The armed resistance to forced collectivization continued in Lithuania for several years. In September 1952, at the Seventh Congress of the Lithuanian Communist party, great attention was paid to the struggle against the "bandit underground of bourgeois nationalists" and against "surviving elements of bourgeois nationalist ideology and religious superstition."65
Throughout the 1940s the Baltic countries were the scene of sometimes bitter armed struggle against the Soviet government. Collectivization also spurred armed resistance in the western regions of Byelorussia.66
During the first five years after the war, extensive industrialization of the Baltic countries was carried out, based on reconstructing the old and creating a new power system. Three years after the end of the war industrial development had already surpassed prewar levels.
The volume of industrial production in Estonia, especially in the chemical and engineering industries, had grown by 1950 to over 3.4 times its prewar level.67 Also by 1950 the number of blue collar and white collar workers in the Baltic countries had increased by 40 percent since 1940.68 In Latvia industrial production in 1950 was three times the prewar level; for the same period in Lithuania it was twice the prewar level.69
The industrialization of the Baltic states destroyed the old social structure. The ethnic composition of the population changed rapidly, especially in Latvia and Estonia, which were more developed industrially. Many Russians and Ukrainians were settled in the cities, and many were appointed to important positions. Many naval personnel appeared in Baltic ports. The Soviet government's principal objective was to alter the national composition of the population in the Baltic states and to create a solid base of support out of non-Baltic elements.
The difficulties in agriculture in the first postwar years throughout the Soviet Union were intensified by the enormous damage done by the war. The German invaders had devastated 98,000 kolkhozes and 1,876 sovkhozes,70 confiscated and slaughtered millions of head of livestock, and deprived the rural localities almost completely of their draft animals in the occupied territories. In agricultural areas the active population was reduced by almost one-third.
The sharp reduction of the human resources in the countryside was also a result of the natural process of urban growth. On the average, as many as 2 million people left the rural areas each year.71 The difficult conditions in the countryside led young people especially to migrate to the cities. Many demobilized soldiers also chose to settle in the cities rather than return to agriculture.
During the war large tracts of land belonging to the kolkhozes had been transferred to enterprises or municipalities or illegally appropriated by them. In other areas land had become an object of commerce. A 1939 resolution of the Central Committee and the Sovnarkom adopted measures against selling off kolkhoz lands. From the point of view of the "revolution from above," which was being carried out in the countryside, this tendency toward a return to private property exposed the fact that regardless of how much the state sought to hide it, no abrupt psychological change had ever taken place within the peasantry. To the peasants, revolution had been an act of oppression rather than justice, since land confiscated from the old owners had not been divided among the peasantry but turned over to the kolkhozes, that is, taken by the government. Then, during the war, land had been strong-armed by factories and municipal authorities.
The Soviet government was fully aware of what these occurrences meant. In a new decree against selling off kolkhoz lands, on September 19, 1946, the Council of Ministers and Central Committee called these "deviations" in the countryside "deeply damaging to the work of the kolkhozes and extremely dangerous to the overall process of socialist construction in our country. "72
By the beginning of 1947, over 2,225,000 cases of unauthorized appropriation or use of land had been discovered, affecting a total of 4.7 million hectares. Between 1947 and May 1949, the misuse of an additional 5.9 million hectares came to light.73 Government bodies—from the local to the republic level—were shamelessly robbing the kolkhozes, using all sorts of pretexts to impose what amounted to payment in kind. In September 1946 the standing debt owed to the kolkhozes by various agencies and organizations reached 383 million rubles.74 In 1947, in the Akmolinsk Region of Kazakhstan, the authorities took from the kolkhozes 1,500 head of cattle and 3,000 centners of grain and other foodstuffs, for a total value of 2 million rubles. The thieves, who included high-ranking party and government officials, never had to answer for their actions.75
The misuse of kolkhoz land and goods aroused widespread indignation among the collective farm peasantry (kolkhozniks). Many kolkhoz chairmen were voted out, but the new kolkhoz heads were unable to change government policies, and the situation remained at an impasse.
After the war, tractor and agricultural machinery production increased rapidly. Despite this improvement, however, the situation in agriculture remained catastrophic. The state continued its policy of investing very little in agriculture—only 16 percent of the budget during the first postwar five- year plan. Crops sown on cultivated land in 1946 were only 76 percent of the amount sown in 1940. Drought and other natural disasters reduced the 1946 harvest below the level of the previous year, when the country had still been at war. "In terms of grain production, our country remained for a long time at the same level as the Russia of the old regime," Khrushchev acknowledged.77 Between 1910 and 1914 grain harvests comprised 267 million kilograms; the figure was 302 million for the period 1949—1953.78 Grain yields were below the 1913 level, despite mechanization, fertilization, and other improvements.
(in centners per hectare)
8.2
Grain Yield 1913
1926
1932 1933-1937 1949-1953
8.5 7.5 7.1 7.7
The per capita output of agricultural products was correspondingly lower. If the two years before collectivization (1928—1929) are taken as 100, agricultural production in 1913 was 90.3, but in 1930—1932 it was 86.8; in 1938-1940, 90.0; and in 1950-1953, 94.0.79 The grain situation became acute despite reductions in grain exports (which fell from 1913 to
1938 by a factor of 4.5) and the reduced number of livestock and the consequent reduction in the amount of grain used as cattle feed. From 1928 to 1935, for example, the number of horses fell by 25 million, which meant a saving of more than 10 million tons of grain, or 10—15 percent of the total grain harvest in that period.80
In 1916 Russia had within its territory 58,380,000 head of horned cattle. As of January 1, 1941, the figure was 54,510,000, and in 1951 57,090,000, which was lower than the 1916 level.81 Not until 1955 was the 1916 level exceeded.82 According to official Soviet statistics (adjusted for inflation), between 1940 and 1952 overall agricultural production increased by only 10 percent.83
The February 1947 Central Committee plenum called for more centralization of agricultural production, taking from the kolkhozes the decision not only of how much but of what to plant. Political sections were reestablished at the MTSs. Propaganda was to substitute for food for the utterly starved and impoverished collective farmers. In addition to their deliveries to the state, the kolkhozes had to contribute to the seed fund and allocate a portion of the harvest to the "indivisible fund," a kind of capital fund. It was not until these obligations were met that the collective farmers could be paid for their workdays (trudodni). Quotas for deliveries to the state were set by the central government. Projected crop yields were estimated carelessly, and actual harvests were often below plan targets. The first commandment for collective farmers was to hand over to the state its quota. Local party and government bodies would often force the more efficient kolkhozes to fill in their poorer neighbors' unmet quotas, which ultimately led to the impoverishment of all. The peasants fed themselves for the most part with the produce they grew on their minuscule private plots. To be able to take these goods to the market, however, they were required to have a certificate stating that they had met their obligations to the state; otherwise they were branded as speculators or "deserters" and faced fines or even prison sentences. Taxes on private plots were increased and had to be paid in kind, often in goods that the kolkhozniks did not produce. For this reason, producers were forced to obtain goods at market price and deliver them to the state free of charge. Rural Russia had not seen such horrible conditions even under the Mongol yoke.