The years of revolution are leaving us farther and farther away, and at the same time, the younger generation is less and less versed in the events of those years. The history lessons in schools take a certain number of hours to study this difficult and tragic period of time in the life of our state. However, unfortunately, present youth does not have a full understanding of what happened in 1917 and after it. Let's try once again to plunge into the post-revolutionary era and popularly consider at least such a thing as collectivization of agriculture.
The reasons for the collectivization of agriculture were rooted in the task of making the industrialization spurt, which was necessary for the Country of Soviets to assert themselves in a circle of hostile foreign neighbors who did not want to perceive it as a realized reality. From the very first moment, when the Bolsheviks seized power, they welcomed the nationalization of all property that existed on the territory of the state. And the collectivization of agriculture was a form of appropriation of land, which turned into its sole possession. The creation of collective farms was not a one-time event announced in 1929. The process of turning the sole farms belonging to prosperous peasants into collective Bolsheviks was already being prepared in the years of “war communism”. This is evidenced by the facts of planting communes, which appeared at that time, and the property there was only exclusively public. And although the transition to a new economic policy led to the collapse of the commune, nevertheless, long before the “year of the Great Turning Point”, a number of collective farms already existed, uniting almost 4% of peasant farmsteads. These associations were called TOZs, i.e. land cultivation partnerships.
Giving reasons for the collectivization of agriculture, one cannot but touch upon the problem of the grain procurement crisis that erupted in the USSR in 1927. Only large agricultural associations, which were subordinate to the state, made possible the trouble-free seizure of all harvested grain and the unquestioning transfer of crops to bins to provide workers with bread. Relying on the creation of a new type of organization of agriculture, the world did not know a precedent for, the Bolsheviks were able to choose the chief executor of their plans. It was a poor man, radically opposed to the wealthy strata of the village. And in support of her, twenty-five thousandth Communists, fans of the revolutionary movement, who firmly believed in the nobility of their mission, were sent from the city. And this led to the fact that the complete collectivization of agriculture ended in the complete elimination of the kulaks. In fact, under the motto of the struggle against the enemies of the revolution, the extermination of the layer of the rural population, which knew the value of land and peasant labor, took place.
The collectivization of agriculture divided the previously unified village into two opposing camps. In one of them were members of the committees of the poor, who previously had nothing for their souls. And in another - fists, who, in turn, were "sorted" into 3 groups: fists-counter-revolutionaries who were arrested with all family members, large fists who were subject to deportation to the northern regions of the country and the rest - those who were resettled within that region where they lived.
The criteria for dividing into these categories were very vague. However, this tragedy, with which the complete collectivization of agriculture ended, does not become less extensive. In total, the collectivization of agriculture destroyed more than 1.1 million strong farms, on which the economy of a huge state, formerly called the Russian Empire, hitherto held on.