“We maintain that the revolution has proved and demonstrated how important it is that the land question should be put clearly. The outbreak of the armed uprising, the second, October Revolution, clearly proves that the land must be turned over to the peasants.” – Lenin (Report on Land, Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, November 8, 1917)
To understand the achievements of the Soviet revolution in farming, one must first grasp the conditions of peasants in pre-revolutionary Russia. At that time, nearly half the agricultural land belonged to the royal family, the monasteries, the nobles, and the big landlords. The remaining land was scattered among the peasant families (~ 80% of the population). Russia was marked by a deeply repressive feudal social order, where the “Old Man” ruled over the household, and women remained under the strict control of the patriarchal homestead. Agricultural practices in Russia were outdated, many dating back to the Middle Ages and even biblical times. This stagnation, combined with the early development of capitalism, led to the rise of a new class of wealthy farmers (rural bourgeoisie) known as the kulaks. These individuals have more land, and they profited by lending money and property to poor peasants and exploiting their labour.
The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution brought radical changes to agriculture, transforming land ownership, farming practices, and rural life by implementing agrarian reforms aimed at dismantling the old feudal system, and transformed the lives of the peasants once and for all. On November 8, 1917, the Second All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies passed the Decree on Land written by Lenin. The decree abolished the private ownership of land and ensured land redistribution, allowing land-starved tillers to finally gain access to property. Within a decade, the arable land available to the peasantry increased to 96% in Ukraine and 97% in European Russia by 1929. However, many poor peasants and farmhands lacked the resources to cultivate their newly acquired land, leaving much of the land idle or rented out to wealthier peasants. By 1929, with the success of the First Five-Year Plan and one of the strongest co-operative movements in the world, industrialization was booming. City workers were achieving higher living standards, while rural peasants gained land and their conditions improved but the old methods of farming were not appropriate for the rapidly developing Soviet Union. Thus, one of the age-old contradictions, the antagonism between the urban and the rural, came into play. The kulaks capitalized on this tension, and tried to organize the peasants against the cities, and against the socialism that the city workers were building. In response, modernizing agriculture became the need of the hour. Thus, in 1929, the Soviet government introduced collective farms (kolkhoz) as part of the Five-Year Plan. These collective farms functioned like factories: large agricultural enterprises owned and managed by the peasants themselves. By pooling their land and drafting animals, they collectively owned the means of production, with output and profits shared under state supervision. The idea of collective farms quickly gained traction. Vast numbers of peasants began moving into collective farms at the village, township, and county levels. The Five-Year Plan had initially aimed for 20% collectivization by 1933, but by 1930, this figure had reached 60% in some areas, leading to numerous unpredictable and chaotic circumstances.
Yet, amid the chaos, a monumental transformation was underway. Hundreds of thousands of peasants, organized into communes, were driving a historic shift from backward agricultural methods to socialist production, thus creating a true revolution in farming!
The emergence of collective farming came hand-in-hand with the necessity of liquidating the kulaks as a class. The kulaks were plotting to orchestrate an artificial famine by hoarding crops, aiming to sabotage the success of collective farms and weaken the nation in preparation for a potential foreign invasion (these conspiracies were later exposed during the Moscow Trials of 1936). In response, mass mobilizations were organized, drawing in broad participation from the peasantry. Alongside this struggle, there was a pressing need to eliminate the superstitious beliefs prevalent among many peasants, which posed a barrier to the adoption of scientific farming methods. Numerous campaigns were conducted by young communists in rural areas to challenge and uproot these outdated ideas.
Through the gradual modernization of agriculture, the hegemony of the “Old Man” in the household, the symbol of patriarchal and feudal dominance, began to break down. Women increasingly liberated themselves from entrenched patriarchal practices and assumed more active roles in both family and agricultural life. Thus, collective farming not only transformed the economic base of the countryside but also laid the foundations for the historic victory of the Soviets over feudalism and backwardness.
The Collective farms also gave the Soviet peasants the security on their soil through ensuring:
- Security over Land: Land could not be leased, sold, or mortgaged, as it was collectively owned and legally considered public domain granted by the government.
- Security against Debt: One of the major causes of debt in the 1920s was the high cost of purchasing heavy machinery. To address this, a unique institution called the Machine Tractor Station (MTS) owned by peasant’s collectives were established, which provided heavy machinery on a rental basis, significantly reducing the financial burden on individual farmers.
- Security against Market Fluctuation: A planned economy and a well-structured cooperative system offered protection against market instability (the state was controlling the distribution, not the market which looks for profit rather than welfare of citizens).
- Through mechanisms such as advance sales of crops, farmers were insulated from sudden market collapses.
- Security against “Acts of God”: By adopting advanced scientific farming methods and implementing universal farm insurance, farmers were protected from natural disasters such as droughts and storms.
- Security over Control: Collective farms operated under a decentralized democratic system, which gave peasants total control over production and decision-making processes.
The Soviets used Science and Technology to modernise the agriculture increasing the efficiency. The Soviets were pioneers in scientific farming, establishing agricultural universities and nearly 13,000 scientific cottage laboratories where farmers could collaborate directly with scientists to study and examine their own crops. This initiative significantly boosted scientific temper among the peasantry, leading to the diversification of farming methods aimed at improving efficiency. These efforts also led to new discoveries that proved extremely beneficial to the development of agriculture and the economy. The Soviets were also the first to use aviation technology in agriculture and established the Farm Aviation Trust (FAT) in 1934. This played a pivotal role in the Soviets conquering the arid Karakum desert of Turkmenistan with wheat and vegetable farming, the Great Arctic Circle with rice, potato farming, and the wild mountains of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan with rubber plantations.
Thus, under the leadership of Comrade Stalin, the Soviet Union transformed from a backward, peasant-based nation reliant on medieval farming methods into a country with 242,400 mechanized collective farms, supported by scientific innovation, all within the span of two decades, etching itself permanently on the pages of history with the victory of Socialism!
