Talk:Collectivisation in the USSR

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[edit] Old talk

There have been a lot of recent entries in the Casualties section (by a new user, if I was VeryVerily I would be accusing him of being a sockpuppet of Fred Bauder already).

I added some stuff on Ukraine's current political climate. Anyone reading the Main Page is aware that Ukraine is bitterly divided between pro-Russian and pro-Western leaders, and that only one party plays up these memorials, which even your own citations say few attend, bears mentioning.

The drought and typhoid epidemic should be mentioned.

And so forth. I know a lot of Ukrainians - most of them talk about the Nazis coming into their villages and shooting everyone, including children, they didn't worry much about a bad harvest during the same period of time the US had its own dust bowl, with sheriffs throwing families off their farms. Ruy Lopez 06:14, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Once again, the Ruymaster's last sentence proves that he is the master of analogies. Tard. Trey Stone 04:49, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Dust Bowl = Great Famine. Next thing ya know Ruy will be comparing the great purges to the McCarthy trials. Oh wait -- he's probably already done that. J. Parker Stone 01:07, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I will assume I am the new user Ruy is referring to. Rest assured, I am not made of wool and my eyes are not sewn on. Furthermore, I don't know Fred Bauder and have never communicated with him outside of this article's discussion's page.
As for this entry, I came across it one day and was so surprised at what I read that it spurred me to join Wikipedia and provide my own input. Presumably that's the point of a Wiki? I'm here to do two things: 1) ensure that a neutral POV is presented and 2) hopefully make this entry readable by mere mortals.
IMHO, this entry has become an ideological battleground with neither side showing much interest in maintaining a neutral POV, much less presenting the opposition's viewpoints. When I edited the Casualties section the other day, it was to distill a rambling, incoherent mess into something that presented factual information succinctly. I did not remove contrasting viewpoints, rather I trimmed irrelevant material and identified the sources of all the claims in order to let the reader draw her own conclusions.
Regarding the most recent additions about the current political climate in Ukraine, what does that have to do with the price of tea in China? The events under discussion in this article ("Collectivisation in the USSR") occurred 70 years ago. I don't think a discussion of current political events is appropriate or even relevant to the article. Why is it necessary? That's a rhetorical question. I know why it's necessary but it's not appropriate if your goal is a neutral POV.
I'm glad you know a lot of Ukrainians, Ruy. Is it safe to assume they're now living in the United States? If so, there are probably some very simple explanations as to why they don't discuss the 1930s famine. But that would require going off on yet another tangent.
Anyways, I hope we can do without the antagonism I saw prior to this page being protected. This is a very important topic and it deserves a well-researched, unbiased Wikipedia entry. Horbal 09:44, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I don't know what events 70 years after the fact have to do with anything, but someone felt they had to add comments on events in 1998 so I spoke about the political issues regarding this. You will have to ask the person who originally thought what happened 70 years afterward was relevant. Everyking apparently thought part of it was irrelevant but kept the anti-communist feelings from 70 years later, so I removed all of it. I don't care if it is the 70 years thing is in or not, but if someone wants to discuss perceptions of this 70 years after the fact, let it be discussed, we're not restricted to discussing only negative perceptions 70 years after the fact. Ruy Lopez 18:19, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I also noticed your disdain for discussing events 70 years after the fact didn't prevent you from noting that the New York Times current management is distancing itself from Walter Duranty's reporting on these events 70 years ago. Ruy Lopez 18:21, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I support the removal of the "1998 declaration" passage. If the page is to remain on topic, we need to keep it focussed on what happened in the 30s. Let's state what happened to the best of our abilities given the passage of time and keep it at that. Holodomor memorials would be better discussed on a dedicated page, IMHO.
As for Duranty, I feel it's tremendously irresponsible to rely upon the authority of the New York Times in covering these events and not point out the facts that later came to light about their coverage. It's one thing to inject modern day political views into events that transpired a long time ago. It is _quite_ another to reveal a sham for what it is. Horbal 21:04, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This article is an utter disgrace, and if I ever return to editing modern history articles, this will be one of the first I will rewrite. Adam 22:40, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Bias

