Study Questions on Suny, chapter 9
Detailed questions:
What is the main point that Suny is making about the 1930s in the first paragraph on p. 217?
According to Suny, on what basic issues have historians disagreed about collectivization?
Did collectivization happen "all at once"? Explain.
What was Stalin’s "Ural-Siberian Method" and why did it cause friction between Stalin and Bukharin?
Explain the position taken by the stalinists and by Bukharin’s supporters in the debate over the "right opposition" and agricultural policy.
According to Suny, was the "war against the peasants" a good economic strategy? Why did the Stalin leadership pursue this policy?
Did Stralin have an absolute majority in the Politburo during the conflict with Bukharin? Explain.
Did Stalin’s "emergency measures" in 1927-28 solve the agricultural crisis? Explain.
According to Suny, was Stalin’s attempt to use the middle and poor peasants against the "kulaks" based on any real divisions in the rural community?
How did the regime respond to peasant resistance, and what were the results?
What grain collection policy did the regime adopt in late 1929 and what were the results?
What was "collectivization"?
What was "dekulakization"?
How were the Kulaks supposed to be treated?
What sort of methods did the regime use to get peasants to collectivize in 1929-1930?
How did peasants respond to collectivization in early 1930?
Were peasant "rebels" anti-Soviet? Explain.
What was the point of Stalin’s "Dizziness With Success" speech of March 1930? Why did Stalin shift policy at this time?
What happened to the collective farms in the months after Stalin’s March 1930 speech?
How did the collective farms actually collect grain for the state (methods?)?
What does Suny portray as the irony of Soviet grain export policies in 1930?
What was the social impact of collectivization?
How does Suny explain the causes of the 1932-33 famine in the Ukraine?
According to Suny, what were the aims and the results of collectivization?
Had collectivization ended all stratification of village society? Explain.
How and why did the state grant concessions to the peasantry in the mid-1930s?
Did the collective farm system really obliterate all of the villages’ traditional ways? Explain.
What problems did peasants on the collective farms face?
As a whole, does Suny agree with those who see collectivization as a necessary evil? Explain.
Big Questions:
Did the Stalin leadership have a clear plan for collectivization, or was it improvised?
Was the major aim of collectivization political, economic, or both? Explain.
Why did the Stalin leadership try to organize collectivization as a "war against the kulaks"? What were the results of this approach?
A student once asked me why Russian peasants had behaved "like sheep" during collectivization…Did they? Explain.
What seems to have changed in the countryside as a result of collectivization/dekulakization, and what seems to have remained the same?
State policy towards the peasantry was "relaxed" in 1935—How might we explain this change of policy?
As a whole, was collectivization a success or a failure? Why?