On January 8, 1932, the Ukrainian Central Committee complained that the situation remained “extraordinarily disturbed” and decreed that January be a “shock month” in hopes of fulfilling the grain quota. Substantial numbers of workers were sent to the districts from the central organs, the government, and even Central Committee members. Seventy million rubles’ worth of industrial goods were sent to the Ukrainian countryside to help stimulate the procurements. But, Slyn’ko wrote:

The struggle to fulfill the grain procurements plan and to overcome kulak opposition in the village was also accompanied by negative phenomena. Many active workers were carried away by administrative measures, violating revolutionary legality.
The majority of the collective farms did not pay the collective farmers for their labor until after the 1932 Spring sowing campaign. There were a number of collective farms in which the minimum necessary was not set aside for consumption, forage, emergencies, or even the Spring sowing.

Such “distortions,”he added, inevitably led to flight from the collective farms in some districts.11

On March 28, 1932, the Ukrainian Central Committee summed up the results of the 1931 grain procurements plan in a special decree. It stated that many districts had not done their jobs in politically and economically strengthening the collective farms, that they had been unable to create a strong collective farm aktyv or organize a final offensive to vanquish petty proprietary instincts among the collective farmers. There had also been many cases of poor economic management, while the liquidation of the okrug (a level of administration between the oblast’ and raion) and the large number of districts (494) had made it impossible for regional (oblast’) and republic level authorities to oversee work on the local level, as the old okrug had done. This had resulted in disorderly planning of the procurements. Some collective farms had fulfilled their quotas several times over by leaving less for investment than those which had not fulfilled the plan. Pay for collective farmers
…………………………….

9 Ibid, pp. 285-289.
10 Ibid, pp. 289-291.
11 Ibid, p. 291.