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Stalinism


Stalin had objectives with agriculture, which was essentially to feed the proletariat, and less the peasants. He wanted to produce crops and goods that could be sold abroad to earn foreign currency with which they could buy machines they did not have. It was introduced, according to a number of historians of the time, to fulfil "Stalin's primary objective", to support the rapid industrialisation. Collectivisation would also bring regular supply of food for towns, make the collection of grain easier and the yields for export go higher. It also was introduced to mechanise agriculture, implying that the surplus labour would be released for the growing industries. .
             Thus, this process was motivated by genuine economic and political necessity considering all the problems Stalin faced, although historians today argue that ideology was also a very strong reason. Indeed, the Collectivisation of the Russian farms implied the redistribution of the land to create large and more economically viable farms, which did follow perfectly the Communist ideology. However, another evidence of his ideology coming out was the "dekulakisation". One of his objectives was to destroy the Kulaks, which would then end private ownership as well as Capitalism in the agricultural sector. However, this "liquidation of the Kulak class" caused a huge amount of loss of livestock, for example in Kazakhstan 83% of cattle, 87% of sheep and 89% of horses were killed especially by the Kulaks in order to stop all the crops and grains going back into the towns. They refused to sell their produce at state-fixed prices, they sabotaged the trade "threatening the very existence of Soviet power" with their "anti-collective-farm propaganda" according to Y. Kukushkin. There was also an important loss of human lives as 13 million were either killed, deported into labour camps or new factories. Around 3 million people died due to the famine conditions of 1932-1933 because of bad harvest and also because of the destruction of the crops.


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