing articles used in farming."[34]
Yet these social relations weighed very heavily upon the poor and middle peasants. It was in order to escape from them that these peasants, wanting to buy implements, went so far as to sell part of the grain that they needed in order to feed themselves and create reserves. At the same time, the shortage of implements available on the market led these same peasants to cut down their sales, while it also aggravated their dependence on the kulaks. Similarly, the policy of high prices for manufactured goods, advocated by Preobrazhensky, was liable to reduce the capacity of the poor and middle peasants to equip themselves, and so to increase their dependence on the kulaks and to strengthen the latter.
Two facts will suffice to show the effects on class relations in the countryside of an inadequate supply of agricultural equipment. On the one hand, according to an investigation carried out in 1924-1925 in the province of Penza, this inadequacy meant that the middle peasants could sow only between 29 and 37 percent of the sowable land which they possessed to grain crops -- in the case of the poor peasants this percentage was as little as 18 or 19 percent, whereas for the rich peasants it was nearly 40 percent. Furthermore, through not being cultivated well enough (especially through not being ploughed and reaped at the proper times, the yield from the land of those who "employed" the owner of a horse and plough was more than 18 percent below average, whereas the yield from the land of peasants who owned an iron plough was 23 percent above average.[35]
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On the other hand, the poor and middle peasants often had to pay out the equivalent of nearly one-fifth of the value of their crop in order to hire farm implements and draught animals.[36]
Thus, the struggle waged by the poor and middle peasants to equip their farms adequately was also a struggle to free themselves from domination and exploitation by the rich peasants, and the delivery of grain by the poor and middle peasants to the procurement agencies was closely bound up with this struggle and with the capacity of the Soviet government to provide material support for the poor and middle peasants in their struggle. Generally speaking, this support was very inadequate. In 1927 it was largely missing. The procurement crisis was due to a great extent to this situation.
The inadequacy of the support given to the efforts of the poor and middle peasants to equip their farms, a neglect which played into the hands of the rich peasants and compromised the expansion both of the harvest and of procurement, is all the more striking in that Lenin had often drawn the Party's attention to both the economic and the political importance of this problem. For instance, in the midst of the civil war he said: "The socialist state must extend the widest possible aid to the peasants, mainly by supplying the middle peasants with products of urban industries and, especially, improved agricultural implements, seed, and various materials . . ."[37]
At the beginning of the NEP Lenin returned to this problem. He emphasized that the Soviet government must set itself the task of supplying the poor peasants with more industrial goods than the capitalists had previously supplied to them, and that what had to be supplied was "not only cotton goods for the farmer and his family, but also badly needed machines and implements, even if they are of the simplest kind."[38]
These passages are of particular importance. They show that, as early as 1921, Lenin had formulated the idea of an alliance between the workers and the peasants, the material foundation of which was to be the provision of means of labor
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("even of the simplest kind") to the toiling masses of the countryside. This was the concept of an alliance "based on steel" and not merely on textiles.
Yet the policy actually followed over the years had not been that policy: only in 1926-1927 did current supplies of implements to the rural areas slightly exceed their prewar level.
The struggle of the poor and middle peasants to organize themselves so as to consolidate their independence from the rich peasants calls for special attention. We find here confirmation of Lenin's analyses pointing to the possibility of a transition to socialism through organizing the working peasants within the framework of the NEP,[39] a confirmation all the more remarkable because it resulted from a development which, as Molotov acknowledged, had not received systematic and constant support from the Bolshevik Party.[40] (This does not mean that this self-organization took place without any connection to the ideas of socialism, which in fact penetrated in a thousand different ways into the midst of the toiling peasantry.)
One of the forms under which the poor and middle peasants organized themselves was the associations for joint utilization of means of production. As a rule, these associations brought together only a small number of farms -- usually less than ten. They were of particular importance in the grain-growing regions, in the steppes, in the Ukraine, the Ural region, and Siberia. They were important especially for the utilization of seeders and threshers. In the Ural region 32.9 percent and 28.2 percent, respectively, of these machines were used in common in this way, while in Siberia the corresponding percentages were 29.8 and 32.3. In the case of tractors the percentage was even 100.[41]
The poor and middle peasants resorted also to traditional
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forms of mutual aid, such as supryaga, by which between five and seven farms jointly utilized labor power, draught animals and implements, and organized themselves to obtain credit. In this setting there developed genuine collective work, which resulted in many poor and middle peasants being able to cultivate part of the land they held as a result of the agrarian revolution. This movement also engendered tens of thousands of "simple" producers' cooperatives which did not enjoy the status of kolkhozes and were, as a rule, not officially registered. Various investigations have revealed the dimensions of this movement.[42] But, in the report already mentioned, Molotov gave no attention to these simple forms: what he hailed was the advantages of "large units" of production, of "the larger enterprise."[43]
In the Ukraine this form of the poor peasants' struggle was especially well developed. It was connected with the activity of the "poor peasants' committees" (Komnezamy, or KNS) which had appeared during the civil war. They continued to exist in that republic even after the ending of "war communism," and also developed during the NEP period. In 1925 more than 14 percent of the peasants in the Ukraine belonged to these KNS, which meant a very high percentage of the poor peasants. Research shows that most of the KNS were solidly organized and contributed effectively to raise production and the standard of living of their members. Not only did they arrange for mutual aid among the latter, and start to introduce new methods of cultivation (by modifying the system of rotation of crops), but they also helped the other peasants and took part in the forming of cooperatives and of other forms of association for joint work.
Other facts, too, testify to the importance of "spontaneous" tendencies to create peasant organizations for joint use of the soil. There was the creation of the "communities for opening up remote tracts of land." When they adopted this form of association, the peasants involved decided to go in for collective forms of cultivation (poselki and vyselki ) instead of individual holdings. These collective forms were established especially in certain regions (such as the provinces of Samara, Saratov,
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and Orel) where substantial tracts of land were situated too far from the old villages to be regularly cultivated by peasants operating from these villages. It is significant that this movement was inspired mainly by poor peasants and that instead of forming new "land associations" of the traditional type, they adopted collective forms of cultivation, and because of this it was possible to ensure a rotation of crops covering several years and to avoid the fragmentation resulting from the former mir.[44]
True, from the standpoint of the general structure of Soviet agriculture, the existence of these various types of organization of the poor and middle peasants did not alter the massive predominance of individual peasant farming. Nevertheless, their existence, by the very multiplicity of the forms they assumed and the liveliness and depth of the tendencies they manifested (despite the absence of systematic aid from the Soviet government and the hostility of the rich peasants), shows how great were the possibilities for transition to a socialist organization of agriculture.[45]
The facts mentioned above show that the procurement crisis of 1927-1928 was not due mainly to a "kulaks' strike," but was the result of a much more complex process in which some mistakes committed by the Soviet government in relation to the poor and middle peasants played their part. As a result of these mistakes, the initiative and independent class action of these peasants suffered restriction. Subsequently, the indiscriminate resort to "emergency measures," by hitting the middle peasants as well as the kulaks, brought about even a shift in the alignment of class forces, and enabled the kulaks to increase their ideological and political influence over an important section of the peasantry. In this connection, the resistance put up by the peasant masses to the measures taken by
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the Soviet government from 1928 on not only resulted from their immediate reaction to encroachment on their material interests, but also reflected the influence that the kulaks then wielded over them. It was in that sense that a "kulak threat" made its appearance in 1928-1929.[46]
In order to appreciate this process and how it was linked with the Soviet government's peasant policy, we must briefly recall certain facts.
