Collectivization in The Soviet Union - Decollectivization Under German Occupation

Decollectivization Under German Occupation

During World War II, Alfred Rosenberg, in his capacity as the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, issued a series of posters announcing the end of the Soviet collective farms in areas of the USSR under German occupation. He also issued an Agrarian Law in February 1942, annulling all Soviet legislation on farming, restoring family farms for those willing to collaborate with the occupiers. But decollectivization conflicted with the wider demands of wartime food production, and Hermann Göring demanded that the kolkhoz be retained, save for a change of name. Hitler himself denounced the redistribution of land as 'stupid.' In the end, the German occupation authorities retained most of the kolkhozes and simply renamed them "community farms" (Russian: obshchinnye khoziaystva, a throwback to the traditional Russian commune). German propaganda described this as a preparatory step toward ultimate dissolution of the kolkhozes into private farms, which would be granted to peasants who had loyally delivered compulsory quotas of farm produce to the Germans. By 1943, the German occupation authorities had converted 30% of the kolkhozes into German-sponsored "agricultural cooperatives", but as yet had made no conversions to private farms.

The image on the left is a reproduction of a fake issue of the newspaper Pravda distributed by Germans in the Occupied Eastern Territories in February 1942. It announces "a gift of Adolf Hitler to the Russian people" — a land reform for "the long-suffering Russian peasant". As part of the land reform, "kolkhozes are abolished and an order of community farms is established as a transitional stage to individual peasant farms". The text under the German eagle reads:

Peasants. The German government, having liberated you from bolshevism, has decided to give peasants land in individual use... Own land to the toiling peasant.

The two photographs of man and woman are captioned "Free people on free land!"

Note that the standard Pravda slogan "Workers of all countries unite" is modified in this fake newspaper to "Workers of all countries unite in a fight against Bolshevism".