Definately lots of bias here, but who has the time to fix it... Mir 05:15, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Well I made lots of edits to this removing what looked biased to me. Because there are lots of small edits, please dont revert everything, but bring up the section that doesn't seem right to the talk page. The passage that some may find contraversial is the Soviet govn't cutting off supplies to areas/ppl who resisted collectivization. I dont know if there is a way to prove this beyond doubt, but there are certainly sources out there that support this. However, if there is a problem with the way it is worded, I would accept "It is believed that the Soviet government cut off supplieds to kulaks and areas that resisted collectivization", or something in that respect. Also, maybe someone can clarify this for me but weren't farmers self sufficient enough that cutting off supplies to them wouldn't lead to famine. Or was the government responsible with not providing them with relief of the famine, after the livestock and grain has been confiscated/destroyed. Mir 17:50, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Re: You are correct the farmers (especially kulaks) were self-sufficient to survive a famine; however, confiscation of livestock and grain forced the famine; I think that had next year's grain was not confiscated the famine would not have been as severe (perhaps a few million less).

--Wiki User

[edit] Use of word kulak

There are a lot of references to kulaks in this article. From what I know, the term was prejorative. Maybe we should use "rich peasants" instead of "kulaks". After all isn't the word kulak comparable to word nigger in its context. Mir 05:49, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Does that mean we can change Khmer Rouge, Shining Path, Viet Cong, partial birth abortion, free market and so on?
Never mind. I think the word kulak should be mentioned once or twice, but beyond that rich peasant is fine. Ruy Lopez 07:22, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Kulak is historically accurate as the language used by Communist cadre included "poor peasant", "middle peasant", "rich peasant" and "kulak". There were different consequences for rich peasants from those for those classified as kulaks. Fred Bauder 11:32, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

I am not sure you are correct about "rich peasants". It's probably an incorrect translation of zazhytochny which means "well to do", not "rich". I think bogaty (rich) was synomymous with "kulak" and "miroyed" (the eater of a community). --Gene s

I'm looking for the Russian words, (I'm sorry, but no cyrillic on this computer), I have found "serednyak", middle-income peasant. I havn't found a word for rich peasant other than kulak, so you may be correct. Fred Bauder 14:20, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

I think, it goes like bednyak (poor) - serednyak (middle)- kulak (rich). At least initially kulak was not a pejorative term. It was meant as someone economically strong, solid. Miroed was a pejorative term for rich peasants. --Gene s 15:06, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The USSR goal was equal status for all peasants so I dont see why they would make the distinction between rich peasants and kulaks, if there it is possible to make a distinction. 139.142.189.66 20:51, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)


Kulak means rich peasant, though its direct translation from russian means "tight fisted one", i believe this term was originally used during the requisitioning of war communism, when the rich peasants refused to give up their grain and were somewhat 'tight fisted'. 00:04, 6 Jan 2005


As far as I knew, the term Kulak / Khulak evolved from describing a rich class of peasant, and became a term the government of the USSR used to brand those it decided to select out as enemies of the state as part of their policy of inciting class warfare to deflect anger at the relative failure of collectivisation from themselves.

Not all those branded Kulaks were actually rich, whilst not all rich peasants were called Kulaks.

I don't know how to define the precise true meaning of Kulak, but it should either be used in the capacity of its true and original meaning, or of how the term was used as a brand, not both. This should be defined in the article.

The term 'kulak' is offensive to nobody because the distinction of a kulak from any other peasant was not significant. Whatever the orginial Russian meaning of the word, it was used to describe Stalin's scapegoats... that is any peasant which had the even the samllest potential to incite the envy of other peasants. Stalin ordered "the liquidation of kulaks as a class" in his Leninist drive for "class struggle". Thus he was able to mobilise the proletariat and some peasants themselves in assisting with grain requisition by brutal force, by cultivating the image of greedy "class enemy" lurking in the countryside.