The shortcomings of agricultural policy in the years between 1924 and 1927 were due, in the first place, to the inadequate supply of instruments of production to the rural areas, where it was the poor and middle peasants who had most need of them.[47]
It must be observed that the "cost" of supplying machinery and implements to agriculture did not amount at any time during the NEP to a burden that could be thought too heavy for the Soviet economy to bear. Thus, in 1926-1927, the sum involved in these supplies came to 122.1 million prewar roubles, or 0.8 percent of the national income.[48] It will be seen, too, that the supply of agricultural equipment to be bought by the peasants did not, in principle, impose any "charge" upon the state budget. As for supplies on credit, these would have called for only limited advances which could be quickly recovered through the increase in production and in money incomes.
The smallness in the amount of equipment supplied was especially detrimental to the poor and middle peasants. They enjoyed, in practice, no priority in receiving this equipment, and the credit system functioned in such a way that they were not the chief beneficiaries of loans either.[49] Moreover, the importance of supplying the rural areas with traditional instruments of production, or improved versions of these (which the poor and middle peasants could acquire most easily), was much underestimated.
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Thus, Molotov, in his report to the Fifteenth Party Congress on "Work in the Rural Areas" referred dismissively to the supplying of simple means of production to the peasants as a "sorry 'progress.'"[50]
The lack of an economic effort to give priority aid to the poor and middle peasants entailed serious consequences. Such priority aid was needed from the political standpoint, because support for the Soviet government from the poor and middle peasants was indispensable if the dictatorship of the proletariat was to be consolidated; and from the economic standpoint as well, because it was the farms of the poor and middle peasants that held the biggest potentialities for increasing production, since they were underequipped -- a large proportion of their land was not even being cultivated and, because they had no implements of their own, the yield from what was cultivated was lower then anywhere else, and so most susceptible to rapid increase.
Generally speaking, the shortcomings of agricultural policy in 1924-1927 were bound up with a definite underestimation of the potentialities of the poor and middle peasants' farms.[51]
In 1928 and 1929, even within the setting of the NEP, the potentialities of Soviet agriculture were still considerable, provided that the peasants were properly supplied with instruments of labor and helped in their efforts to extend the area under cultivation and increase yields, and to organize themselves more effectively.
The "image" of the Soviet peasant as "routine-minded" and "lazy" is false. To be convinced of this one has only to note that in 1925-1926 gross agricultural production reached the prewar level, even though there were fewer means of production in the countryside than at an earlier date.[52]
The underequipment of agriculture was due to old equipment wearing out and the crying inadequacy of supplies of
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new equipment. It was not due at all to any so-called indifference or "indolence" on the part of the peasantry. On the contrary, statistics show that in 1927 expenditures on purchases of equipment were 70 percent greater than they were before the war.[53]
The economist Oganovsky observed how much greater the potentialities of agriculture in this period were than they had been before the Revolution. He wrote: "Neither the economic and social facts nor the importance and role of the cadres and the factors of production are comparable. And if the contexts are incommensurable there cannot, either, be anything in common between the results obtained then and those obtainable at the present time, as we can observe here and now."[54]
Some estimates made at that time sought to take account, partly at least, of the potentialities of NEP agriculture, especially with a view to forecasting the agricultural production and the "net balance."[55] Thus, Osvok estimated the grain harvest that could be obtained in 1931 at 87.8 million metric tons -- an increase of 14.9 percent on 1926 -- which should provide a "net balance" of 14.6 million metric tons -- 56 per cent more than in 1926, which meant a net market availability of 18.7 percent.
This estimate was actually based on a very low estimate of the yield to be obtained in 1931. It assumed that this yield would be the same as in 1928, so that only the area cultivated would be larger. It was all the more certainly an underestimate in that, already in 1926, the yield per hectare was higher than the prewar average,[56] despite the underequipment from which Soviet agriculture still suffered. If sales of means of production to agriculture had continued at the same rate as in 1925 it would have been reasonable to expect a grain harvest of about 92 million metric tons, which would have given a "net balance" in the region of 17 million metric tons.[57]
The actual potentialities of NEP agriculture at the end of the 1920s were all the greater in that the poor and middle peasants were at that time ready to enter step by step upon the road of cooperation, of collective labor and production (provided that they were really helped by the Soviet government,
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and not subjected to measures that harmed them and shook the foundations of the worker-peasant alliance). These forms of labor and production implied -- if the peasants entered into them voluntarily -- great possibilities of increased harvests. They made possible a fuller utilization of the land area, with employment of machinery and carrying out of cultivation work with the minimum loss of time. This was confirmed by experience during that period.
However, the Party leadership tended to underestimate the possibilities of NEP agriculture and not to reckon with the real requirements for developing it along the cooperative and collective road.
From the beginning of the NEP to the Fifteenth Congress (at the end of 1927), the efforts made by the poor and middle peasants to undertake various forms of collective labor or production remained without systematic support. Molotov recognized this fact, though omitting to draw any practical conclusions from it, when he declared: "It is now important to realise . . . that we are lagging behind, that we are not keeping pace with the new Socialist elements now developing in the village. What we lack now is courage and perseverance in stimulating the collectivisation of the village, primarily because we do not know enough about it."[58]
At that time, Molotov did not conclude from this observation that a substantial acceleration of development towards collective farming was really possible. He said, on the contrary, that "the development of individual enterprise along the socialist path is a long and tedious process. It will require many years to pass over from individual to communal farming."[59]
This underestimation of the possibilities of collective farming was accompanied by inadequate backing of the cooperative movement.
We know the role that Lenin ascribed to cooperation as a
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form leading to socialist organization of production.[60] Yet by 1927, despite the undeniable development of cooperation, the Bolshevik Party had failed to give it all the necessary aid, being influenced in this by the idea that cooperation mainly served the interests of the rich peasants -- whereas experience showed how important it was for the poor and middle peasants. Here, too, Molotov, in his report to the Fifteenth Party Congress, noted the insufficiency of the work accomplished. After quoting Lenin on cooperation he said that "this statement made by Lenin has not yet been fully appreciated by us. At any rate, it has not been sufficiently reflected in our practical work."[61]
And yet a number of Party resolutions had already drawn attention to the role that development of the cooperatives should play. I may mention, in particular, a resolution adopted by the Twelfth Conference of the CPR(B), in August 1922, which emphasized the importance of agricultural credit, and a resolution of the Thirteenth Party Congress (May 1924), which pointed out that the development of cooperative trade would enable the poor peasants to increase their production and sales while limiting the power of the kulaks.[62] In April 1925 the Fifteenth Party Conference reaffirmed the need to organize agricultural credit. It called on the cooperatives to take over the processing and marketing of agricultural produce and the supply of means of production to the peasant masses. This resolution also appealed to the cooperatives to encourage the development of all possible forms of collective working of the soil.
