DOI: 10.20535/2307-5244.49.2019.189545
National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine
The article debates the organizational and legal foundations of UkrSSR agricultural
structures from 1927–1929. It tackles the socio-economic situation of the rural population in the process of unifying the economic space. These processes
eventually reduced the number of rural dwellers and changed the overall
Ukrainian demographic profile.
The agrarian policy of the Soviet government of 1927–1939 was based on
forced collectivization. The political leadership took control of the supply of agricultural
products through the administrative-command apparatus. It led to the
Holodomor of 1932–1933 when financial and food reserves of peasant farms
were deliberately drained for the needs of the industry.
Within less than a calendar year, millions of people died; thousands of villages
disappeared from the map. From 1934 to 1939, the number of peasants decreased.
The rural area across the entire territory of Ukraine depopulated, which led to
such a socio-economic phenomenon as the extinction of the Ukrainian nation.
The agricultural structure of Ukraine approved in 1927–1939, actually represented
a system in which collective and state farms were complemented by far
better private social-economic and production-economic relations. The collectivization
relied on the artisan format. It provided for the full collectivization of the
land, the tools of labor, but very little work motivation. Party and state structures
interfered with the direct production and economic activity of collective farms,
thus ignoring the experience of agricultural workers and local traditions. Most
of the appointed collective leaders had no agronomic education and experience
in running a large collective farm.
Keywords: the population of rural areas, the Society for the joint management
of land.
