Christopher Farris Bush and Professor Rodney Bohac, History
Collective farms in the Soviet Union have always been enigmatic. Stalin’s initiative to collectivize the peasants in 1930 met with heavy opposition. With heavy-handed brutality, the government put down the rebellions and forced farmers to stay on the Kolkhoz to endure the 1932-1933 famine. While this famine reached holocaust-levels of casualties, the incident has gone relatively unnoticed. With the start of World War II conditions on the collective farm worsened due to redirected funds and lack of the male workers needed to perform the rigorous labor. Rumors of Western intervention to alleviate suffering, kept the hopes of the downtrodden peasants aloft1. At the end of the war their dreams were crushed as it became apparent that there would be no intervention. That coupled with the extreme loss of able-bodied workers to the war made the future seemed grave to kolkhoz members. As the triumphant victors returned, they faced the challenge of rebuilding the farm and stabilizing their harvests. What happened in this time period is crucial to understanding the outcome of the Kolkhoz. These brave men and women stepped forward to forge the longest surviving Soviet system. The irony and the enigma is that the system most bitterly protested became the longest lasting.
The history of collectivized farming is a subject of deep interest to me; it was a social upheaval of gigantic proportion, and yet, has largely gone unstudied. Texts have been written which deal with the generalities of the subject; whether in a history textbook or a historical novel, history easily becomes a mere abstract list of names, dates, and facts. However, factual autobiographical sketches put a real human face on the subject; these primary source narratives draw a reader’s attention to the personal and very real nature of history and its people, their struggles and their triumphs.
This summer I traveled to Iaroslavl, Russia to study the daily life of collective farm in this region. I chose to focus on this reason because I had lived there previously and had several contacts. At the beginning of my stay I consulted Dr. Adrea Govarelov Chechikov, a professor of history at Domodedovski University, and he referred me to the seminal works on post world war kolkhozi. I acquired many of these Soviet-era accounts to establish the historiography on my topic.
For one month I lived in Iaroslavl and studied documents on collective farms in the regional and party archives. My research focused on the personal letters sent by collective farm workers to the regional newspaper, Severnii Rabochik (Northern Worker). Through reading these letters I became aware of two distinct styles of writing generally used by the writers. Either the author painted a rosy picture with vague language and emphasis on numerical qualification of success or the author outlined specific difficulties blaming them on the corruption on abuses or inaptitude of local collective farm leadership. By reading the opening lines of a letter, it was apparent which style the author of any given letter would pursue. The more critical letters gave a richer insight into the hardships and difficulties that the kolkhozniki faced. In addition, some of the letters praising the local leadership also provided evidence of greater underlying social and economic difficulties. For example, one farmer wrote that hard work paid off because after the collective had achieved its quota the leader allowed the workers time to work on their private plots. This document shows that the peasants found success in their personal farming rather than in the collective and highlighted the undue praise given to the kolkhoz by some writers to the paper.
In addition to studying documents in the archive, I also conducted several interviews with former kolkhozniki. These oral histories provided me with rich information on the personal aspect of the collective farm. Many of the interviewees shared the impact of the kolkhoz on their life and commented on the social structure present at that time. I enjoyed listening to their personal anecdotes and hope to use them in my paper. They also alerted me to several difficulties and successes on the farm that helped me to research issues that were not apparent in my study of the archival documents.
Although my research was successful, some factors hindered me in gathering all of the information which I wanted. I had planned to focus on two or three kolkhozi but the documents in the archives were generally not divided by districts or collectives. Therefore, I was forced to gather documents from the entire Iaroslavl region. In addition, many of the kolkhozniki were still influenced by the Soviet fear of speaking to foreigners. Only relatives of my friends were willing to speak with me. I attempted to interview random people on the street but found that they seldom granted permission for me to speak with them and provided poor information. I also wanted to interview multiple members of each kolkhoz but the interviewees were not willing to refer their friends. Therefore, I was limited mainly to interviewing isolated kolkhozniki who had emigrated from the rural districts. Despite this challenge, I attempted to compensate by interviewing former collective farmers from different backgrounds. I spoke with a teacher, club manager, daughter of a kolkhoz director, someone who worked in the city and returned for the weekends, and a soldier who returned from the front. I hoped to gain a universal understanding of how people from different positions in the kolkhoz interacted and felt about their work.
My research gave me great insights into the experiences of kolkhoz workers after World War II and allowed me to experience of working in the archives and with people. While I discovered many things about the collective farm, there remains much more to be discovered. I hope to return next year to pursue this topic further.
1 Elena Zubkova, Russia After the War, New York: M. E. Sharpe 1998. Pg. 61.