If a nation does not know its history, if the country loses its history, then its citizens have nowhere to go.
Mirzhakyp Dulatuly

From the history of collectivization of agriculture in Kazakhstan

1724
(from COLLECTION OF MATERIALS of International scientific conference «GREAT FAMINE IN KAZAKHSTAN: TRAGEDY OF THE NATION AND THE LESSONS OF HISTORY») published in Astana, 2012

Determining all subsequent action of Kazakh Regional Committee (Kazkraykom) of All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks) in the late 20s – early 30s of the 20th century in agriculture has become a slogan – «The policy of the party in the village – it’s collectivization and liquidation of the kulaks as a class».

Nomadism as difficult type of economic and cultural activity with the social organization and a multilevel complex of institutional linkages was not ready to process of sovietization based on sedentarization. Despite it, the problem of grain procurement campaign was offered to be solved at the expense of withdrawal from a turn of lands of nomadic and semi-nomadic cattle breeding. In September, 1931 Kazkraykom CPSU (b) has set the task for cattle-breeding areas, «go on line of higher rates of collectivization ». If in 1930 the number of farms in the republic was 7000, of which more than two thousand – in the cattle-breeding areas, by June 1, 1931 in the collectivization of cattle-breeding farms covered 44.1% of total households.

Thus, the process of accelerated and massive, forced settling has fundamentally changed the principles of organization of production (the load on the remaining pastures, rapid desertification of pasture, plowing the desert), causing a chain reaction of deformation of the national economy of Kazakhstan.

Archival documents incontrovertibly show inextricable connection of Stalin’s collectivization and the famine of 1929–1934. With its expansion in the USSR there was a food crisis, with culmination in the 1932–1933. Already in late 1929 – early 1930 in the areas of complete collectivization facts of famine were recorded and even deaths owing to it. The reason was the consequences of forced grain procurement in 1929, which created food shortages in the village areas. And they were a direct result of Stalin’s leadership on the course of forced industrialization, which demanded the sources for its realization. For this purpose there were established higher tasks for farms in grain procurement.

Bolshevik experiment in the fi eld of agriculture have failed, its ideological leaders shifted all responsibility for the disastrous effects to the peasantry, which is most affected by the Soviet authorities, having undergone the physical extirpation and persecution.

Auanasova A.M.,

Chief Scientifi c Offi cer of the Institute of

State History Committee of Science

of Ministry of Education and

Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan,

doctor of historical sciences, professor

Data was given from the Institute of State History, Committee of Science of The Ministry of Education and Science