The Committees of Poor Peasants (Russian: Комитеты Бедноты, komitety bednoty, commonly rendered in English as kombeds) were established during the second half of 1918 as local institutions bringing together impoverished peasants to advance government policy. The committees were primarily in charge of grain requisitioning on behalf of the Soviet state as well as the rural distribution of manufactured goods. The kombeds quickly fell into disrepute among the bulk of the peasantry over the abuses of their members, who were often outsiders to the village and who were paid a commission by the state for all grain obtained. The need of the Bolshevik government to establish closer relations with the peasantry during the Russian Civil War lead to the merger of the Committees of Poor Peasants with the village soviets starting in December 1918.
Famous quotes containing the words committees, poor and/or peasants:
“Cry cry what shall I cry?
The first thing to do is to form the committees:
The consultative councils, the standing committees, select committees and sub-committees.
One secretary will do for several committees.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“It is easy enough to say that poverty is no crime. No; if it were men wouldn’t be ashamed of it. It is a blunder, though, and is punished as such. A poor man is despised the whole world over.”
—Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927)
“It would not be an easy thing to bring the water all the way to the plain. They would have to organize a great coumbite with all the peasants and the water would unite them once again, its fresh breath would clear away the fetid stink of anger and hatred; the brotherly community would be reborn with new plants, the fields filled with to bursting with fruits and grains, the earth gorged with life, simple and fertile.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)