In fact, despite these resolutions, and Lenin's statements about the role to be played by the cooperatives (especially in "raising the small economy and in facilitating its transition . . . to large-scale production on the basis of voluntary association"),[63] the development of the cooperatives was not supported by the Soviet state with all the necessary vigor. The cooperatives were not drawn firmly in a direction that would have strengthened within a short time the farms worked by the poor and middle peasants, thereby also ensuring growth and regularity in grain procurement.
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On October 1, 1927, nearly 40 percent of the Soviet peasants were, nevertheless, members of state cooperative societies -- but these societies were much more concerned with buying agricultural produce from the peasants than with selling them means of production, which meant that the poor and middle peasants took relatively little interest in them.[64] As regards the credit cooperatives, their activity benefited less than 20 percent of the peasants, they charged relatively high rates of interest, and from 1925 on they granted loans only for comparatively large amounts, exceeding the needs and capacities of the poor peasants, so that the latter got almost no advantage from the existence of these cooperatives and had to turn to the usurers.[65]
The situation that existed at the end of the NEP was due both to the inadequate attention paid to the needs of the poor and middle peasants and to the corruption and negligence that reigned very widely in the grassroots administration of the cooperative system. The funds placed at the disposal of the cooperatives by the state for the purpose of making loans to the poor peasants remained practically unused. The local cooperatives did not take the steps needed for these funds to be employed. Moreover, they were too remote in their activities from the conditions in which the peasants lived, and were often held back by the bureaucratic control exercised by the district soviets.[66] This state of affairs was, of course, related to the feebleness of the Party's roots in the countryside, a crucial problem to which I shall return.
In the light of the facts which have been mentioned, the procurement crisis of 1927-1928 thus appears as not at all the result of an "inevitable economic crisis" but as the outcome of political mistakes. These were due to the feebleness of the
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Party's roots in the countryside and also to ideological reasons which led the Party (even while recognizing that agriculture was the basis of economic development) to underestimate in practice the aid that should have been given to the peasant masses, and to concentrate nearly all its efforts on industry.
The procurement crisis of 1927-1928, unlike that of 1925-1926, did not lead to a rectification of agricultural policy. The increasing stress laid on large-scale industrialization blocked the way to any serious and rapid improvement in the supply of manufactured goods to the rural areas. At the same time, fulfilling the industrialization program required that procurement be maintained, at all costs, at a sufficiently high level. The immediate consequence was the imposition of the "emergency measures" at the beginning of 1928, and the impossibility, despite attempts made by the Party, of giving them up. Yet the renewal of these measures did not help to improve the situation in agriculture -- quite the contrary. There was something worse, however: the renewal of the emergency measures was felt by a large section of the peasants to signify an abandonment of the worker-peasant alliance as it had existed until then, while the worsening of the economic situation in the countryside also caused them discontent. This determined a realignment of class forces in the village, and increased the ideological and political influence of the kulaks. A crisis of the worker-peasant alliance thus resulted, and during 1929 caused the Party (because of the way it analyzed the situation) to abandon the NEP suddenly and completely. This abandonment took place, as we shall see, in conditions that were unfavorable to the functioning of the kolkhozes, from which ensued, among other things, the very grave crisis of agricultural production that marked the first half of the 1930s.
The fact that through 1928 and 1929 the emergency measures continued to be enforced meant that these measures could no longer be regarded as merely "emergency" measures, as they had been described at the beginning of 1928. They became, on the contrary, "ordinary" measures. What was happening, in practice, was transition to a policy different from the NEP, a transition which entailed a series of consequences.
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The procurement crisis and the protracted application of the emergency measures had negative repercussions on grain production, and then on agricultural production generally. These consequences proceeded from two types of sequence of cause and effect. On the one hand, the technico-economic: when requisitioning deprived some peasants of even the grain they needed for sowing, that led directly to a subsequent fall in production. On the other hand, ideological and political: when the peasants thought the amount of grain that would remain at their disposal depended not on what they produced but on decisions to be taken by the administrative authorities, they were not disposed to increase their production. Reciprocally, the fall in production and the economic consequences of the application of the emergency measures had, in turn, political effects. At this level "economics turned into politics," as Lenin had noted at the time of the peasant revolts in the last phase of "war communism." This transformation of economics into politics was the most serious result of the introduction and then renewal of the "emergency measures."
All the tensions provoked in the rural areas by the application of the emergency measures of 1928, and by the way in which they were applied, had a negative effect on grain production. In 1928 this production was down again as compared with 1927 -- it came to only 73.3 million metric tons.[67] As compared with 1926, the decline in production was 3.1 million metric tons.
This fall in production entailed a tendency for procurement to fall. The Soviet government dealt with the situation by
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continuing, as we know, to resort to emergency measures. However, under the combined effects of the decline in the harvest and the exhaustion of the peasants' reserve stocks, the amount of grain procured now suffered a real collapse. It came to no more than 8.3 million metric tons, or about 78.4 percent of the procurement obtained without emergency measures in 1926-1927.[68] This had important consequences for the Soviet economy as a whole.
A particularly notable sign of the exhaustion of the peasants' reserve stocks was the sharp drop in the amount procured in the first half of 1929. During those six months, the amount procured came to no more than about 2.6 million metric tons of grain (less than half the procurement achieved in the first half of 1928).[69] At the same time prices of grain on the private markets reached new peaks.[70]
The severe fall in the quantity of grain held by the state and cooperative organs threatened more gravely than ever before the supplying of the towns and the regularity of exports.
There was something even worse: the impact of the emergency measures upon the peasantry was such that their production effort declined again. Thus 1929 saw a fresh fall in the grain harvest. It came to no more than 71.7 million metric tons.[71] As compared with 1926, the reduction was 4.7 million metric tons. This decline was all the more catastrophic because it occurred at a moment when the struggle for industrialization was in full swing and called, if it was to be carried on without subjecting the economy as a whole to excessive tension, for an increasing supply of agricultural produce, primarily grain.
The emergency measures thus did not help really to overcome the initial difficulties. On the contrary, they contributed to disrupting the working of the NEP (in fact, they put an end to it ) and broke the dynamism that Soviet agriculture had shown until 1926-1927.
It was the collapse of the harvest and of the grain procurement in 1928 and 1929 (that is, one of the consequences of the protracted implementation of the emergency measures) that induced the Bolshevik Party to go over to collectivization on a
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vast scale at the end of 1929. The immediate aim of the "turn" thus made was to stop the decline in procurement. The "turn" took place in conditions where it was no longer possible to rely on agricultural successes previously obtained, or on persuasion of the peasants, and their enthusiasm. The large-scale collectivization begun in the autumn of 1929 was thus carried out essentially "from above," by means of administrative measures. It did indeed make possible imposition on the kolkhozes of relatively high delivery quotas, even when their harvest had been poor, which was the case for several years. On the morrow of collectivization as thus carried out, from 1931 on, the grain harvest often fell by 12 or 14 percent below the level of 1926. The maintenance and increase of the exactions from grain production were thereafter effected at the expense of the peasants' own consumption -- but these facts already belong to another period, that of the so-called revolution from above.[72]
It will be observed that the measures taken in 1928 and 1929 did not effect overall agricultural production as badly as they affected grain production. The reason for this was that the emergency measures hardly affected, directly at any rate, crops other than grain corps.[73]
The primordial importance ascribed by the Bolshevik Party to the procurement problem was due to the decisive role that the "net grain balance" of agriculture played in the provisioning of the town population and in maintaining exports.
