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Betting on the kolkhoz ...
Stalin understood that socialism was threatened from three sides. Hunger riots could take place in the cities. The kulaks in the countryside could strengthen their position, thereby making socialist industrialization impossible. Finally, foreign military interventions were in the offing.
According to Kalinin, the Soviet President, a Politburo commission on the kolkhozy established in 1927 under Molotov's leadership brought about a `mental revolution'.
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Ibid. , p. 38.
Its work led to the adoption of a resolution by the Fifteenth Congress of the Party, in December 1927:
`Where is the way out? The way out is in the passing of small disintegrated peasant farms into large-scaled amalgamated farms, on the basis of communal tillage of the soil; in passing to collective tillage of the soil on the basis of the new higher technique. The way out is to amalgamate the petty and tiny peasant farms gradually but steadily, not by means of pressure but by example and conviction, into large-scale undertakings on the basis of communal, fraternal collective tillage of the soil, applying scientific methods for the intensification of agriculture.'
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Webb, op. cit. , p. 245, n. 1.
Again in 1927, it was decided to focus on the political line of limiting the exploiting tendencies of the rural bourgeoisie. The government imposed new taxes on the revenues of the kulaks. The latter had to meet higher quotas during grain collection. The village Soviet could seize their unused land. The number of workers they could hire was limited.
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Davies, op. cit. , pp. 46, 49--50. Nicolaï Boukharine, 328uvres choisies en un volume (Moscow: Éditions du Progrès, 1988), p. 424.
Fri Aug 25 09:03:42 PDT 1995