This is nonsense, especially for this: "is offensive to nobody because the distinction of a kulak from any other peasant was not significant". It was significant. First, there were poors with very few property, second, after "raskulachivanie" (dispossession), "kulak" became a stamp on those people. Nobody uses nazi's terms for the oppressed nations. Nobody uses the term "vrag naroda" (people's enemy) without quotes, no normal person would call so anybody sentenced with this statement. The same for "kulak". Ъыь 08:45, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

The Kulaks were quite simply the term used by the government to denote the group of people it used as a scapegoat for its problems. Often times this happened to be the richer peasants, as they were an easy group of people to target to please the lowest classes. However, this was not only not always the case, but by virtue of this definition, the use of "rich peasants" as a replacement for the term "kulak" is a misnomer. The two terms are clearly not interchangeable. GWing02 7 Nov 2005

I think that earlier, under the Russian Empire, the term may have been more innocent. But during the 1932–33 famine, local officials were put under intense pressure to find kulaks, and given complete discretion to identify them. The results were predictable. —Michael Z. 2005-11-8 06:34 Z
The word 'kulak' without quotation marks or without the added 'so-called' is little more than hate-language. It should not be used as if it described something that actually has a resemblance to reality. The word was used by the Bolsheviks to de-humanize their political opponents, similar to the term 'rootless cosmopolitan', though the latter was a purely Bolshevik invention. Dietwald 09:16, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
I'm a native speaker and can't agree more. From my reading experience, the word is used as a negative label, and the victims or their relatives never do use it, neither the historic reports. Pre-perestroika history textbooks for 5-th grade do use it, but that's ugly. Ъыь 06:15, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I would just like to point out that anyone currently being taught History (at least in England) is highly likely to have been taught to use 'kulak'. Additionally, I think you will find kulak defined in English as "kulak noun, historical a wealthy, property-owning Russian peasant." by Chambers Dictionary, so surely: a) It is fine to use the word kulak in English since it is not derogatory by definition. or b) The dictionary definition should be changed to reflect the outcome of this discussion.

At the time in Russia, it was hard to define actually what a kulak was. Officials who enforced the law were unsure of the correct definition and so rounded up any people who were there at the time. How can we, with hindsight, discuss the exact definition of the term 'kulak' if the people who were there did not know themselves?

[edit] revisions by Ruy Lopez

Your other edits are reasonable but can you explain why you made these changes:

1. liquidation of private property of land. changed to: transfer of the land from kulaks to peasants.

I favor the first version because the land wasnt realy transfered to peasants, it was transfered to the state (or am I wrong). Furthermore, land was taken from everyone who had land, not just kulaks and again transfered to the state.

liquidation of private property of land doesn't sound like a phrase from someone who uses English as their primary language. The important thing is that private property did not cease to exist - peasants shoes weren't owned by the state, so why mention private property of all? "Ownership of land, the majority of which was in the hands of rich peasants, was transfered to the state" is fine.
Private ownership of land specifically did cease. I dont know if its right to say kulaks had the majority of land, anyone have any stats on this? If they had more than 50% then i'd agree with "Ownership of land, the majority of which was in the hands of rich peasants, was transfered to the state". Also, while theoretically land was supposed to go to the peasants in reallity it went to the state Mir 23:54, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

2. Removal of link to canadian resolution. I put this link because it affirms the validity of the paragraph instead of something the Ukrainian historians made up. Are you disputing that the soviet government took those actions? 139.142.189.66 21:21, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I don't mind if the resolution is there but it belongs at the end of the article, if at all. The Canadian government deciding what happened in the Ukraine 70 years after the fact is - politically motivated, far removed from the fact and in many ways irrelevant. Ruy Lopez 21:50, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What is your argument for it being politically motivated. It is as biased as anything Stalin did, and his quotes are included in the article. Also, you removed it from that section without putting it at the end. Mir 23:54, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

During the revolution, the peasants seized the land, but the state had nationalized it by decree. See THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF LAND SOCIALIZATION. So no one owned land, but there was an existing right to use it. It was that use which was extinquished, not a true property right, however the language used to describe collectivization customarily describes the situation in terms of property. Also, most land was owned by poor and middle peasants, kulaks owned more than the average, but only a small fraction of the total. Fred Bauder 22:02, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

