According to “The Collectivization of ‘Genocide’”, In Another View of Stalin by Ludo Martens, collectivization in the Soviet Union was said to be a policy “ pursued under Stalin, between 1928 and 1940, to consolidate individual land and labour into collective farms”. Overall, this process was said to be unsuccessful for many reasons. The implementation of this process was expensive, costing Russia a great deal and having devastating effects on the financial sector, the animal population, grain harvests as well as human life and the standards of living. The utopian schemes of modernizing the Soviet agriculture were unrealistic, considering the poor socio-economic conditions at that present time. These idealities of consolidating the land “into parcels that could be farmed by modern equipment using the latest scientific methods of agriculture” (Wikipedia) were possible in the long run, but debilitating in the short run. A temporary abatement eventually occurred due to problems faced in the collectivization process. Stalin wrote and article in the issue of Pravda saying:
"It is a fact that by February 20 of this year 50 per cent of the peasant farms throughout the U.S.S.R. had been collectivized. That means that by February 20, 1930, we had over fulfilled the five-year plan of collectivization by more than 100 per cent... some of our comrades have become dizzy with success and for the moment have lost clearness of mind and sobriety of vision."
The grain procurement by the state increased, but not at an effective rate as the targets and harvests fell. Peasants were also resistant and uncooperative due to the fact that they had to give up their properties to the collective farms, selling most of the food that they produced to the sate at minimal prices set by the state itself. Peasants also got less for their labour due to the high government quotas and thus refused to work. Peasants resisted through acts of sabotage, burning crops and slaughtering the...