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CollectivizationThe contradiction began to be resolved late in 1929as the party moved to a more coercive campaign ofcollectivization. Until then, although collectivizationhad been favored officially, it had been largely voluntaryand involved mostly the poorer peasants. But asthe campaign of dekulakization intensified, largernumbers joined the collective farms out of fear that theymight be labeled kulaks and become subject to dispossession.At this stage, too, the "encouragement" ofcollectivization fell increasingly to police organs andto the brigades of militant workers sent out to thecountryside from the cities. ' The result, in whichpolitical motives and perceived economic requirementscan scarcely be disentangled, was a massive overfulfillmentof Five Year Plan goals for collectivization andthe effective destruction of the NEP orientation ofagricultural policy. Stalin appeared to acknowledge theshortcomings of the campaign with his "Dizzy withSuccess" article of March 1930, in which he deploredcertain excesses and, in effect, introduced a pause inthe process of collectivization. In the confusion thatfollowed for most of 1930, and in the face of uncertaintyamong the agents of collectivization who had notbeen warned of Stalin's shift, Stalin's admissions wereconfirmed as to the shallowness of peasant "conversion"by the movement of vast numbers out of the kolkhozes.Nevertheless, after this interlude the drive for furthercollectivization resumed.Peasantry and NationalityFrom the Ukrainian point of view, there was muchto confirm Stalin's linkage of peasantry and nationalityas problems to be addressed. Indeed, despite theautonomy that the Ukraine continued to enjoy in thecultural realm, it was very possible to view the policiespronounced in Moscow as twin onslaughts on Ukrainiannationality and peasantry. The percentage of Ukrainianfarms collectivized rose from 8. 6 in December 1929to 65. 0 in March 1930 to 70. 0 in mid-1932; correspondingpercentages for Russia were 7. 4, 59. 0, and59. 3. The 90 percent mark was reached by 1935 in theUkraine, not until late 1937 in Russia. Moreover, theurban workers sent forth to implement collectivizationintroduced an ethnic issue; many came from outsidethe Ukraine, and even in Ukrainian cities many workerswere Russian, or at any rate non-Ukrainian. Withcollectivization taking priority over Ukrainization, theUkrainian party organization was profoundly affected.Skrypnyk's regime was undermined, and lower partyechelons were transformed as party secretaries werepurged, often for real or imagined opposition tocollectivization. At the same time, Ukrainian resistanceseems to have been exceptionally strong, as indicatedby numbers of punishable offenses.Questionable as the forced collectivization programmay have been from an economic point of view, byitself it would not necessarily have led to famine.Enormous hardship was inflicted on the peasantry inthe course of it, especially in the winter of 1929-1930,and of course not only in the Ukraine. Enormous losseswere also recorded as the peasants responded withsabotage, destruction of grain and livestock. Furthermore,the impact was by no means restricted to thekulaks, for the sheer scale and recklessness of the driveinflicted severe damage on whole regions, includingmany middle and even poor peasants who were caughtup in the "dizziness" of unchecked coercion. Nevertheless,famine was not inevitable.UnrelentingGrain ProcurementA policy of unrelenting grain procurement madethe critical difference between hardship and catastrophe.The Ukrainian harvest of 1930 was exceptionally goodand could meet the quota (of about one-third) imposedby Moscow with no great difficulty. The same 7. 7million ton quota for 1931 could not be met, however,because of the poorer harvest, and central authorities,while applying great pressure, began to attribute theshortfall to deliberate withholding of grain. The 1932harvest was poorer still but, even with a modestreduction in the quota, Moscow demanded nearly halfof the total — which by itself would have met barerequirements in the Ukraine for people and livestock.Ukrainian party officials issued numerous warningsabout the dire consequences to be expected if Moscowdid not relent, recounting stories of villages wherenothing had been left for the populace to eat, and thisat a time when the Soviet Union was exporting grain.The official response to all warnings was indifferenceor disbelief, coupled with new regulations imposingstern penalties for withholding or pilfering. InNovember 1932 the Ukrainian Soviet regime prohibitedthe distribution of food and the creation of reserves(seed grain) until quotas were met. Even so, effectivecontrol over the Ukraine was transferred to Stalin'snon-Ukrainian lieutenant, Pavel Postyshev, who ruledagainst the provision of aid to the starving countrysideand sent brigades to collect what little was left of graindistributed to collective farm members. At the sametime, Postyshev brought the nationality issue into playby blaming shortfalls in collections on Skrypnyk andother Ukrainian "nationalist wreckers. "'The Ukrainian Famine 109