The most significant figure in this connection is that for the "net grain balance" from agriculture, meaning the net amount of grain definitively marketed outside the village.[74] Even in 1926-1927 (that is, before the application of the emergency measures) this balance came to no more than 10.5 million metric tons, as compared with about 19 million metric tons in 1913.[75] The contraction of the net grain balance in comparison with that before the war was bigger than the decline in production, although the peasantry had not quite recovered
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their prewar standard consumption of grain (the rural population having increased).[76]
In general, however, 1926-1927 food consumption by the mass of the peasantry had reached a level markedly higher than in the years preceding the Revolution. The distribution of income among the peasants was much less unequal than before, and a certain increase was observed in the intake per head of products rich in protein (meat, milk, and eggs).[77]
In relation to prewar, the decline in the net grain balance of agriculture gave rise to a series of grave problems. While this balance had fallen by about 44 percent between 1909-1913 and 1926-1927,[78] consumption by the towns and industry had risen by about 28 percent between 1913 and 1927.[79] The resort to emergency measures did not bring about any improvement in this aspect of the situation, for the grain balance of agriculture declined in 1927-1928. It then stood at only 8.33 million metric tons. In 1928-1929 the emergency measures enabled the grain balance to be kept at the same level[80] as in 1927-1928, despite the decline in the harvest, but this result was secured only by reducing consumption in the villages, which had to bear the whole brunt of the fall in grain production.
A reduction in their consumption of grain had thus been forced upon the peasants by means of the emergency measures. Already in 1928 the application of these measures had led to the peasant masses being deprived of some of the grain they needed for subsistence and for sowing for the next season. Stalin noted this in his report of July 13, 1928, to the plenum of the CC, when he said that it had proved necessary to "press harder" on certain regions and to take from "the peasants' emergency stocks."[81]
In the regions affected by such exactions, many peasants had tried to obtain from the towns the grain that they needed.[82] The distribution of grain in the towns was thereby disorganized. The urban population, fearing that its consumer needs would not be met, tried to hoard, and this made it necessary to introduce rationing in certain towns.[83] The effect of this was to prevent the peasants from supplying themselves
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from the shops. In some cases the Soviet administration was even obliged to sell part of the grain procurement back to the peasants.
Altogether, after 1927, the supply of food to both town and country worsened, and the amount of grain available for export fell sharply -- to such an extent that symptoms of crisis appeared also in the sphere of external trade.
The suddenness with which the emergency measures were applied was due above all to the fact that the Bolshevik Party was poorly represented among the peasantry and its concrete knowledge of peasant and agricultural problems was very inadequate. However, the rigidity shown in the application of these measures was due also to the seriousness of the impact which this decline in procurement had on Soviet foreign trade.
The figures are self-explanatory: whereas in 1926-1927 grain exports amounted to 2,160,000 metric tons (which was only 22.4 percent of the 1913 figure),[84] in 1928 they fell to 89,000 metric tons.[85] And it needs to be added that this was the figure for gross exports. They were made possible only by drawing on the State's reserves, which fell to a level so low that the Soviet Union had to reconstitute its emergency stocks by importing grain itself in the summer of 1928 -- to the amount of 250,000 metric tons.[86]
A tremendous effort was therefore required in 1928 to make up for the fall in the exports of grain. The results of this effort were positive: the total value of exports increased, in spite of everything, by about 3.8 percent, reaching the figure of 799.5 million roubles.[87] This increase was achieved through a substantial boosting of exports of oil, butter, eggs, timber, furs, etc.[88] Only the centralization of exports by the Commissariat of Trade made such an effort feasible: and it was paid for by the appearance of fresh shortages on the domestic market.
However, the launching of the industrialization program
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(which was based on extensive reliance on imports of industrial goods from abroad ) came up against difficulties as a result of the poor progress in exports. The latter were not sufficient to secure the growing amount of imports needed. The Soviet Union, which had a surplus in its foreign trade balance in 1926-1927, in 1928 showed a deficit of 153.1 million. If the emergency measures were renewed in 1929, this was done also in order to redress the foreign trade situation. It was decided, in fact, to increase grain exports, regardless of the fall in procurement: hence the aggravated shortages.
The procurement crisis thus came into violent contradiction with the demands of the industrial plan. This is the principal economic aspect of the crisis at the end of the 1920s. It is an aspect which cannot be separated from the form of industrialization policy which was developed at that time.
The political consequences of the procurement crisis and of the measures taken to cope with it were closely interwoven with the "economic" consequences. They conditioned each other. For the future of the worker-peasant alliance, and so for the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the political consequences were of decisive importance. They were at the heart of the overall process of the class struggles of this period. It is these consequences that we must now study.
The political consequences for the worker-peasant alliance of the situation which developed after January 1928 were, of course, complex and contradictory. The statements made at the time by the Party leaders, and what appeared in the press, reflect these contradictions. At certain moments stress was laid on the increased influence of the Party among the peasant masses which was supposed to have resulted from the operation of the emergency measures. At other moments, mention
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was made of the negative effect of these measures, which were said to have enabled the kulaks to rally broad sections of the peasantry around them. Stalin's writings also reveal divergent appreciations, reflecting both the contradictions in the objective situation and the effects of the struggles going on within the Party leadership.
During the plenum of April 1928 Stalin emphasized the strengthening of the Party's leading role which was supposed to have resulted from the application of the emergency measures. After declaring that these measures had "enabled us to put an end to the procurement crisis" (which was soon to be proved untrue) and to render the local Party organizations more or less sound by purging them of "blatantly corrupt elements who refuse to recognize the existence of classes in the countryside," he added: "We have improved our work in the countryside, we have brought the poor peasants closer to us and won the allegiance of the overwhelming majority of the middle peasants, we have isolated the kulaks and have somewhat offended the well-to-do top stratum of the middle peasants."[89]
We know, however, that in practice the emergency measures were far from having affected only the kulaks. Indeed, as early as February 1928 Stalin had sent out a circular warning the Party's local organizations against "excesses," affecting strata of the peasantry other than the rich peasants, which might "create new difficulties"[90] with these other strata.
