Talk:Yakov Yakovlev

Deleting the unsubstantiated adjective in the intro

As requested, I am taking my proposal to delete this page's unsourced, unequivocal use of the word "forced" to describe collectivization to the talk page.

The Soviet Union's efforts to consolidate agriculture into a system of "kolkhozy" and "sovkhozy" involved a number of discrepancies between the Party's general line and the actions by rank-and-file membership; the former stressed the "voluntary nature" of collectivization from the beginning, whereas the latter sometimes resorted to coercion. The following primary source document establishes the CPSU's perspective on the matter:

"But with all the phenomenal progress of collectivization, certain faults on the part of Party workers, distortions of the Party policy in collective farm development, soon revealed themselves. Although the Central Committee had warned Party workers not to be carried away by the success of collectivization, many of them began to force the pace of collectivization artificially, without regard to the conditions of time and place, and heedless of the degree of readiness of the peasants to join the collective farms…. It was found that the voluntary principle of forming collective farms was being violated, and that in a number of districts the peasants were being forced into the collective farms under threat of being dispossessed, disfranchised, and so on."

Commission of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (B.), Ed. History of the CPSU (Bolsheviks): Short Course. Moscow: FLPH, 1939, p. 307

The following secondary source documents support the existence of this tension:

"Although the center equipped local officials with the legislative powers necessary for de facto dekulakization, many regional party organizations, particularly those in grain-producing regions, went one step further and issued orders for the expropriation or exile of kulaks on a relatively large scale from the fall of 1929. In the Lower Volga, Middle Volga, Siberia, and Ukraine, thousands of peasants were expropriated and/or exiled on the basis of regional party decisions made prior to the adoption of the central decree on dekulakization on Jan. 5, 1930. By the time of the central decree, the center was recognizing and endorsing what had already become a reality in many parts of the countryside. Implementation of dekulakization following the central decree spread far beyond the grain-producing regions into grain-deficit and national minority regions in spite of the center’s directives not to implement dekulakization outside of regions of wholesale collectivization, which was then limited mainly to grain-producing regions. The result was massive violations that soon led the center to issue more precise directives in late January and early February, in hope of establishing control over the campaign and standardizing and regulating procedures.

…Finally, the center issued a strict warning that dekulakization was to occur only in regions of wholesale collectivization and that dekulakization should not be considered an end in itself. These directives represented the center’s belated attempt to re-gain the initiative in policy implementation. The directives, however, failed to stem the tide of violence and anarchy unleashed in the countryside, and the center was finally forced in early March to signal a retreat with the publication of Stalin’s famous article, “Dizziness with Success,” and the Central Committee decree of March 14, 1930."

Getty and Manning. Stalinist Terror. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 67

"It is undoubtedly true that in many areas there was needless violence and suffering. But this did not originate with Stalin. It was the hour of Russia’s peasant masses, who had been degraded and brutalized for centuries and who had countless blood debts to settle with their oppressors. Stalin may have unleashed their fury, but he was not the one who had caused it to build up for centuries. In fact it was Stalin who checked the excesses generated by the enthusiasm of the collective movement. In early 1930 he published in Pravda “Dizzy with Success,” reiterating that “the voluntary principle” of the collective farm movement must under no circumstances be violated and that anybody who engages in forced collectivization objectively aids the enemies of socialism. Furthermore, he argues, the correct form for the present time is the co-operative (known as the artel), in which “the household plots (small vegetable gardens, small orchards), the dwelling houses, a part of the dairy cattle, small livestock, poultry, etc., are not socialized.” Again, overzealous attempts to push beyond this objectively aid the enemy. The movement must be based on the needs and desires of the masses of peasants. Stalin’s decision about the kulaks perfectly exemplifies the limits under which he operated. He could decide, as he did, to end the kulaks as a class by allowing the poor and middle peasants to expropriate their land. Or he could decide to let the kulaks continue withholding their grain from the starving peasants and workers, with whatever result. He might have continued bribing the kulaks. But it is highly doubtful, to say the least, that he had the option of persuading the kulaks into becoming good socialists."

