Changes In The Soviet Union's Rural Development Path In The 1930s

In the late nineteen twenties and the early thirties,the Soviet Union finished the collective revolution of agriculture under the leading of Joseph Stalin.This revolution is vital in the agricultural development of the Soviet Union,since it achieves the collectivisation of the traditional natural economy,and builds the foundation for the industrial development and the anti-facist war.Joseph Stalin,in this revolution,made the decision of the substitution of farming community for collective farms which was the end of the community's history that had been existing for thousands of years.Peasants were forced to be involved in collective farms,and millions of rich peasants were eliminated or expelled to the remote areas,all of these leads to the severe decline of the agricultural productivity.Compulsion,unreasonableness,and cruelty in this revolution all lead directly to the resistance of peasants.So evaluating this collective revolution subjectively is of great importance as for learning from the construction process of the socialist countryside,but is very meaningful both theoretically and practically for the development of agriculture of the present socialist countries.This thesis consists of four chapters.Chapter one shows the background and trigger of the revolution in the Soviet Union's agricultural development.The Soviet Union was at its major phase of industrial development in nineteen thirties to enforce national defence,so as to resist the threatening and invasion from the capitalistic countries.The procurement crisis of 1927 was the direct cause of this collectivisation.Chapter two show the developing history from farming community to collective farms of the Soviet Union.The farming community,as a combination of peasants' living community and working community,had made its way all through emancipation reform and Stolypin reform until the victory of the October Revolution.After the October Revolution,Bolsheviks found the rural soviet to govern countryside,which led to the phenomenon of the co-existing of the rural soviet and farming community.Not until the collective revolution,collective farms had become the grass roots organisation for controlling countryside after Joseph Stalin abolished farming community.The third chapter analyses elaborately about the intellectual origin,reasons for the smooth progressing,and the content and effect of this revolution.Joseph Stalin's idea on the collective revolution is drawn from the ideology of Marx,Engels,Lenin,and Narodniks.The revolution was carried out smoothly in the Soviet Union,and apart from Stalin's personal influence,this is also partly because of the social norms as catching up and surpassing atmosphere,military preferences threatened by invasions,the socialistic theory as socialism in one country,despotism,rural governing systems and so on.The progress of the collective revolution includes:construction of collective farms in a large scale;the elimination of rich peasants and special migration;compulsory state procurement and sales,and the establishment of machine stations etc..The achievements of this revolution lie in the fact that the immediate food supply in a short time for exports which could provide capital for processing industry.While its problems can be seen in the whole process of the revolution as obsession,incorrectness,and cruelty,which made peasants become the sacrifice of the revolution.The fourth chapter is the evaluation of the collective revolution,including the reasonableness of its existing and its restrictions.Many socialist states had mimicked the collectivisation of the Soviet Union in the twentieth century,this model of collectivisation,however,was banished in the end.This proves the unsustainable development of the collective revolution,and this is meaningful for the construction of countryside and the agricultural development in the twenty first century.