At the beginning of the summer of 1928, while remaining in favor of the emergency measures -- which he thought were impossible to renounce -- Stalin took a much more pessimistic view of the situation developing in the countryside, from the standpoint of the political and ideological relations between classes. This found expression in his statements of July 1928,
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particularly his report to the Leningrad Party organization on the results of the plenum held at the beginning of that month. In this report Stalin acknowledged that the procurement crisis had not ended in March, and that in April-June it had been necessary to extend the emergency measures to the point of taking from the emergency stocks held by the peasants, with, as the result, "renewed recourse to emergency measures, the arbitrary administrative measures, the infringements of revolutionary law, the house-to-house visitations, the unlawful searches and so on . . ." Having described these measures and the form they had taken, Stalin added that they had "worsened the political situation in the country and created a threat to the bond (between the workers and the peasants)."[91] Dealing with the same problem, the resolution adopted by the July 1928 plenum noted the "discontent among certain strata of the peasantry, expressed in demonstrations against the arbitrary administrative measures adopted in a number of regions."[92]
Nine months later, to be sure, at the plenum of April 1929, when Stalin attacked Bukharin for the first time before the CC,[93] he again spoke of the need to resort to emergency measures, asserting that these measures were "backed by the popular support of the middle- and poor-peasant masses,"[94] a claim that was not confirmed by the actual way in which procurement was carried out in the months that followed.
Thus, Stalin's appreciations of the class consequences of the emergency measures varied a great deal. They do not enable us to discover the answer to the real question: what was the principal aspect of the contradictory effects of these measures?
In order to answer this question we need to take an overall view of the situation in the countryside.
When we take this overall view we see clearly that what constitutes the principal aspect of the situation is the worsening in the relations between the Soviet government and the peasantry during 1928, a worsening that involved a large pro-
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portion of the middle peasants and even some of the poor peasants (those who were affected, directly or indirectly, by the emergency measures).
The symptoms of this worsening situation were undeniable: for example, the contraction in the sown area and in the number of cattle. The latter was due not merely to the shortage of fodder (due to the extent of the emergency measures) but also to the fear felt by some of the middle peasants lest they be regarded as rich peasants.[95] More broadly, the confidence of many peasants in the continuance of the NEP was shaken: they no longer believed in a secure future, and were also placed in an objectively difficult position through the less and less adequate supply of means of production. The climate of uncertainty developing among the peasantry was also connected with the closure by administrative means of thousands of small-scale enterprises, while the production and distribution previously provided by these enterprises was not replaced by state and cooperative industry and trade.
The reduction in the number of livestock, which led to a crisis in the supply of milk, butter, and meat, added to the grain crisis.[96]
It was especially during the farming season of 1928-1929 that relations between the Soviet government and broad strata of the peasantry deteriorated. On top of the measures taken at the beginning of 1928 came other measures of a fiscal character. Henceforth a section of the peasantry were to be taxed no longer on the basis of norms fixed in advance (according to the principles adopted at the beginning of the NEP) but on "individual bases" estimated by the agents of the revenue authority. In theory, taxes levied in this way were to affect only the richest of the peasants. Actually, they also affected the middle peasants to a large extent, for a number of reasons: lack of a strict definition of the peasants who were to be taxed in this way; lack of familiarity with rural realities on the part of the revenue service; and opportunity (given these conditions) for some of the kulaks to hide themselves, so that the burden of taxation fell upon peasants who ought not to have been taxed in this way; etc.
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After November 1928 Stalin mentioned mistakes made in the application of the "individual tax." He said that only 2 or 3 percent of peasant households should have been affected by it, whereas there were several districts "where 10, 12 and even more percent of the households are taxed, with the result that the middle section of the peasantry is affected."[97]
Following a wave of protests from the rural population, some of the peasants who had been wrongly taxed got their money back. Nevertheless, considerable harm had been done to the relations between the Soviet government and the middle peasants. Thereafter, some of the latter tended to line up with the rich peasants for joint resistance to administrative decision. Furthermore, the economic weakening of the middle peasants increased their dependence on the kulaks.
In this situation, toward the end of 1928 the TsIK adopted an important decision regarding the "general principles of the possession and distribution of land."[98] This legislative text made serious changes in the Agrarian Code of 1922[99] which were significant from two points of view: they facilitated transition to collective forms of agricultural work and production, and they restricted the possibility of land-grabbing by the kulaks.
However, the arrangements made in it regarding the general peasant assembly in the village (the skhod ) showed that the Soviet government was obliged to cut down the powers of this assembly and to subject it to control by the administrative organs. Thereafter, decisions taken by the skhod, in which the middle peasants held the majority, could be annulled by the rural soviet, in which these peasants were increasingly reduced to minority status.
Politically, this measure meant a decisive break with the NEP, which had accepted the middle peasant as the central figure in the Soviet countryside. It showed that there had been a rupture between the middle peasants and the government, since it took away from these peasants the power of autonomous decision hitherto allowed them within the framework of the skhod. This change of direction implied a profound worsening in the relations of confidence which the NEP had
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begun to establish between the Soviet government and the middle peasantry. It showed that there was a divergence between the orientations of the latter (who had been to some extent thrust into the camp of the rich peasants) and those of the former. And, however justified some of the new orientations of the Soviet government might be, the introduction of means of constraint which were to be used to bend the will of the basic mass of the peasantry could not but result in grave political crises. Let us recall that only a little over two years before the adoption of the decision subjecting the skhod to tutelage -- and this decision was to be one of the instruments of what has been called the "revolution from above," that is, of a collectivization not decided upon by the peasant masses themselves -- Stalin, referring to Lenin, had said: "For carrying out a revolution it is not enough to have a correct Party line. . . . For carrying out a revolution a further circumstance is required, namely, that the masses, the broad mass of the workers, shall have been convinced through their own experience that the Party's line is correct."[100]
As Lenin had forecast six years earlier,[101] evoking circumstances similar to those of 1928, the weakening of the worker-peasant alliance was splitting the Party more and more into a tendency which was determined to "go ahead" even if the peasantry was not satisfied, and one which sought to prevent the rupture of the worker-peasant alliance.
The supporters of the first tendency, who were led by Stalin, were convinced that only rapid industrialization and collectivization would enable the difficulties to be overcome by providing the worker-peasant alliance with a new material foundation (one of "steel," that is, of tractors) and unifying the technological conditions of production by introducing machinery into agriculture.
It was, of course, the representatives of the other tendency (described as "the Right" and led by Bukharin) who gave most attention to the weakening of the worker-peasant alliance and to the way in which the fight against the kulaks was being transformed into a fight against the middle peasants.[102] However, representatives of the first tendency were themselves
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obliged to acknowledge the increased political and ideological influence of the kulaks over the middle peasants and the manifestations of discontent on the part of the latter. This was true of Kaganovich, although he advocated a "hard" line as the only way of ensuring the industrialization of the Soviet Union. In a statement made in 1928 he said that "the serednyak is sometimes influenced by the kulak and expresses his dissatisfaction. . . . [He has been hit] by rather heavy taxation, and by our inability at the present time to offer him prices for his grain which are commensurate with the prices of manufactured goods." In the process of taking action against the kulaks, he admitted, "we have penalized" the middle peasants.[103]
The procurement campaign of 1928-1929 began badly. From October on, pressure by the procurement organs was again brought to bear over a very wide area. Pravda of December 2, 1928, denounced the pressure and harsh measures that were being applied to the middle and poor peasants. The attempts made to organize them had had little success, and these two classes did not constitute a force upon which the Party could really rely in the countryside. At the same time, the poor peasants were also becoming more and more discontented because of the increasing gap between the prices paid by the state (even though these had been raised a little after July 1928) and the prices prevailing on the free market (which were now three or four times as high).[104]
Under these conditions, since there was no solid organization or political consciousness of a sufficiently high level among the peasantry, part of the harvest was marketed outside the official channels, not only by the kulaks but also by the poor and middle peasants (who were able, through these sales, to retain a certain degree of economic strength in relation to the kulaks ). Although sales on the "free market" were not, as a rule, actually forbidden, the local authorities often penalized them, so as to facilitate their own procurement plans. The penalties affected the middle and poor peasants as well as the kulaks, and their discontent consequently increased.
