Learning from History and Farming - November 2022
In the 1930’s the genius ideology that is Stalinism embarked upon the collectivisation of farms in the Soviet Union. What this meant was that the Government took control of the farms by seizing the land, equipment, livestock and dwellings. Farmers were given the opportunity to stay as an employee, and those that that resisted the seizure of their farms, by physical defiance, or even by simply writing a letter of protest to the Government, were murdered, or bundled up and sent to Serbia where death was a welcome reprieve from their suffering. Of course, no Government can farm as well as a farmer can. The collectivisation program led to several famines and the death of something like ten million (10,000,000) people within just a couple of decades. Even as late as the 1980’s Soviet farmers struggled to achieve the production levels of competing neighbouring countries. In fact, a March 1975 report found that 27% of Soviet agricultural produce was produced by private farms, despite the fact...