Collectivisation

Causes:

- the NEP had introduced 'bourgoeis' aspects such as private trade which compromised socialist ideologies (state control of grain production would mean the government was not dependent on the peasantry)

- Rapid Industrialisation (wanted self-sufficiency to end dependence on foreign imports and catch up with western society as the NEP had only just caught up with pre-1914 industry)

Results:

- appeased party members of communist ideas (by 1937, 93% of peasant households had been collectivised)

- Unfortunately by the end of 1928, there were only 196,000 lorries in the USSR compared to over a million in the US

- 50% of collective farms were disabled in 1930 as too much grain had been collected (Stalin blamed over-zealous officials being 'dizzy with success')

- agriculture was primitive (5 million wooden ploughs were still in use)

Causes:

- Stalin wanted cheap food to keep factory wages low and production costs down

Results:

- grain production fell from 73.3 to 67.7 million tonnes in 1928 ( Twenty-Five Thousanders as managers did not have the skills to run farms effectively)

- rise in grain collection from 10.8 million at the beginning of collectivisation to 22.8 million by 1932

- In 1932, the USSR exported 1.73 million tonnes of grain abroad

- During the Great Depression in 1932, the percentage of manufacturing was greater than many western countries

Causes:

- Stalin encouraged class warfare and the rejection of Kulaks (by the mid 1930's kulaks as a class had gone, 15 million Kulaks were deported or sent to Gulags during collectivisation)

- Stalin was prepared to follow his political ambition at the expense of social aspects (4 million died of famine in 1933)

Results:

- in resistance peasants burned crops, barns, and killed livestock + between 1929 and 1933 half of pigs and cattle in the USSR had been slaughtered, over 40 million animals 

- private plots of land in the Kolkhoz was very successful (produced between 25-35% of agricultural output in the USSR)

- By 1933, most of the more active resisters had given up or been removed (effect of 'Law of Seventh-Eighths' in 1932 which prescribed 10 years in prison for any theft and later the death penalty)