Franklin, Bruce, Ed. The Essential Stalin; Major Theoretical Writings. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1972, p. 16-19

After the Politburo published the aforementioned "Dizzy with Success," pressure from the peasantry forced local Party members into greater harmony with the line of the CPSU. Mark Tauger suggests as much:

"The chronology of these protests also helps us to interpret them as well. By far most protests occurred in March, with many fewer in April and even fewer in February. This suggests that in February, peasants protested against the most flagrant abuses and the most impossible situations in the new or expanded collectives. The vast increase in protests in March and April, however, followed and must have reflected the publication on 2 March 1930 of Stalin’s article ‘Dizzy with Success’, which condemned local officials for excesses and stated that collectives had to be formed voluntarily. Many sources show that peasants all over the USSR read this article, since it was published in virtually every newspaper, and because of it many of them upbraided local officials for forcing them to join kolkhozy, left the farms, and protested [Davies, 1980a: 270–72].

...

First, collectivization was a programme most peasants did not understand. Resistance scholars have documented the bizarre rumours that spread through the villages in early 1930. Whatever else those rumours indicate about peasant mentalite´, they clearly reflected a misunderstanding of collectivization. Even peasants’ identification of collectivization as serfdom distorted the policy (as discussed above).17 Their confusion may explain why the vast majority of the protests, as the 1931 OGPU report indicated, were resolved by explanations and persuasion. OGPU reports from the central Russian province of Riazan provide further examples of this pattern: when kolkhoz organizers conducted sufficient explanatory work, collectivization proceeded successfully. In one village, organizers forced the kolkhoz on the peasants and they resisted, while in a neighbouring one, organizers explained it at length and peasants joined. In another case women peasants came to the village meeting intending to disrupt it, but when they found out what a kolkhoz actually was, they joined [Viola et al., 1998: 134–5, 170]. Of course, we cannot know how representative such anecdotal reports were, especially because most sources were concerned with problems rather than favourable events. But these sources do document that some peasants responded with adaptation rather than resistance. And the 1931 OGPU report’s evidence that most protests were not violent rebellions, and its implication that resistance was not the majority response of the peasants, both imply in turn that such adaptive responses must have been at least as widespread as resistance, if not more widespread.

...Stalin wrote the article on the basis of secret reports on excesses and peasant protests during collectivization and appeals by regional officials, including Ukraine’s Petrovskii (as mentioned above the head of government in Soviet Ukraine), to take measures to correct the situation. Thus peasant statements and actions were among the sources for Stalin’s letter [Danilov et al., 1999–2002: Vol.2, 832–3]. The Politburo published Stalin’s letter in the hope of averting even greater rebellions. Sergo Ordzhonikidze, a top Soviet official and associate of Stalin, wrote from Ukraine in late March, after the suppression of three rebellions, that without Stalin’s article and the TsK (Communist Party Central Committee) decree that followed it, ‘we would have had very intense complications in Ukraine’ [Danilov et al., 1999–2002: Vol.2, 368–9; Vasil’ev and Viola, 1997: 233]."

Tauger, M. Soviet Peasants and Collectivization, 1930-39: Resistance and Adaptation. Journal of Peasant Studies, 2004

Of course, there is a plethora of rival sources out there offering competing accounts. But the existence of this scholarly controversy, and the multifaceted complexities of collectivization itself, should discourage us from blithely labeling it as either "forced" or "voluntary." This adjective should either be deleted or heavily qualified to better reflect the reality of the topic.

Firstly, what is your argument against using the term "forced" exactly? Are you attempting to assert that the process of collectivisation was overwhelmingly implemented without coercion? Secondly, I don't understand what relevance the opinions/assertions of the CPSU or Stalin has to the question of whether people were forced to join collectivised farms. Stalin's 'Dizzy with Success' article is widely seen as an attempt to push the blame of the violence of collectivisation onto local officials, and I therefore don't see the legitimacy in behaving as if his statements were accurate explanation of the facts on the ground. Finally Mark Tauger's claims are not without controversy either, he has had a number of public academic disagreements over the years given his position regarding the Holodomor. These include historians R. W. Davies and Stephen Wheatcroft, as well as David R. Marples, so we have to take account of that.

Might I recommend that you make your wishes clear before you start producing Theodosian walls of text? Alssa1 (talk) 11:05, 24 August 2021 (UTC)

Would you also be able to substantiate the claim that historian Robert Conquest is a "discredited source" as you claimed in your edit? Alssa1 (talk) 17:26, 24 August 2021 (UTC)