Stalin, Soviet Agriculture, and Collectivisation

Explanations of the success of Soviet rapid industrialization during the 1930s, whether put forward by Western or Soviet scholars, have generally presupposed the “extraction” of a substantial net contribution from the agricultural sector. According to this view the rapid pace of industrialization, especially during the early years of the campaign, demanded an agricultural contribution well in excess of what might have been obtained by relying on the voluntary acquiescence of the peasantry. Forced mass collectivization, by replacing private (peasant) discretion over the amount, composition, and marketed share of agricultural output with centralized administrative coercion, has been supposed to have ensured the necessary increased flow of agricultural products to industry and urban centers and to have severed the potentially constraining link between the pace of industrialization and peasant willingness to expand output and particularly, marketings in the face of increasingly adverse terms of exchange.