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At the beginning of 1929 there were many signs that a peasant resistance was developing against procurement measures that were being imposed with ever greater severity. From January 1929 on the Soviet press mentioned more and more often additional "categories" of peasants who were acting as enemies of the Soviet power. The press spoke of "little kulaks" (kulachniki ), who "dance to the tune of the kulaks," and "sub-kulaks (podkulachniki ) who carry out sabotage on their behalf."[105] These expressions did not relate to socioeconomic categories but to ideological ones. Their appearance reflected a reality: the growing influence of the kulaks over the poor and middle peasants whose direct interests were being harmed. They reflected also an attitude of mistrust toward the peasantry in general which was widespread in the Party.[106]
This attitude toward wide sections of the peasant masses was in line with the way that the local authorities interpreted the directives they received from the center. In any case, it weakened still further the worker-peasant alliance, and helped to cause a growing proportion of the peasantry to fall under the ideological and political influence of the kulaks.
In his speech at the Party's Sixteenth Conference (at the end of April 1929), Syrtsov, chairman of the Sovnarkom of the RSFSR, who supported the line of maintaining and extending the emergency measures, or other similar measures, described how the relation of forces was evolving in the countryside: "We can literally feel, sense, how things are taking a certain shape, how the kulaks are becoming conscious of themselves as a class, how their own class demands are being put forward."[107]
The counteroffensive thus being waged by the kulaks was obviously possible only because they had succeeded (as a result of the situation which had developed after the beginning of 1928) in drawing behind them a sufficient body of peasant support. One of the resolutions adopted by the Six
page 122
teenth Conference, while not recognizing that the worker-peasant alliance had been gravely shaken, nevertheless raised the problem of maintaining this alliance: "The question whether the peasant masses will remain faithful to the alliance with the working class, or will allow the bourgeoisie to separate them from it, depends on the line of development that agriculture is to take -- the socialist road or the capitalist road -- and, in conformity with that, on who is going to direct the way the economy will develop -- the kulak or the socialist state."[108]
It is significant that the problem thus presented was not expressed in terms of a mass line to be carried out among the peasantry, a task of ideological and political work aimed at persuading the peasants of the correctness of the socialist road: that it was expressed not in political terms (the leading role of the Party and of the proletariat in relation to the peasantry), but in "economic" terms, in terms of the direction of the economy by the "state." Actually, this "direction of the economy by the State" was assumed to be dependent essentially on the accelerated development of industry. The Sixteenth Party Conference adopted the figures for the First Five-Year Plan which were put before it. The future industrial results of that plan appeared as the condition required for transforming agrarian relations through the spread of collective and state farms, so that the spread of this type of farming was still treated very cautiously by the Sixteenth Conference;[109] but the immediate political requirements for strengthening the worker-peasant alliance were neglected, owing to the de facto priority accorded to industrialization seen as the condition for this strengthening.
The priority development of industry (and, above all, of heavy industry ) at all costs was at that time regarded as the fundamental task of the hour. This resulted from the conjunction of a number of factors which will be examined later. Among them was the shortage of industrial goods (interpreted as the symptom of a "lag" of industry behind agriculture) and an increase in unemployment, for which rapid industrialization seemed the only answer. On the political plane, acceler-
page 123
ated industrialization was seen as a means of consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat through increasing the numbers of the working class, and also through the strengthening of the country's military potential which this industrial development would make possible.
The importance ascribed one-sidedly to the development of industry, and heavy industry in particular, led to little account being taken of the negative consequences of the postponement (until industry should be "sufficiently developed") of the solving of the problems involved in the consolidation of the worker-peasant alliance. Within the framework of the prevailing interpretation of the basic task of the hour, the worsened situation in the countryside, far from impelling the Party to rectify the political line which had brought this about, led on the contrary to the adoption of fresh measures of coercion, applied, in practice, to the peasantry as a whole ; these were considered necessary for the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union.
The most serious indication of the worsening situation in the countryside was the sharp fall in the procurement of grain during the first half of 1929.[110]
Faced with this fall, the Party and the government tried to apply measures of a new type, so as to have as little recourse as possible to Article 107,[111] since they had promised this to the peasants after the many protests and demonstrations in 1928. One of these measures took the form of a "voluntary undertaking," a sort of "self-fixing" by the skhod itself of the amount of grain to be procured.
Actually, the skhod (which, moreover, was often called upon to commit itself without regard to whether or not a quorum of members was present) was confronted with the obligation to ratify the procurement figure laid down by the state organs. A decision taken in July 1929 by the CC shows plainly that the quantities which the village assemblies thus "undertook" to deliver were taken in excess of their capacity and had to be reduced. This exposes the fictitious nature of the so-called self-fixing of the amount of the grain procurement. The use of such methods proved a new source of discontent among the
page 124
peasantry, including the poor peasants to whom these measures were applied, and who, moreover, were supposed to have been consulted through "poor peasants' committees" which actually had no real existence, and often disappeared almost as soon as they had been formed.[112]
The most serious source of the increased tension between a large part of the peasantry and the Soviet government was constituted, however, by the measures taken against peasants who failed to deliver to the procurement organs the amounts of grain laid down. These peasants were subjected to various penalties. One of these penalties was expulsion from the cooperative society, which meant that those expelled had to buy on the private market, where prices were much higher than in the cooperative shops. The effect of this was to oblige these peasants also to sell their produce on the private market, thereby risking prosecution as speculators. Another penalty applied when the amounts laid down were not delivered was the imposition of a fine equivalent to five times the amount not delivered, known as the pyatikratka. In principle, the application of this fine was to be decided by the skhod, but, in view of its frequent refusal to do so, in April 1929 power to apply the fine was given to the rural soviet -- which meant, in practice, to an organ in which the peasants carried little weight and which was dominated by officials.
In June 1929 the government of the RSFSR decided, furthermore, to expand the applicability of Article 61 of the Penal Code. Henceforth, "refusal to deliver grain in fulfillment of the voluntary undertaking entered into by the village, a joint refusal by a group of rural households, and offering resistance to the implementation of the plan for building up reserves of grain [will be dealt with] in accordance with part three of this article."
This part of Article 61 provided for penalties of up to two years' imprisonment, confiscation of property and, in some cases, exile. Exiling and imprisonment, which had already begun to be employed as penalties, were thus made legal. During the campaign of 1929-1930, these measures were applied with increasing frequency.[113] This was also true of
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the "hard tax," which meant to impose upon kulaks, or peasants treated as kulaks, a contribution in grain to be paid within twenty-four hours. Since the rate at which this tax was levied often exceeded what the peasants could pay, they could find themselves sent into exile for failure to meet their obligation.
