Chapter 2

collective farms.” 3 After discussing each of these factors, the textbook told its readers, “All this could not help but affect the level of the harvest: The 1932 sowing plan for grain crops was not met in 1932, which resulted in the creation of considerable food supply difficulties.” 4

The first real sign of freer discussion on the issue of collectivization appeared only in the early 1960s. In 1960, P. S. Zahors’kyi and P. K. Stoian were able to make one of the earliest detailed surveys of the policies which had led to disaster during the total collectivization of agriculture and the early procurement campaigns. In their Sketches of the History of the Committees of Non-Wealthy Peasants, they wrote:

Serious distortions were permitted in carrying out the grain procurements. Alongside collective farms which did not fulfill the grain procurements plan, there were collective farms in which all the grain was taken away, supplemental tasks imposed, middle-peasant farms were treated like kulak farms, and so forth.

Such distortions along with “kulak wrecking” had led Ukrainian agriculture to difficult circumstances in 1931-32, they added. On the Famine itself, however, the authors were silent, thus ending on a positive note—they concentrated on the achievements of the komnezamy, which ostensibly facilitated their abolition in the Spring of 1933.

The following year, one of the most interesting neglected works of the entire Khrushchev period appeared—I.I. . Slyn’ko’s monograph on the early years of the Machine Tractor Stations in Ukraine: The Socialist Transformation and Technical Reconstruction of Ukraine’s Agriculture (1927-1932). What is particularly interesting is Slyn’ko’s treatment of both the MTS role in procurements campaigns and the campaigns themselves.

Slyn’ko gave one of the best blow-by-blow accounts of the various measures undertaken by Soviet authorities in Ukraine to overcome the “sabotage” by “kulaks and hostile elements” of the 1932 grain procurement campaign. “What,” he asked, “were the main reasons for this difficult situation of agriculture in the UkSSR in 1932?” His answer was complex. The class struggle had been extraordinarily intense and the kulaks and other hostile elements had strengthened their resistance. The availability of machinery had lagged behind the rate of collectivization. The new collective farms and the distribution of its fruits to its members were poorly organized, such that “the principle of the material interests of the collective farmers” was ignored. The procurements campaign had been planned incorrectly. The number of Communist organizations in the countryside was small and their influence weak, which led to weak organizational and mass agitation work by the party. Moreover, the village remained culturally backward and petty proprietary instincts tenacious among the peasantry and especially in its middle stratum.

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3 Istoriia Ukrains’koi RSR (History of the Ukrainian SSR) (Kiev, Vydavnytstvo Akademii Nauk Ukrains’koi RSR, 1958), vol II, p. 371.

4 Ibid.,p.376.

5 P. S. Zahors’kyi, P. K. Stoian, Narysy istorii komitetiv nezamozhnykh selian (Sketches of the History of the Committees of Non-Wealthy Peasants (Kiev, Vydavnytstvo Akademii Nauk Ukrains’koi RSR, 1960), p. 145.