Agriculture commissar of collectivization
In December 1929, Yakovlev proposed that 'at least a third' of farmland be collectivized by spring 1930. Stalin dismissed it as too cautious. Yakovlev backed down and faithfully executed the more extreme timetable.
Born Epstein. He joined the Bolsheviks in 1913 and after the revolution led party work in Ukraine. In 1923 he became editor of Krestyanskaya Gazeta (Peasants' Gazette), rising as an authority on rural affairs. Appointed the USSR's first People's Commissar for Agriculture in 1929, he chaired the Politburo commission on collectivization and drafted the landmark decree of January 5, 1930, which set a forced timetable for collectivizing major grain regions and proclaimed the 'liquidation of the kulaks as a class.' He also sponsored Trofim Lysenko, helping set Soviet biology on its anti-scientific course. Arrested during the Great Terror and executed in 1938.
Career Timeline
- 1929–1934Agriculture commissar and collectivization administrator
Related historical events
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationAgriculture commissarAs commissar of agriculture, he handled the practical drafting of wholesale collectivization policy and the design of the kolkhoz system.
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeTargetA party leader associated with agricultural policy who was executed in 1938.
Architect of Collectivization: The Politburo Commission and the January 5, 1930 Decree
On December 8, 1929, Yakovlev was appointed the first People's Commissar of the newly created USSR People's Commissariat for Agriculture (Narkomzem SSSR). Simultaneously, he chaired the All-Union Council of Agricultural Collectives (Kolkhoztsentr). Stalin entrusted him with designing and executing forced collectivization. The Politburo commission on collectivization, which Yakovlev led, drafted the landmark Central Committee decree of January 5, 1930, "On the Rate of Collectivization and State Assistance for Collective-Farm Construction." The decree set a breakneck schedule: major grain regions (Lower and Middle Volga, North Caucasus) were to complete collectivization by autumn 1930 or spring 1931 at the latest; other grain regions by spring 1932. It simultaneously proclaimed the shift from "limiting the kulaks" to "liquidating the kulaks as a class." Yakovlev initially proposed that "at least a third" of agricultural land be collectivized by spring 1930, but Stalin dismissed this as too cautious. In the months that followed, party cadres competed to inflate collectivization figures; millions of peasants were branded kulaks, deported, and executed. The campaign set the stage for the catastrophic famine of 1932–33 (the Holodomor). Yakovlev remained People's Commissar for Agriculture until April 1934.