The application of Article 61 did not affect the kulaks alone, but often struck at the middle peasants. This was so also with the decision taken by the CC in July 1929 to forbid the sale by state shops of "goods in short supply " (matches, lamp oil, nails, textiles, etc.) to peasants who had not delivered the amounts of grain laid down for procurement.[114] A measure already practiced at the local level, and at first condemned as unjustified, was now given legal force.
The local authorities were supposed to apply the various penalties with discrimination, that is, to avoid hurting the middle and poor peasants, except in exceptional cases. In reality, as shown by the many decisions by the CC condemning the abuses committed by local authorities, this was not so.
The Party leadership tried to draw a distinction between the line laid down, the correctness of which they reaffirmed, and its application, which they recognized as often being mistaken. In principle, this distinction would be justified if the formulation of the line and the demands imposed upon the local authorities had not led the latter to multiply decisions which were unacceptable owing to their class consequences (and which were, moreover, condemned post facto). Such decisions became more and more frequent during 1928 and 1929, so that the situation grew increasingly to resemble what Lenin had described and denounced in March 1919, when he said that "blows which were intended for the kulaks very frequently fell on the middle peasants. In this respect we have sinned a great deal."[115]
During 1929 the peasants' resistance to the various coercive and penal measures developed and took many different forms. It was no longer merely a matter of "passive resistance," expressed in reduction of the sown area and slaughtering of some of the cattle, but of "offensive" reactions of one kind or another. One of these forms of resistance, which implied col-
page 126
lective action, was called volynka: certain villages simply refused to supply anything whatsoever to the procurement organs. These volynki were punished severely. In 1929 peasant revolts were reported in a number of regions (but do not appear to have spread widely). The most important of them occurred in the mountains of Georgia (in Adzharia) and in the Pskov region. There were also attacks on procurement agents by kulaks or peasants under kulak influence.[116]
When the Party leadership drew up the balance sheet of the procurement campaign of 1928-1929 at the beginning of July 1929, they came to the conclusion that the measures which had been taken down to that time were not providing a real solution to the problem of supplying the towns, and not enabling a sufficient quantity of grain to be centralized for export. From then on, the leading bodies of the Party, especially the general secretary's office, were led to reformulate the problem of collectivization.
Previously, this problem had been regarded as one to be tackled with care -- as a task which it was essential to carry out with wide backing and confidence on the part of the peasant masses. Thereafter, collectivization tended to appear as the immediate means of "solving" the problems created by procurement difficulties and by the fall in grain production.
As we shall see,[117] the Party then committed itself to a policy of accelerated collectivization for which neither it nor the peasant masses were ideologically or politically prepared. This policy was carried out in such a way that it proved the starting point of a serious rupture in the worker-peasant alliance and an unprecedented crisis in agriculture, especially grain production and stock-breeding. The supply of foodstuffs to the towns could then be ensured only through a further fall in consumption by the peasantry.
Let me remind the reader that the expression "during the NEP" means the period from 1921 to 1929. I have already pointed out
that the policy actually carried out during the last years of this period amounted increasingly to a negation of the principles of the NEP. The expression "final crisis," or "general crisis," of the NEP therefore does not really mean a crisis of the "New Economic Policy" so much as the development of the contradictions characteristic of the years 1928 and 1929.
[p. 85]
Narodnoye khozyaistvo 1961 g., p. 27.
[p. 85]
Sdvigi v selskom khozyaistve SSSR, p. 14.
[p. 85]
The figures for this development will be found in Grosskopf, L'Alliance ouvrière, Table 185, p. 310.
[p. 86]
Ibid., p. 311.
[p. 86]
Report of the 15th Congress of the CPSU., Communist Party of Great Britain, London, 1928, p. 362.
[p. 87]
See volume I of the present book, pp. 235 ff.
[p. 87]
See above, p. 92.
[p. 87]
"Preliminary draft theses on the agrarian question, for the 2nd Comintern Congress," in Lenin, CW, vol. 31, pp. 152-164.
[p. 87]
S. G. Strumilin, "Rassloeniye sovyetskoy derevni," in Planovoye Khozyaistvo, no. 3 (1928), p. 56, quoted in Grosskopf, L'Alliance ouvrière, p. 141. In general, this chapter will refer frequently to Grosskopf's book, which the reader interested in a detailed analysis of the problems discussed here should consult. Strumilin's article is available in French in Recherches internationales à la lumière du marxisme, no. 85 (no. 4 of 1975), pp. 120 ff.
[p. 88]
The approximate character of the figures is due especially to the fact that the majority of the investigators whose work furnished the basis for these statistics were not peasants themselves and were therefore not always able to grasp precisely the real situation of the different forms. Nevertheless, it is to be observed that quite other sources give a social breakdown of the peasantry very similar to Strumilin's, when these sources employ the same criteria of categorization as he does (see Strumilin's article in Recherches internationales, no. 85 [no. 4 of 1975], p. 149, and Grosskopf, L'Alliance ouvrière, tables on pp. 309-310). It is to be observed, too, that Strumilin, who cannot be accused of being "pro-kulak", considers that the farms of the richer peasants were more strictly inspected than the others and their incomes therefore better known (Recherches internationales, p. 130).
[p. 88]
These figures refer to the share contributed by peasant farms (i.e., excluding the sovkhozes and kolkhozes ) in 1925. Even if
we set aside the share of marketed grain furnished by the well-to-do stratum of the middle peasants, the other middle peasants and the poor peasants alone were responsible for 71.5 percent of it (see Grosskopf, L'Alliance ouvrière, p. 142). We are concerned here still with comparative quantities, but they are highly significant. These same quantities were mentioned by Stalin in May 1928 (see above, pp. 89-90).
[p. 88]
Grosskopf, L'Alliance ouvrière, pp . 142- 144.
[p. 88]
Figures for the area of land included in a farm do not permit any conclusion to be drawn regarding the wealth of the farmer, as Lenin showed in The Development of Capitalism in Russia (CW, volume 3). What had been true before the Revolution was even truer under the NEP. At that time an especially large proportion of the land held by the poor and middle peasants could not be cultivated by them, for lack of tools, machinery, and horses (for some figures, see above, pp. 97-98).
[p. 89]
L. Kamenev, Nashi dostizheniya, trudnosti i perspektivy, p. 9. See also L. Kamenev, Stati i rechi, vol. XII (Moscow, 1926), pp. 347-371 (quoted in Grosskopf, L'Alliance ouvrière, pp. 138-140).
[p. 89]
Ya. A. Yakovlev, Oboshibkakh khlebofurazhnogo balansa TsSU i ego istolkovatelei, quoted in Grosskopf, L'Alliance ouvrière, p. 142.
[p. 89]
Stalin, "On the Grain Front," in Works, vol. 11, pp. 85 ff. The percentages (given on p. 89) were furnished by Nemchinov, a member of the collegium of the Central Statistical Board.
[p. 89]
The special influence of the rich peasants in the skhod, and their attachment to the "land commune" have been questioned: see D. J. Male, Russian Peasant Organisation Before Collectivization, pp. 162 ff.
