Anne Applebaum's "Red Famine" book (4 of 12)

How effective was Soviet agricultural collectivization?

John Kenneth Galbraith, who trained as a agricultural economist, noted in 1977 that agricultural production and organization had been and still was a chronic problem for the Soviet system.

The peasants, whom Lenin had made part of the revolution, were its greater problem [than industrial production challenges]. After 1929, as the [Soviet] script required, farms were collectivized, private property in land effectively abolished . That was half a century ago [fom 1977]. To have responsibility for agriculture is still to have the most perilous post in the Soviet administration. It was the failure here that cost Khrushchev his job. In more recent times the shortcomings of Soviet agriculture have been one of the most important factors in capitalist living costs. When the Russian grain buyers arrive, prices go up and up.

It could be that land is tilled well only by men and women who are encouraged by high prices and dissuaded by low prices, who reap the rewards of their toil, suffer the penalties of their own sloth , who exploit themselves with long hours and little sleep. The other socialist countries - Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary - have made concessions to this necessity. So, in smaller measure, has the Soviet Union, where a surprising proportion of marketable production comes from privately owned plots of land. Where agriculture (and other small-scale enterprise) is concerned, there is a perceptible convergence, East or West, that accepts the rule of the market.¹ [my emphasis]

In 1977, the phrase “market economy” had not yet become a common description of capitalism. Nearly three decades later, in his last book published during his lifetime, Galbraith would write in his signature Veblen-esque style:

Managers, as will later be emphasized, not the owners of capital, are the effective power in the modern enterprise. For this reason and because the term "capitalism" evokes a sometimes sour history, the name is in decline. In the reputable expression of economists, business spokesmen, careful political orators and some journalists, it is now "the Market System." The word "capitalism" is still heard but not often from acute and articulate defenders of the system.²

He recounts some of the history of labels for the system like “free enterprise.”

So in reasonably learned expression there came "the market system." There was no adverse history here, in fact no history at all. It would have been hard, indeed, to find a more meaningless designation-this a reason for the choice.

Markets have been important in human existence at least since the invention of coinage, commonly ascribed to the Lydians in the eighth century B.C. A respectable span of time. In all countries, including the former Soviet Union, as also in what is still by some called Communist China, they had a major role.³ [my emphasis]

This is one of a series of posts about some of the issues raised by Anne Applebaum’s book Red Famine (2017) on the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33 in the context of competing national narratives in present-day eastern Europe. The first post can be found at this link.

As Galbraith’s 1977 observation indicates, collectivization left lingering problems as an economic concept. Sergii Plokhy notes that the ambitious goals for Soviet industrialization, which the collectivization effort was considered necessary to support, actually did move forward rapidly. (More in a later post on the larger geopolitical context.) But it didn’t produce miracles in agricultural production:

As the master of the Kremlin [Stalin] had wanted, Ukraine became a model of Soviet industrialization and collectivization. By the end of the 1930s, the industrial output of Ukraine exceeded that of 1913 eightfold, an achievement only slightly less impressive than that of the union' s largest republic - Russia. The agricultural sector was fully collectivized, with 98 percent of all households and 99.9 percent of all arable land listed as collective property. The problem was that impeccable collectivization statistics belied agriculture's dismal performance. In 1940, Ukraine produced 26.4 million tons of grain, only 3.3 million more than in 1913, posting an increase in agricultural production that amounted to less than 13 percent. The village, devastated by the Great Famine and collectivization, could not keep pace with the rapidly growing industrial city. Although Ukraine underwent rapid industrialization and modernization, it paid a tremendous price for that "leap forward." Between 1926 and 1937, the population of Soviet Ukraine fell from 29 to 26.5 million, rising to slightly more than 28 million in 1939.⁴ [my emphasis]

The extent to which the industrialization and related agricultural collectivization was successful is important. Because it becomes a central fact in world history. Six years after 1933, Germany invades Poland. In 1941, Germany invades the USSR. The project of rapid development was successful enough to enable the Soviet Union – with assistance from allies including the US – to halt what remains the largest invasion in history on the outskirts of Moscow.

That obviously doesn’t justify everything that happened, or eliminate what-if questions about whether collectivization could have been accomplished in a less destructive fashion. It seems very clear that the central government’s response once they clearly knew mass famine was taking place was irresponsibly inadequate, at best.

But arguments about whether collectivization amounted to the “the enslavement of the peasantry,” as Stalin biographer Stephen Kotkin of the Hoover Institution put it in 2017[4], or whether it qualifies in today’s understanding of genocide against Ukrainians as Ukrainians, are distinct questions. Kotkin addresses both issues later on in the same interview saying explicitly, “Stalin did not intend for millions of people to die in the famine.”⁵ And he continues, “there’s no documentation of him intending to kill peasants or intending to kill Ukrainians or anybody else as a result of – during collectivization.”⁶

R.W. Davies and Stephen G. Wheatcroft are the authors of The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933 (2004). In an article replying to criticism of that book, they reiterate their criticisms of the collectivization program. But they write: “However, we have found no evidence, either direct or indirect, that Stalin sought deliberately to starve the peasants. The top-secret decisions of the Politburo, endorsed by Stalin, never hint at a policy of deliberate starvation.” Citing several official documents dealing with aspects of the famine, they explain:

Our view of Stalin and the famine is close to that of Robert Conquest, who would earlier have been considered the champion of the argument that Stalin had intentionally caused the famine and had acted in a genocidal manner. In 2003, Dr Conquest wrote to us explaining that he does not hold the view that 'Stalin purposely inflicted the 1933 famine. No. What I argue is that with resulting famine imminent, he could have prevented it, but put "Soviet interest" other than feeding the starving first - thus consciously abetting it'.⁷[1]

1. Galbraith, John Kenneth (1977): The Age of Uncertainty: A History of Economic Ideas and Their Consequences 154-5. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

2. [Galbraith, John Kenneth (2004): The Economics of Innocent Fraud: Truth for Our Time, 4-5. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin.

3. Ibid., 6.

4. Plokhy, Serhii (2021): The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, 254-5. New York: Basic Books.

5. Stalinism Triumphant: Famine, Terror, And Hitler's Shadow, 1929-1941. Hoover Institution YouTube channel 12/12/2017. <

(Accessed: 2023-07-08). Segment starting at 29:00. Kotkin there calls collectivization “the core crime of this criminal regime.”

6. Ibid., After 52:30.

7. Davies, R.W. & Wheatcroft, Stephen G. (2006): Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932-33: A Reply to Ellman. Europe-Asia Studies 58:4, 628-629. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/20451229> Accessed: 2023-11-08).

The were responding to a review: Gregory, Paul (2006): Review. Journal of Modern History 78:2. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/505849> (Accessed: 2023-11-08).