I noticed that Ruy Lopez removed statements that the collectivization had been forced. I'm bringing this information back, at least until Ruy reveals his rationale. Boraczek 09:48, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Drought

I have been able to find evidence for a drought in 1931 (by searching online at Amazon in Years of Hunger, ISBN 0333311078, but not during the period of greatest impact of the famine, early 1933, following the harvest of 1932. Could those of you who feel drought played a significant role in the famine, please clarify the situation? Also, while there is some mention of both typhus and typhoid affecting people weakened by starvation, there does not seem to be any evidence of this as an independent factor. Fred Bauder 15:10, Dec 14, 2004 (UTC)


[edit] external links

Trey Stone, you can not remove links to web pages whose opinion you disagree with, and leave only external links to pages you agree with. This is trying to impose your POV on the article. Ruy Lopez 11:10, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Central Asia and Kazakhstan

In areas where the major agricultural activity was nomadic herding, collectivisation met with massive resistance and major losses of livestock. Hundreds of thousands of households fled into [[China]] and of those who remained as many as a million died in the resulting famine. Livestock in Kazakhstan fell from 7 million cattle to 1.6 million and from 22 million sheep to 1.7 million. In [[Mongolia]], a Soviet dependency, attempted collectivisation was abandoned in 1932 after the loss of 8 million head of livestock<!--From the chapter, "Central Asia and the Kazakh Tragedy, pages 189-198, Harvest of Sorrow, ISBN 0195040546-->.

Ruy Lopez removed the above with the comment, "See talk", but I see nothing on talk that relates to it. These sorts of facts need to be included in article. As late as the 1950s and 60s a similar attempt was made in Tibet with dismal results. This is what happens when people don't have access to accurate information. It is Wikipedia's responsibility to have accurate information available for people to consider. We never know who may be reading an article and then acting on it decades later. Fred Bauder 16:01, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Moving articles back and forth

What's the deal with moving Collectivisation to Collectivization and back? Is is some sort of pissing match? --Gene s 09:46, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You're damn straight it is. J. Parker Stone 22:00, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Reversion

VeryVerily's changes reverted as a condition of my unblocking him. Although his changes seem mostly rather minor, he also deleted a good deal of material in the same edit and should make such changes gradually and with due respect of using the discussion pages a well where there is disagreement. - Marshman 05:30, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I noted in E-mail to Marshman that most of the deletion was a mistake, but not a huge one as this is a wiki where it's easy to patch such things up, but even so this was absolutely not a revert as Neutrality falsely charged (and blocks are harder to fix). I have made the edit with the paragraphs alluded to in E-mail restored, which is what we agreed to. VeryVerily 06:07, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Goebbels claims

just simply reading the page, I noticed the sentence "Decades later, with the start of the Cold War, historians would begin reinvestigating Goebbels' claims and, surprisingly, most investigators found them to be true." No mention is made of what Goebbels claims are, and no link is provided. This seems rather dumb.

[edit] Unselfconscious use of the term "kulak"

The terminology has been discussed before (#Use of word kulak, above), but this exact issue wasn't broached.

Kulak may have been a traditional term for a class in the Russian Empire, but it was used and wildly misused by the Soviet communist party. I'm concerned that this article is making the mistake of unselfconsciously doing the same when it says that "kulaks did this or that", or that "X number of kulaks were deported".

I'm not saying the term is offensive, I'm saying that we don't use the term, or at least that we don't assign the same meaning that the Soviets did during collectivization.

The article at kulak seems to avoid this, by referring to "people who were labelled kulaks", or putting quotation marks around the word. Would anyone oppose my editing this article, and any others, to use the term in the same way as that article does? —Michael Z. 2005-04-7 03:13 Z

Ye me

Just wanted to add is some of the Russian translation slightly wrong, just noticed some differances of the spelling for state and collective farms?