[p. 90]
Grosskopf, L'Alliance ouvrière, pp. 137 ff.
[p. 90]
See above, pp. 36-37.
[p. 91]
Ibid.
[p. 91]
G. Pistrak, "Zernovoye khozyaistovo i khlebniy rynok S.S.S.R. vosstanovitelnogo perioda," in Sotsialistichestoye Khozyaistvo, no. 5-6 (1927), p. 256. Also Ya. A. Yakovlev, ed., K Doprosu o sotsialisticheskom pereustroistve selskogo khozyaistva, pp. 98-103, 153-155, quoted in Grosskopf, L'Alliance ouvrière, pp. 331 ff.
[p. 92]
This is confirmed by the way that the emergency measures were
applied subsequently. They made possible the procurement of the required amount of grain only through taking large-scale levies from the reserves held by the middle peasants, and some times by the poor peasants. This fact was admitted more than once by the Party leadership -- see above, pp. 39-40 ff.
[p. 92]
V. Milyutin, "Uroki khlebozagotovok," in Na Agrarnom Fronte, no. 4 (1928), p. vi, and A. Lvov, "Itogi khlebozagotovitelnoy kampanii 1927-1928 g.," in ibid., no. 9 (1928), pp. 65-66; quoted in Grosskopf, L'Alliance ouvrière, p. 333.
[p. 93]
In this connection, although grain production increased considerably under NEP, the remark made by Lenin at the Tenth Party Conference in May 1921 (CW, vol. 32, p. 406 [Transcriber's Note: See Lenin's Tenth All-Russian Conference of the R.C.P.(B.). -- DJR]) was still valid for the great majority of the peasants: in the absence of an adequate supply of industrial products to offer to the peasants, then only taxation would ensure the supply of foodstuffs in amounts adequate to meet the needs of the towns, industry, and exports. Most of the peasants were too poor, and their need of grain for their own consumption too poorly satisfied, to be able to sell their produce in order to hoard, or to invest, say, by subscribing to loans.
[p. 93]
Grosskopf, L'Alliance ouvrière, p. 332.
[p. 94]
It should be recalled that in the summer and autumn of 1918 the Bolshevik Party supported, in principle, the movement and organization of the poor peasants (see volume I, p. 220). Whatever may have been the weaknesses of that movement (which developed during the civil war), it is significant that during the years 1921-1927 the Party offered no systematic backing to the various initiatives of the poor peasants.
[p. 94]
In 1926-1927 average annual income per head (i.e., per member of a family) was estimated at 78.6 roubles for the poor peasants, 113.3 roubles for the middle peasants, and 239.9 roubles for the rich peasants. That of an agricultural worker was estimated at 108.2 roubles and that of an industrial worker at 334.6 roubles (Grosskopf, L'Alliance ouvrière, p. 211). It must be stressed that these are only estimates, and that the "purchasing power" of the rouble varied widely from one locality or region to another.
[p. 94]
See volume I of the present work, p. 239.
[p. 95]
Grosskopf, L'Alliance ouvrière, pp. 239-246.
[p. 95]
Ibid., p. 177.
[p. 96]
See below, p. 142.
[p. 96]
Yakovlev, ed., K voprosu, p. 59, quoted in Grosskopf, L'Alliance ouvrière, p. 308.
[p. 97]
N. Rosnitsky, Litso derevni, pp. 28-29, quoted in Grosskopf, L'Alliance ouvrière, pp. 308-309.
[p. 97]
Yakovlev, ed., K voprosu, pp. 56-57.
[p. 98]
Lenin, "Resolution on the attitude to the middle peasants" (March 1919), in CW, vol. 29, p. 219. [Transcriber's Note: See Lenin's Eighth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.). -- DJR]
[p. 98]
Lenin, "On the Tax in Kind" (April 9, 1921), vol. 32, p. 292.
[p. 98]
Ibid., p. 288.
[p. 99]
Report of the 15th Congress, p. 376.
[p. 99]
Grosskopf quotes numerous facts concerning the development of these forms of association and mutual aid (L'Alliance ouvrière, pp. 311-315).
[p. 99]
Ibid., pp. 311-312.
[p. 100]
Report of the 15th Congress, pp. 368-369.
[p. 100]
On these points see Grosskopf, L'Alliance ouvrière, pp. 390-395.
[p. 101]
Ibid., pp. 311 ff., 415 ff.
[p. 101]
See above, pp. 121 ff.
[p. 102]
See above., p. 97.
[p. 102]
Carr and Davies, Foundations, vol. I, part 2, p. 977, and Grosskopf, L'Alliance ouvrière, Table 141, p. 244.
[p. 102]
See above, pp. 106-107.
[p. 102]
Report of the 15th Congress, p. 368.
[p. 103]
A great deal of weight needs to be given to the problem referred to here. It was, in fact, underestimation of the potentialities that the farms of the poor and middle peasants possessed for several years yet that contributed to impelling the Soviet government to undertake a collectivization that was ill-prepared politically and ideologically, and which it saw as the only way of escape from the supposed exhaustion of the possibility of still increasing agricultural production for a certain period without r
Part 2
The village during the NEP period.
Differentiation and class struggles.
Agricultural policy and transformation
of social relations in agriculture
1. The social conditions of immediate
production during the NEP period
I. Remarks on the social differentiation of
the peasantry
(a) The specific features of the
differentiation among the peasantry
during the NEP period
(b) Statistics illustrating class
differentiation in the Soviet peasantry
in 1927
(c) The supply of grain to the market and
the class differentiation of the
peasantry
(d) The social and political role of the
kulaks
II. The class foundations of the
procurement crisis of 1927-1928
(a) The first phase of the procurement and
the sales made by the kulaks
(b) The second phase of the procurement
and the struggles of the poor and middle
peasants
III. The forms of struggle of the poor and
middle peasants in the NEP period
(a) The struggle to acquire means of
production
(b) The struggle of the poor and middle
peasants to strengthen forms of
organization that would consolidate
their independence of the rich peasants
IV. Agricultural policy and the
procurement crisis of 1927-1928
(a) The shortcomings of agricultural policy
in the years 1924-1927
(b) The underestimation of the
potentialities of the poor and middle
peasants' farms
(c) The small amount of aid given to the
development of collective farming and
cooperation
V. The aggravation of the contradictions
through the peasant and agricultural
policy followed in 1928 and 1929.
(a) The chief economic effects of the
situation created by the procurement
crisis and the protracted application of
the "emergency measures"
(1) The fresh decline in grain production in
1928, the renewal of the emergency
measures in 1928-1929, and the decline
in procurement
(2) The problem of the grain balance
(3) The procurement crisis and foreign
trade
(b) The principal effects on class relations
in the countryside of the situation
created by the procurement crisis and
the protracted application of the
emergency measures
(1) Some formulations by Stalin regarding
the consequences of the application of
the emergency measures during the first
half of 1928
(2) An overall view of the situation in the
countryside in 1928
(3) The peasants' resistance in 1929 and the
development of coercive measures
Notes
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page 128
page 129
page 130