Peasant Resistance to Collectivization in the Western Oblast, 1929-1937

摘要

From 1929 to 1937 the Soviet government conducted a campaign to collectivizeagriculture. This paper is a study of how peasants in the Western Oblast resisted collectivization during these years and how their strategies evolved to combat the changing nature of the Soviet state. Violence typified peasant opposition to state policies in the early years of collectivization from 1929 to 1934. During the years 1935 to 1937, in contrast to the violent opposition of the earlier years of collectivization, the peasants resorted to more cunning forms of protest and clever manipulation of the political discourse available to them. This conscious change in strategy resulted from the peasants' realization that the collective farm had become a permanent fixture of rural life and that, while open opposition was pointless, everyday forms of resistance could lead to what was in their view the optimum structure for the kolkhoz.