Merl S. Collectivization and socialist agriculture (1917–1992): Revised comparison of the Soviet and East-European experience. Part II. Collectivization in Eastern Europe under Stalin and Khrushchev (1944-1962) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2025. V.10. №3. P. 6-37.
EDN: CAKXOY
Annotation
To reassess collectivization and socialist agricultural policy, it is necessary to keep the whole period in view, distinguishing the following phases with basically different political approaches: (1) collectivization under Stalin as based on class war and peasant subjugation to transfer capital from agriculture to industry; (2) collectivization under Khrushchev, striving to complete it, although this policy was basically put in question (in 1953 in the Soviet Union and in 1957 in the GDR and Hungary); (3) efforts to stabilize the economically weak collective farms in the 1960s after finishing collectivization and replacing Khrushchev; (4) the final turn to modernization of agriculture expecting economies of scale through different concepts of industrialization in the 1970s; (5) the failure of these concepts causing a cost trap and enforcing the rehabilitation of small-scale private agriculture in the 1980s. The first part showed how Stalin eliminated modernization from collectivization so that agriculture would serve industrialization. The second part focuses on collectivization in Eastern Europe under Stalin and Khrushchev, including temporary attempts to revise collectivization policy after Stalin’s death. Stalin’s combination of collectivization and class war was applied in Eastern Europe, determining the same fatal consequences for the social-economic capital of agriculture as in the Soviet Union and threats for domestic food supplies. Stalin’s approach was criticized in the Soviet Union: in June 1953, Beria and Malenkov questioned Stalin’s infallibility. The revision of collectivization in several East European countries (primarily Hungary, GDR and Czechoslovakia) aimed at the stabilization of collective farms, which required consolidation denied by Stalin: state investment in agriculture, payment for work and efficient machinery for large-scale farming. Based on the working models of collective farming, numerous private farmers were to join collective farms, which was blocked by Khrushchev insisting on completing collectivization first. With his ideological approach, he worsened the destruction caused by Stalin’s collectivization, and was responsible for the exodus of more flexible workforce from agriculture in the Soviet Union. Only Hungary managed to make use of the potential of family labor. The third part will focus on the stabilization of collective farms after Khrushchev’s removal from office and on the industrialization of agriculture, which started in socialist countries in the 1970s, two decades later than in the West.
Keywords
Collectivization of agriculture, Stalin, Khrushchev, Kadar, Ulbricht, socialist agriculture, mechanization, collective farms, industrialization of agriculture, modernization, Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Hungary, GDR, small peasant farms, economies of scale, private plots, class war, myths of Stalin’s infallibility, social differentiation
About the author
Stephan Merl, DSc (History), Professor, Bielefeld University, Universitätsstr., 25, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany.
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Additional Info
- Submitted Friday, 10 January 2025
- Reviewed Sunday, 02 February 2025
- Copyright © Auhtors, 2025
- Distribution Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Merl S. Collectivization and socialist agriculture (1917–1992): Revised comparison of the Soviet and East-European experience. Part I. Soviet collectivization under Stalin (1925–1953) // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2025. V.10. №2. P. 6-36.
EDN: ADGDWI
Annotation
Literature on collectivization in Eastern Europe presents an outdated picture of Soviet collectivization close to Stalin’s interpretation, and literature on Soviet collectivization ignores alternative policies to promote forced industrialization in countries with predominantly small-scale peasant farms. Before discussing collectivization and socialist agricultural policy in Eastern Europe, the author examines collectivization in the Soviet Union under Stalin, combining this analysis with some methodological reflections on the approach and central terms applied. Then the author focuses on the entangled comparison of collectivization and socialist agricultural policy after the World War II in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to thoroughly reassess this policy by answering the following key questions for the assessment of socialist agricultural policy: whether enforced collectivization was necessary or harmful for industrialization; whether Stalin’s collectivization aimed at modernization of the agrarian sector at all; why socialist agricultural policy, after liquidation of private farms during collectivization under Stalin and Khrushchev, since the late 1970s in almost all socialist countries returned to supporting private small agricultural production. In addition to focusing on the decisive turning points of the agricultural policy, the author keeps the whole period in view, distinguishing the following phases with basically different political approaches: (1) collectivization under Stalin as based on class war and peasant subjugation to transfer capital from agriculture to industry; (2) collectivization under Khrushchev striving to complete it, although this policy was basically put in question (in 1953 in the Soviet Union and in 1957 in the GDR and Hungary); (3) efforts to stabilize the economically weak collective farms in the 1960s after finishing collectivization and replacing Khrushchev; (4) the final turn to modernization of agriculture expecting economies of scale through different concepts of industrialization in the 1970s; (5) the failure of these concepts causing a cost trap and enforcing the rehabilitation of small-scale private agriculture in the 1980s. The first part of the article shows how Stalin in 1929 turned collectivization away from modernization goals, which made collectivization an end in itself, enforcing the diversion of resources from agriculture to industrialization. Stalin did not trust the peasants and ignored their great capacities of increasing production, which made members of collective farms forced laborers with limited civil rights. Mechanization ensured primarily state control over agriculture and prevented an increase in yields.
