Collectivization

Collectivization is a policy of uniting individual farmers into state-run collective farms. These collective-farms are the combination of industry and agriculture under Socialist communal ownership. It organizes agriculture to be under the state economic plan which allows for easier management and distribution of food and controlled production.

Collectivization by country

Soviet Union

Collectivization was used in the Soviet Union to allow the state to control agriculture and put it under socialist ownership. It was instrumental in building the Soviet Economy and bringing the peasantry to the proletariat. The Soviet Union was originally a majority peasant state and collectivization was able to harness that. The Soviets unfortunately had fierce resistance to collectivization by the Kulaks. The Kulaks would destroy crops and livestock to avoid collectivization and this would amalgamate into one of the leading causes of the Soviet/Ukrainian Famine.

Theory

An excerpt from the political economy textbook issued by the Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.:

(1) Collectivisation of agriculture is an essential condition for building socialism. The essence of collectivisation is the gradual and voluntary union of the peasant farms in producer co-operatives. Collectivisation means the transition from small-scale, individual, backward private farming to large-scale socialist farming equipped with modern machine techniques. Collectivisation corresponds to the vital interests of the peasantry and all the working people.

(4) With the victory of the collective farm system, the Soviet Union was transformed from a country of small peasant farming to a country with the largest-scale agriculture in the world and a highly mechanised one. The productive forces of agriculture acquired scope for their development. The Soviet peasantry escaped for ever from exploitation, poverty and beggary were abolished in the countryside, and conditions for an uninterrupted improvement in the material and cultural life of the collective farm peasantry were created. The friendly alliance of the workers and peasants became strong.