Grain Procurement Crisis of 1927–28

Background

Under the New Economic Policy, adopted in 1921 in place of the forced requisitions of War Communism, the state bought grain on the market. Procurements rose from 8.4 million tons in 1925/26 to 10.6 million tons in the record harvest year 1926/27, and planners set the 1927/28 target above that. From autumn 1927 collections fell sharply, and the October to December quarter plan of 7 million tons was missed by 2.1 million tons. The war scare of 1927, procurement prices fixed low, and industrial goods that did not reach the countryside all contributed. An early-1927 cut in industrial goods prices of about 10 percent, intended to undercut private traders, instead emptied state store inventories.

Response and the Dispute over Causes

Party leaders split over why grain was not coming to market. Stalin saw sabotage by rich peasants seeking higher prices; Bukharin blamed a poor harvest and unattractive procurement prices. Touring Siberia from 15 January to 6 February 1928, Stalin directed that kulaks deliver their surpluses immediately at state prices and that refusers be prosecuted under Article 107 with confiscation, 25 percent of the confiscated grain going to poor and weaker middle peasants. The coercive practice that began in the Urals and Siberia was codified as the "Ural-Siberian method," in which village assemblies set individual quotas and kulaks who fell short were fined up to five times the quota (the pyatikratka, or "five-timer"); on 20 March 1929 the Politburo approved it and recommended it for eastern regions.

Consequences and the Turn to Collectivization

Coercion did not resolve the crisis. The 1927/28 harvest was only slightly below the previous year's, yet procurements from October 1927 to October 1928 fell by 14 percent, and in Siberia and the Urals producers shifted from grain to meat, eggs and other products. Free market grain prices doubled between December 1927 and December 1928, higher fodder prices reduced livestock numbers, and the government introduced bread rationing in large cities in autumn 1928 and nationwide in February 1929. In July 1928 a Central Committee plenum condemned requisition-style procurement in some regions while resolving to build new state grain farms. The Right (Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky), defending NEP, proposed raising procurement prices two- to threefold and importing the shortfall, but their course was rejected. The relative success of coercion convinced Stalin that administrative compulsion worked, and the crisis became the turning point toward wholesale collectivization and dekulakization.