I have tried to clean up the article in this respect. Dietwald 09:49, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I just wanted to point out that by the English dictionary, since this article is written in English, defines a kulak as "kulak noun, historical a wealthy, property-owning Russian peasant." Why don't we use this definition of Kulak?82.13.128.252 14:05, 9 December 2006 (UTC)Martin H.

The problem is that simply people were labelled "kulaks" by the communists doesn't mean they necessarily were wealthy, property-owning Russian peasants. It may have been the case, or they may have simply been considered enemies for their opposition to communism, and therefor accused of being kulaks. - 70.71.155.24 20:02, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] False statements

Some communists such as Jeff Coplon and Ludo Martens have recently claimed a much more modest figure of between several hundred thousand and two million deaths.

This is complete nonesense. Walter Duranty in August 1933 for "The New York Times" estimated that there were 2 million excess deaths in the famine-stricken regions of Ukraine, Lower Volga, and North Caucusus. Over 60 years later, his estimates have been vindicated as Russian archives have revealed that excess deaths in Ukraine, Lower Volga, and North Caucusus amounted to slightly under 2 million for 1932-1933. The following table is derived from Russia's archives and is from "Years of Hunger: Sovet Agriculture, 1931-1933" by Stephen Wheatcroft and R.W Davies. It has been posted by scholar Mark Harrison of Warwick University:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/harrison/archive/hunger/deaths.xls

Ah, you're basing figures off of SOVIET records and an article written by the Times in 1933? A bit silly to say the least.

[edit] Genocide

Repeated attempts to use the term genocide to describe the Ukrainian famine are POV. Even if I agree with you that it was a genocide, it's still disputed by a number of historians. It's clearly a famine, clearly a democide (which includes "knowingly wreckless and depraved disregard for life"), but its status as genocide is disputed. Even the Holomodor article acknowledges the dispute. -- TheMightyQuill 12:09, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. For all it matters. The Ukrainian famine can be considered a genocide, but there is no agreement on this -- unlike the Holocaust, or the killing of Armenians by Turkey at the end of WWIDietwald 19:51, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Funny, I was going to disagree with you as I thought using the word genocide in reference to the massacre of Armenians is up for debate, but after reading the Armenian Genocide page, it turns out I was wrong, and the word genocide was largely invented to describe those massacres. Yay for wikipedia. So, I guess thanks for helping to remove my ignorance. -- TheMightyQuill 13:34, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

anytime:) Dietwald 13:32, 23 May 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Amis and 'Koba the Dread'

As a historian of Soviet Russia, I would like to point out that Amis's book is considered by the majority of historians of this subject to be largely biased and poorly sourced. I completely agree with the mention of the August 7 decree on pulic property and think it is relevant to the discussion, but could this point be referenced to a historian of more repute and more thorough research? 09:54, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] British vs American spelling

So, generally you're supposed to go by what the first person who wrote the article used, but unfortunately, the first entry gave the article a title with British spelling (Collectivisation) but wrote content with the American spelling (Collectivization). Can anyone give any reason to choose one spelling over the other? - TheMightyQuill 09:39, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

American English is spoken by more people around the world

I'm not sure. Most europeans use british spelling, plus, many of the former british colonies. Canadians such as my self would write collectivization, but our population doesn't add much to the global total. - TheMightyQuill 03:54, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

"American english is spoken by more pople around the world" - Care to cite such a bold statement?Tourskin 01:11, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

"American English (AmE) is the form of English used in the United States. British English (BrE) is the form of English used in the United Kingdom and the rest of the British Isles. It includes all English dialects used within the British Isles." Source "United States of America...Population - 2007 estimate 301,366,000" Source "United Kingdom...Population - 2006 estimate 60,609,153" Source Surely, the British Isles do not have 240,000,000 residents, and surely the population of the UK has not increased 500% since last year.

[edit] Collectivization after the second world war?

This article makes no mention of collectivization or Soviet agriculture after the second world war. Itoldalthea 04:15, 2 March 2007 (UTC)iToldAlthea

It remained much as the same as before.Tourskin 01:12, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
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