Collectivization

A new phenomenon in the life of the Siberian village of the 1920s was the organization of collective farms, which were considered by the leadership as sprouts of socialist transformation in the countryside. They were organized by soldiers who returned from the fronts, destitute peasants and village communists. The first collective farms were created in the form of communes, in which everything was socialized, from land, horses, cows to clothes, spoons and tobacco. Communards ate in communal canteens. In 1922, there were 32 communes and 17 artels in the Tyumen province. Among the first Tyumen communes were Zarya (p. Dubynskoye), "Free Siberian" (Uspenskoye village), "Red Eagles" (Krasenevo village) and others. In the Tobolsk district, the first communes arose in 1927, there were two of them: "Red Ant" (village of Ertigarka) and "Red Plowman" (Zhukovka).

In artels, unlike communes, the main means of production were socialized. The members of the artels kept a private household. Most of the farms were small: arable land — 100−200 hectares, and 25−50 peasants on them. In 1924, the sown area of all collective farms was 2,786 hectares.

In communes and artels, an equalizing system of distribution of products was used, regardless of the amount and quality of labor invested, which were divided equally according to the number of eaters in the family ("equally for everyone"). There was no accounting of labor. Low labor productivity was typical for most farms. In a semi-impoverished state, they existed until the end of the twenties.

The first agricultural exhibition held in the USSR was the All-Russian Agricultural and Handicraft Industrial Exhibition, held in Moscow in 1923.

The exhibition was opened on August 19, 1923. The decree of the Central Executive Committee "On the All-Russian Agricultural Exhibition" dated December 15, 1922 served as the basis for the construction and holding of the exhibition. The place for its holding was Vorobyovy Gory, the territory on which the Park is located today. Gorky and the Neskuchny Garden.

The exhibition opened at a place where Muscovites' vegetable gardens have long existed, and a giant landfill arose under Soviet rule. A. V. Lunacharsky was present at the opening. On his last visit to Moscow, on October 19, 1923, V. I. Lenin inspected the exhibition.

The scale of the exhibition was amazing: the exhibition area was about 100 hectares; the number of buildings was 255 (including auxiliary structures). The cost of building the complex is about 13 million rubles. The exhibition could receive more than 1.5 million visitors. The exhibition was built in just 10 months, starting in October 1922. Unfortunately, most of the buildings of the exhibition were wooden and were dismantled as they deteriorated.

Back in the early 1920s, there were timid attempts to create collective peasant farms (unions (partnerships for joint cultivation of land), artels, communes).

The most important task of the XV Congress of the CPSU (b) (December 2−19, 1927) recognized the deployment of collectivization of agriculture, the transition to large-scale socialist production, based on Lenin’s principles of cooperation. The XV Congress of the CPSU (b) went down in history as the congress of collectivization of agriculture. The government’s policy in the field of collective farm construction was significantly influenced by the grain procurement crisis of 1927/28, which was largely provoked by the new food tax (2 times higher than usual). A card system has been introduced in cities since 1928. In order to provide the townspeople with food in the winter of 1927/28, even forced grain withdrawal was carried out.

The solution to all problems was seen as mass collectivization, which became a reality after the publication of Stalin’s article "The Year of the Great Turning Point" in the newspaper Pravda on November 7, 1929. Stalin claimed that "it was possible to organize a radical change in the depths of the peasantry itself." The country’s leadership, in the process of collectivization, sought to rely on poor and middle-class farms. However, they did not want to go to the collective farms. The best houses, cattle, equipment, and harness were taken in favor of the collective farms. By March 1, 1930, 70% of peasant farms in Tyumen, Tobolsk and Ishim districts had been involved in collective farms. This was achieved with the help of harsh measures.

In the village of Dmitrievka in the Yurginsky district, peasants who did not want to join the collective farm were evicted within one night. In the dead of night, the commissioners kicked the poor and middle peasants out of their homes and drove them 15 kilometers to another village. In the Novo-Zaimsky district, peasants were offered to sign two lists to choose from: either to the collective farm, or to exile.

In the village of Russian Medyanki, Tobolsk district, villagers dispossessed four families. They drove them out of their homes, locked them in a barn and kept them until the commissioner arrived. Four days later, the commission arrived, sorted it out, and everyone was released to their homes. And there were bare walls in the houses — everything was pulled apart.

Despite the mass terror, the established collective farms turned out to be fragile and began to disintegrate in the spring of 1930. For example, by May 1930, slightly more than 20% of peasant farms remained in the collective farms of the Tyumen district.

One of the most tragic pages of collectivization was dekulakization, that is, the forcible deprivation of a peasant, his property and civil rights. Local leaders acted on the principle: "It is better to overdo than underdo." In December 1930 The Ural Regional Committee of the CPSU (b) recognized the need to involve at least 66.3% of peasant farms in the Tobolsk district in collective farms. They decided to achieve this by repressive measures against the kulaks. The secret instructions of the OGPU determined who was to be dispossessed, who was to be evicted, who was to be left in place. According to the decision of the Ural Executive Committee of the CPSU (b) dated February 5, 1930, it was determined that 1,500 farms were evicted in the Tyumen district, 1,700 in the Ishim district. In March, the task was increased by another 750 families, and in June, another 290 families were added for construction and peat harvesting.

In total, in 1930−1932, about 5 thousand peasant farms were dispossessed in the Tyumen, Ishim and Tobolsk districts, more than 30 thousand people, including women and children, were expelled.

In the winter of 1932/33, a terrible famine swept the Volga region, Ukraine, Belarus, Kuban, the North Caucasus, and Kazakhstan. They also starved in Siberia. In 1934, the collective farmers were allowed to start vegetable gardens. This year, collectivization in Western Siberia as a whole ended. The collective farm system became the basis of the agricultural sector of the Tyumen Region.