The Collective Farm System as the Main Resource of the Mobilization of the Soviet Economy in the 1930s–1950s

Abstract

The authors consider the collective farm system as the main source and structural element of the Soviet mobilizational economy by analyzing modern methodological innovations in Russian economic history and documentary evidence. Among the main parameters of the study are: periodization of the collective farm system within the mobilization model of development; methods of forced work in the Soviet village; the typology of mobilizing management practices; the tactic of resistance to power; and the content of communicative practices and mass consciousness reactions, mediated by the formation of the mobilization management model. These data indicate that the existing specificity of socio-political interaction from the 1930s to the 1950s demonstrates inconsistency and the antinomy of real and declared goals of agricultural policy. The mobilization model (economically justified only in conditions of external aggression), demagogically covered by the opportunity of building socialism, Bolshevik policy, and education of the peasantry in the spirit of collectivism, in reality did not have development as its basis. It was only a tool to optimize resources and solve the tasks of maintaining socio-political stability. The viability of peasant farming in these conditions was provided by maintaining some market elements (the household plot, the possibility to sell products at the market, etc.), which were present in the economy throughout the period under review.