Ural-Siberian Method

The Ural-Siberian method (Russian: урало-сибирский метод) was an extraordinary approach launched in the Soviet Union for the collection of grain from the countryside. It was introduced in the Urals and Siberia, hence the name. [[P1]] It was a return to the drastic policies that had characterized War Communism in the period before Lenin's New Economic Policy. [[P1]]

Background: the grain procurement crisis of 1927-1928

State grain collections plunged from the autumn of 1927. For the October-December 1927 quarter, planned procurements of 7 million tons were missed by 2.1 million tons. [[P42]] Planners judged the shortfall insufficient not only for creating the planned grain reserve and meeting export targets, but also for feeding the cities and the Red Army. [[P42]] Stalin depicted the shortfall as political, the result of "sabotage" by the rich peasantry to force price rises, while Bukharin argued that a poor harvest and unattractive procurement prices, rather than hoarding, were the cause. [[P43]] The shortfall threatened urban food supply: by November 1927 there was a supply problem in some industrial centres, [[P209]] and bread rationing was introduced in large cities in the autumn of 1928. [[P133]]

1928: origins in the Urals and Siberia

On 9 January 1928 the Politburo decided to send Central Committee members to the grain regions: Molotov to the Urals, Mikoyan to the Northern Caucasus, Ordzhonikidze to Siberia, and Kubyak to Kazakhstan. [[P410]] Ordzhonikidze's illness cancelled the Siberian assignment, and on 15 January Stalin set out there instead. [[P410]] During the undisclosed trip Stalin visited Novosibirsk, Barnaul, Rubtsovsk, Omsk and Krasnoyarsk. [[P410]] He told his Siberian audiences that he had been commissioned to help fulfil the grain procurement plan, and demanded that Article 107 of the RSFSR Criminal Code (speculation) be applied to wealthy peasants holding back grain and speculating. [[P422]] [[P426]] [[P427]] [[P428]] On 18 January the bureau of the Siberian Territorial Committee in Novosibirsk adopted, on Stalin's proposal, a resolution demanding confiscation and judicial prosecution of kulaks. [[P411]]

The initial version of the Ural-Siberian method was proposed by the Urals obkom on the basis of the actual practice used there in 1928. [[P5]] Several accounts link the method to Stalin's tour of Siberia in January 1928. [[P422]] [[P410]]

1928-1929: formalisation

Stalin dubbed the method "Ural-Siberian" at the April 1928 joint Plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). [[P5]] The Politburo approved the Urals obkom's proposal on 20 March 1929 and recommended its use in the eastern regions of the Soviet Union; the pyatikratka, suggested by the Siberian raikom, was adopted at that point. [[P5]] The Right Opposition criticised it as a restoration of extraordinary measures, yet it was approved and eventually received legislative support in June 1929. [[P2]]

How it worked

The approach resembled that of the Kombeds (Poor Peasants Committees) of 1918-1919. [[P6]] Village assemblies endorsed the grain procurement plans for their villages and set up commissions which assigned individual quotas according to the "class approach." [[P6]] Kulaks who failed to meet their quotas were fined up to five times the quota, a fine colloquially known as pyatikratka ("five-timer"). [[P6]] Further refusal resulted in up to one year of forced labour camps, and group resistance in up to two years of confinement with confiscation of property and subsequent internal exile. [[P6]] This practice anticipated the policy of dekulakization. [[P6]] From January 1928, Article 107 of the RSFSR Criminal Code was applied to persons refusing to surrender grain "surpluses" at state prices. [[P412]]

Peasant resistance and outcomes

The method fostered increasing unrest among the peasants, with a corresponding intensification of repressive measures, both in the countryside against peasants and in the cities against private grain traders declared profiteers. [[P8]] 1929 witnessed a significant increase of "mass disturbances" and "kulak terror"; in November 1929 the OGPU reported 12,808 arrests on counter-revolutionary charges and 15,536 on economic charges. [[P8]] The bulk of arrests fell in major grain production regions: Siberia, the Northern Caucasus, Ukraine, the Central Black Earth Region and the Urals. [[P8]]

These drastic measures allowed Stalin to speak of "satisfactory procurement." [[P9]] Some researchers believe this relative success convinced Stalin of the efficiency of a forced administrative approach to the peasantry, further developed in the policy of total collectivization. [[P9]] The November 1929 Plenum of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party declared this policy an immediate priority. [[P9]]

Historiography and naming

In Soviet historiography it was claimed that the method was introduced on the initiative of Zavyalovo village in Novosibirsk okrug, and the term "Zavyalovo Method" was in use for some time. [[P11]] On 22 March 1929 the newspaper Soviet Siberia reported the "Zavyalovo initiative" and called for spreading it elsewhere; it has been suggested that this publication was propaganda cover-up of the Politburo decision of 20 March. [[P11]] In Western historiography different chronologies have been published because of a lack of documentary sources; in particular, some works say the method was first introduced in Siberia and only later in the Urals. [[P12]] Additional information became available after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which provided greater clarity regarding its adoption. [[P12]]

The differing emphases on the method's origins, and the limits of the documentary record, should be preserved in both the Korean and English accounts. The Russian historian Vladimir Ilyinykh traced a genealogy in which Stalin's Siberian visit of January 1928 provided the decisive opening for the method's emergence.