Joseph Stalin's Policy Of Collectivization

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The policy of collectivisation was one of the key agricultural policies of Joseph Stalin in the late 1920s and throughout the rest of his reign. Stalin 's policy intended to consolidate individual farms, including farmers lands, equipment and labour, into collective farms called called kolkhozy and sovkhozy. They were owned by the state and paid peasants farmers as hired labour (sovkhozy) or volunteer cooperative collective farms(kolkhozy). The policy of collectivisation was significant because it helped to bring Russia into the modern era and develop the country as before Russia was stagnating under Tsarism whilst the rest of the world was moving forward. It helped modernise Russia through supporting the forced industrialisation of Russia’s …show more content…
Transitioning from the Mir system to the policy of collectivisation was an important strategy for Stalin which needed to change from the outdated Mir system. With a growing industry Russia needed a large and efficient agricultural sector to support it, the urban workers and food for workers in the towns. The policy of collectivisation helped to modernise Russia in terms of agriculture because the previous agricultural policy under past leaders was mostly the same and unchanged since the revolution. Stalin’s aim was to benefit the Russian economy by moving from the Mir system to a policy of collectivisation as it allowed for more food to be grown more quickly thereby encouraging and facilitating a sustainable workforce and making industry expand. Also it meant a surplus of food could be sold abroad which would allow the economy to further grow and …show more content…
However it can be seen from Source 5 that collectivisation had a negative effect on the industry because the source shows how from 1930 to 1932 none of the resource industries grew much at all compared to years like 1935-1937. This can be linked to the fact that there was a great famine in the year of 1932 which caused millions of people to die and huge food shortages. This affected the industry because the workforce was diminished and they were working on meagre rations. This shows the effect of collectivisation on industry because collectivisation is directly linked to the famine in 1932 due to resistance of collectivisation and the chaos caused by the collectivisation campaign. However collectivisation was just a factor which caused the 1932 famine and cannot be directly linked. Source 5 can be widely interpreted as it does not show data for 1931 or 1933 therefore conclusions drawn from comparing the sets of data may not be as accurate as first

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