Page "Third Period" Paragraph 6

The new policies of industrialisation and collectivisation now adopted were given the slogan " socialist accumulation ".

The Communist party had publicly proposed collectivisation to be voluntary ; however, lower level officials occasionally disregarded official policy, and motivated the peasants into joining the communes by use of threats and false promises.

In what Issac Deutscher calls " the great change ", the new policies of industrialisation and collectivisation now adopted were carried out in a ruthless and brutal way, via the use of the security and military forces, without the direct involvement of the working class and peasantry itself and without seeming regard for the social consequences.

According to figures given by Deutscher, the peasants opposed forced collectivisation by slaughtering 18 million horses, 30 million cattle, about 45 per cent of the total, and 100 million sheep and goats, about two thirds of the total.

Kulaks who engaged in these behaviours were dealt with harshly ; in December 1929, Stalin issued a call to " liquidate the kulaks as a class "-emphasis on as a class is needed, because it was not a call to eliminate the individuals themselves.

Policies included their deportation to remote lands in Siberia and to correctional labour camps.

There is debate amongst historians as to whether the actions of the Kulaks and their supporters helped lead to famine, or whether the policy of collectivisation itself was responsible.

( See Collectivisation in the USSR, Holodomor.