Sovkhoz

The Soviet region’s peasantry has mainly been reliant on agriculture for sustenance both financially and by providing food. This dependence is geographically rooted long before the creation of the USSR itself, spanning to the start of the very population of the area. The very dynamic of the agricultural community began to shift as Joseph Stalin rose to power. Numerous changes were enacted starting in 1927, many of which are found within the first five year plan of 1928 through 1932. This new method of enforcing and imposing Stalinism unto the Soviet people included the practice of collective farming, also known as kolkhoz. While agricultural development was progressing toward this style since the fall of Imperial Russia, Maurice Hindus and his family immigrated to the United States years prior to the change in power. In his memoir, Hindus’ describes his return to the village of his childhood, he divulgates the affects the change has brought upon those whose lives were more closely altered. Through accounts of the hardships faced by the peasantry, a new lens is created, through which those originally unable to access such non-politically fueled reports are able to do so. Through the successes of the memoir in its ability to bring rural, peasant Russia to the west, it is not without bias and shortcomings. Due to Hindus’ preexisting worldview, he is only able to provide an incomplete report of the collective farms that were imposed on the public. As a Russian émigré, Hindus sets…

The policy intended to merge individual labour and holdings into sovkhoz and kolkhoz . The Soviet leadership believed that collectivisation would be the best effective method of utilising the land and furthermore it would improve agricultural productivity. Collectivisation would ensure sufficient food resources in urban centres and Communists would provide peasants with new methods, seeds and advanced equipment, expected to reduce the workforce, so that more peasants would leave for the cities…