Collectivization of agriculture has been carried out since the 1920s. Stalin demanded to speed up the process, to evict and even shoot some of the kulaks who fiercely resisted collectivization.
Collectivization as a war of the state
The forced enrollment of peasants in collective farms, in which property belonging to the family was taken away, turned into peasant riots. To intimidate people, some families were simply dispossessed, using their property as a material base for collective farms. Families were evicted from their places of residence, sent to the European north of the country, as well as to sparsely populated areas of Siberia, someone was imprisoned. It was the war officially declared by the state against the peasants.
This war culminated in the early 1930s, when millions of people were sent on the road in inappropriate conditions, without food or clothing. When dispossession of kulaks, first of all, they took away their shoes and warm clothes. Many did not reach their destinations, they died on the way. The young Soviet Republic demanded cheap labor to carry out the projects of the Party and government. And she was found, sending people en masse to exile and camps of the OGPU, for example, with their help, the famous White Sea-Baltic Canal was built. If not for the prisoners, it would have required a lot of equipment and money, and the prisoners with a pick and a wheelbarrow replaced it.
Local collectivization
It was not easy to determine who was a kulak and who was a middle peasant, since many wealthy peasants, after paying all kinds of taxes and food appropriation, found themselves on the brink of survival. It was ordered to resolve this issue on the ground, for this, young communists were sent to the districts, who, together with the committees of the peasant poor, had to draw up lists.
They took into account the lists of old, already outdated, as well as exposing speeches of neighbors in the village. The time had come for settling personal scores, when outright idlers and drunkards slandered the working neighbors who had once invited a hired worker to help clean up. The presence of two samovars in the family was the reason for the recognition of her kulak, subject to expulsion. Those who had the means of production, and the horse belonged to them, were expelled in the first place, taking everything from them, including even hot food from the oven.
There were such distortions everywhere, agriculture from exporting production became poor, the fruits of collectivization are still being heard. Then millions of people became victims of repression, who were evicted from the villages, who were shot, who were sent to camps, who were exiled. Their journey in those years was endless, sometimes they walked on foot. Having reached the indicated places, they built barracks, and did not imagine that they would have to live there for many decades, or even their whole life.