Keywords
Collectivization of agriculture, Stalin, Khrushchev, socialist agriculture, mechanization, kolkhoz system, industrialization of agriculture, modernization, Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, small peasant farms, Chayanov, economies of scale, private plots, social differentiation, exploitation, myth of infallibility, Litsom k derevne.
About the author
Stephan Merl, DSc (History), Professor, Bielefeld University, Universitätsstr., 25, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany.
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Additional Info
- Submitted Friday, 10 January 2025
- Reviewed Sunday, 02 February 2025
- Copyright © Auhtors, 2025
- Distribution Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Round table “In memory of Teodor Shanin” // The Russian Peasant Studies. 2020. V.5. №4. P. 39-77.
DOI: 10.22394/2500-1809-2020-5-4-39-77
Annotation
On the final day of the Chayanov International Conference (October 22–23, 2020), the round table was held in memory of Teodor Shanin, a remarkable agrarian scientist and researcher of A.V. Chayanov’s legacy. The round table was dedicated to both the memory of Professor Shanin who passed away on February 4, 2020, and to his 90th birthday on October 29, 2020. More than 60 scientists and students from different regions of Russia and the world watched presentations of friends, colleagues, and students of Shanin at the round table held online due to the pandemic. The round table was opened by Professor Shulamit Ramon, the widow of Teodor Shanin, who spoke about the worldview dominants of his life and work, his intellectual connection with Russia. The British colleagues of Teodor Shanin—Professors Henry Bernstein, Mark Harrison and Judith Pallot—spoke about directions of the main academic research and discussions which started in the 1970s on social differentiation of the peasantry and referred to the ideological legacy of Lenin and Chayanov; Teodor Shanin made a huge contribution to these debates.
The French scholar Aleksey Berelovich focused on the features of Shanin as a political scientist and a brilliant analyst of the political processes of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. Russian colleagues of Teodor Shanin—geographer A.I. Alekseev, historian V.V. Kondrashin, sociologists V.G. Vinogradsky, O.P. Fadeeva, I.E. Shteinberg, A.M. Nikulin, D.M. Rogozin, and A.A. Artamonov—shared their personal memories of Shanin and provided a comprehensive description of his interdisciplinary methodology of agricultural research. Agrarian scientists from South Africa—Boaventura Monjane and Ruth Hall, and India—Sima Purushotaman—emphasized the importance of Shanin’s legacy for the study of the peasant development in the regions of Africa and Asia. Most presentations stressed and analyzed the intellectual connection of Professor Shanin with the Russian agrarian research of Marxists, populists, and the Chayanov school. [/tab]
Keywords
Shanin, peasantry, agrarian sociology, social differentiation, Russia, Marxism, populism, Chayanov [/tab]
About the authors
Alexander I. Alekseev, DSc (Geography), Professor, Faculty of Geography, Lomonosov Moscow State University. 119991, Moscow, Lenin Hills, 1.
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Aleksandr A. Artamonov, Leading Specialist, Center for Agrarian Studies of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 82, Prosp. Vernadskogo, Moscow, Russian Federation, 119571.
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Alexis Berelowitch, University Paris—Sorbonne (Paris IV). France, Paris-5, Rue VictorCousin, 1.
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Henry Bernstein , Emeritus Professor, School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London). London WC1H 0XG, United Kingdom.
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Olga P. Fadeeva, PhD (Sociology), Leading Researcher, Institute of Economics and Organization of Industrial Production, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Prosp. Lavrentieva, 17, Novosibirsk, 630090, Russia. E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Ruth Hall, Professor University of the Western Cape, X17, Bellville, 7535.
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Mark Harrison, Emeritus Professor, Department of Economics, University of Warwick. Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom.
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Viktor V. Kondrashin., DSc (History), Professor, Head of Center for Economic History, Institute of Russian History Russian Academy of Science. 117292, Moscow, D. Ul’yanova St., 19.
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Monjane Boaventura , Post-Doc, Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa.
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Alexander M. Nikulin, Head of the Chayanov Research Center, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp, 82.
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Judith Pallot , Emeritus Professor, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. Oxford OX1 3QY, United Kingdom.
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Purushothaman Seema, Professor, Azim Premji University Survey. 66, Burugunte village, Bikkanahalli main road, Sarjapura, 562125 Bengaluru.
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Shulamit Ramon, Professor, School of Health and Social Work, University of Hertfordshire. Hatfield AL10 9AB, United Kingdom.
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Dmitry М. Rogozin, Senior Researcher, Institute of Social Analysis and Forecasting, Russian Presidential Academy for National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), 119034, Moscow, Prechistenskaya Nab., 11 bld.1.
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Ilya E. Shteinberg, PhD (Philosophy), Associate Professor, Moscow State University of Psychology and Education. Sretenka St., 29, Moscow, 127051, Russia.
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Valery G. Vinogradsky, DSc (Philosophy), Senior Researcher, Center for Agrarian Studies, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. 119571, Moscow, Vernadskogo Prosp., 82.
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