Abstract
The legacy of the record grain harvest of 1937 was complex. It increased the grain stocks held on farms and within rural households, and boosted the livestock sector, particularly livestock in private hands, to the benefit of the household activities of collective farmers. To the extent that food became more available, consumers gained in both the countryside and the towns. Because it was unexpected, and because the state was unprepared to capture the benefits for itself, the episode damaged Stalin’s trust in the agricultural officials. The state now struggled to regain control over grain surpluses; this struggle continued through the last prewar years and led to increased restriction of private farming activities.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Robert Indrikovich Eikhe, born in 1890, was an Old Bolshevik of Latvian ethnicity. He was a full member of the Central Committee from 1930 and a candidate member of the Politburo from 1935. As a leading official in Western Siberia, he was involved in preparations for the collectivsation of peasant agriculture (Vol. 1: 234, 249), and in management of the ensuing famine (Vol. 5: 85, 97). Before the Great Terror, he worked actively with state security officials in his region, calling for extra-judicial killings, organsing show trials and exposing plotters in the local Agriculture Commissariat office (Tragediya, 5(1) (2004): 256–259, 489; see also Wheatcroft, ed. (2002), 134–135 (S. G. Wheatcroft)). Appointed the people’s commissar of Agriculture on October 29, 1937, Eikhe was arrested and dismissed on April 29, 1938, and sentenced to death on February 4, 1940.
- 2.
Slavic Review, 34(4) (1974): 790–802 (Davies and Wheatcroft).
- 3.
RGASPI, 17/2/623: 29.
- 4.
RGASPI, 17/2/620: 1.
- 5.
The words quoted were used as a headline in the version of Eikhe’s speech published in Izvestiya on January 22, 1938 (reproduced in part in Tragediya, 5(2) (2006): 28–33). The full transcript, with interjections by Stalin and others, is available in RGASPI, 17/2/635: 4–25. The published text omitted the interjections.
- 6.
‘Eikhe, Robert Indrikovich,’ at https://ru.wikipedia.org/.
- 7.
The Latvian campaign was launched by NKVD Order no. 49990 on November 30, 1937 (Istoriya Stalinskogo Gulaga, 1 (2004): 285). In 1938, 11,490 Latvians were arrested and charged with espionage under various sections of Article 58 of the criminal code (Mozokhin (2011): 464).
- 8.
Ivan Alexandrovich Benediktov (1902–1983) was born into a family of post office employees in Kostroma province. In the 1920s, after a period of employment, he studied agricultural economics at the Timiryazev Academy. He was involved in the collectivisation of peasant farms in Uzbekistan; after a period of military service, he returned to Moscow to work as the director of a local state farm trust (it was here that he came into contact with Khrushchev, as explained in the text). In August 1937 Benediktov was appointed the people’s commissar of Grain and Livestock State Farms in the RSFSR, where he worked until April 1938. In March 1938 he also became first deputy to Eikhe, when he became the people’s commissar of Agriculture of the USSR.
- 9.
Khrushchev, ed. Memoirs, 1 (2004): 195.
- 10.
Before his death (the date is not given), Benediktov gave a long autobiographical interview in Molodaya Gvardiya (1989), no. 4: 12–65.
- 11.
SP (1939), no. 40: art. 308 (June 23, 1939).
- 12.
Izvestiya, May 6, 1938.
- 13.
Davies et al. eds. (1994): 127, 289.
- 14.
RGAE, 1562/1/1051:135–121 (April 8, 1938); Tragediya, 5(2) (2006): 90–97.
- 15.
Reproduced in Tragediya, 5(2) (2006): 98.
- 16.
SP (1938), no. 18: art. 117 (April 19, 1938).
- 17.
Finansovo-khozyaistvennoe zakonodatel’stvo (1938), no. 24: 9–10.
- 18.
Tragediya, 5(2) (2006): 311–317.
- 19.
Tragediya, 5(2) (2006): 319–321.
- 20.
Tragediya, 5(2) (2006): 338–339.
- 21.
Tragediya, 5(2) (2006): 361 (March 4).
- 22.
Tragediya, 5(2) (2006): 337.
- 23.
Tragediya, 5(2) (2006): 338–339.
- 24.
Tragediya, 5(2) (2006): 413–416.
- 25.
XVIII s”ezd (1939): 118–119.
- 26.
Zelenin (2006): 244.
- 27.
RGASPI, 17/2/643: 1–46.
- 28.
Tragediya, 5(2) (2006): 413, 482. Land was also removed from individual peasant households and from other peasants who were not members of kolkhozy.
- 29.
RGAE, 5446/22a/1092: 138 (September 1937). No figure for the 1937 harvest was given in the directives.
- 30.
Izvestiya, January 22, 1938.
- 31.
SZ (1938), no. 2: art. 5 (Sovnarkom decree ‘On the state plan of agricultural work for 1938’, January 27, 1938).
- 32.
Two copies of substantially the same draft plan are in RGAE, 7486/4/571: 251–260 (undated, in the name of Chernov) and 219–250 (dated October 1937, in the name of Paskutskii, including additional and other material).
- 33.
RGAE, 7486/4/571: 133–136 and 171–173.
- 34.
By March 20, 1938, according to the reports, 1.7% of the spring sowing target had already been met, and this compared with 1% on the same date in 1937. Izvestiya, March 25, 1938.
- 35.
Izvestiya, March 25, 1938 (V. Krainev).
- 36.
Reproduced in Tragediya, 5(2) (2006): 113–118.
- 37.
SP (1938), no. 28: art. 182 (Sovnarkom decree ‘On the state plan for the development of livestock for 1938’, June 17, 1938).
- 38.
RGASPI, 17/3/1003: 39 (November 22, 1938).
- 39.
XVIII s”ezd (1939): 282–315.
- 40.
XVIII s”ezd (1939): 409–416.
- 41.
Tragediya, 5(2) (2006): 384–387 (not dated but before March 26, 1939).
- 42.
Tragediya, 5(2) (2006): 330–333 (January 4, 1939). In 1953 these measures would be revived as Khrushchev’s ‘virgin lands’ campaign.
- 43.
SP (1939), no. 14: art. 88 (February 8, 1939).
- 44.
Tragediya, 5(2) (2006): 424–426 (May 24, 1939).
- 45.
Tragediya, 5(2) (2006): 475–479 (October 17, 1939). Between 1937 and 1939 the number of collective farms increased by around 2%, and the change in the land area they occupied was likely similar, with the first efforts to expand agriculture into the virgin lands.
- 46.
Tragediya, 5(1) (2004): 593 (December 5, 1939).
- 47.
XVIII s”ezd (1939): 298.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Davies, R.W., Harrison, M., Khlevniuk, O., Wheatcroft, S.G. (2018). Agriculture in 1938 and 1939. In: The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia Volume 7: The Soviet Economy and the Approach of War, 1937–1939. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-36238-4_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-36238-4_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-36237-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-36238-4
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)