ABSTRACT
The most important event to affect the character of rural life in the USSR after the 1917 revolution was the collectivization of agriculture which took place between 1929 and 1933. During this period millions of independent peasant farmers were forced to join large-scale farm units, kolkhozi, bringing with them their land, livestock and capital. Henceforth, they had to work together in the fields, selling their produce to state purchasing organizations and distributing the income made among themselves. Collectivization transformed rural society and rural politics, replacing rich peasants, priests and village elders by a new generation of leaders, represented by Communist party cadres, collective farm managers and ‘brigadiers’. Villages, hamlets and dispersed farmsteads were incorporated into the territory of collective farms, and in the east nomads were forced to adopt a sedentary life. The economic purpose of these transformations was to reorganize agriculture in such a way as to provide for the transfer of resources from the countryside to the towns. For the next few decades agriculture was ‘squeezed’ for the sake of heavy industry. Rural living standards suffered accordingly; agricultural workers became second-class citizens denied many of the legal rights of town dwellers, and they were poorly remunerated for their work in the collectives. In more recent decades agriculture has received large injections of capital, and wage reforms have meant that the standard of living of the rural population has been able to rise. Other reforms have removed many of the restrictions that formerly existed on the mobility of the rural population. Yet rural living standards remain relatively low in the pecking order for the allocation of resources in the USSR, and this continues to put limits on the realization of rural policies.
