Brandishing the threat of “dekulakization” and arrest, the authorities quickly achieved stunning collectivization results—at least on paper. While 7.5 percent of the country’s peasant households belonged to kolkhozes as of 1 October 1929, by 20 February 1930 that percentage had reached 52.7.17 Underlying this statistic was a horrific and tragic reality. People sent from the city or mobilized from the local population to carry out collectivization behaved like conquering hordes toward a defeated enemy. Anyone who refused to enter the kolkhoz was arrested and beaten. The plundering of “dekulakized” property and the raping of women were standard. Churches were closed and clergy members arrested. “Fervent” members of the Komsomol—the Communist Youth League—desecrated churches and pranced about in church vestments.
This abuse and humiliation drove the usually docile countryside to rebellion. A wave of peasant militancy swept across the country. In all of 1926–1927, the authorities identified just 63 incidents of large-scale anti-government unrest in rural areas. In 1929 there were more than 1,300 such incidents, involving 244,000 participants. In January–February 1930 alone, there were approximately 1,500 incidents with 324,000 participants.18 Stalin, though undoubtedly informed of the growing unrest, did not immediately respond. He was probably confident that the wave of rebellion was simply the inevitable resistance of an “obsolete class.” By late February, however, he began to think again.19 First came a report on 26 February from Kharkov, then the capital of Ukraine, containing news of unrest in the Shepetovka District, near the border with Poland. Crowds of peasants were demanding the reopening of churches and the abolition of the kolkhozes. Party activists were beaten. Other reports reaching Moscow around the same time described similar incidents in Kazakhstan, Voronezh, and even near the capital. Unrest broke out on 21 February in the Pitelinsky area of Riazan District outside Moscow. Peasants removed their livestock and family stores from kolkhozes and returned property to kulaks. Church bells were rung and delegations sent to neighboring villages to rally others to the cause. Peasants armed with stakes tried to prevent the arrests of kulaks. A policeman was killed and eight activists were wounded. OGPU agents responded with firearms, as a result of which three peasants were wounded and six killed, according to official reports.20
The escalating disturbances and the threat that the spring sowing could be disrupted forced the authorities to pull back. On 28 February 1930 the Politburo adopted a resolution calling on Stalin to address collectivization in the press.21 The famous article “Dizzy with Success” was published on 2 March. It contained an optimistic assessment of the “huge strides” made in collectivization and proclaimed “the countryside’s radical turn toward socialism.” At the same time, Stalin condemned individual “anti-Leninist inclinations”—the spread of communes; the expropriation of all peasant property for communal use; violations of “the principle of voluntarism and accounting for local circumstances”; and the removal of church bells—placing the blame for these excesses at the feet of local officials. On 10 March, secret Central Committee directives were sent out demanding the return of some expropriated property to peasants (poultry, livestock, the lands immediately adjacent to their homes), the correction of “mistakes” made during dekulakization, and a halt to the creation of communes and the closing of churches.22 This was a temporary retreat intended to calm the peasants and allow them to plant their crops.
Stalin’s article and the Central Committee directives did little to calm tempers. Both failed to provide what was most sought: an explanation of what would be done with the kolkhozes that already existed. The peasants took this problem into their own hands. They forcibly destroyed the collective farms, took away confiscated property and seeds, and restored abolished property lines. The contradictory signals from Moscow only fanned the flames of anti-kolkhoz sentiment and provoked further disturbances by peasants, leaving local activists unsure of how to proceed. March 1930 marked the apex of the war in the countryside: there were more than 6,500 instances of mass unrest, almost half the total for the entire year. In all, approximately 3.4 million peasants took part in acts of rebellion in 1930.23 Based on that number, it can be presumed that 1.5–2 million revolted in March. The higher figure is more likely since the political police had an incentive to underestimate participation in anti-government unrest. Some incidents were well organized; the peasants formed detachments and took over significant territory.
Uprisings were especially widespread in Ukraine, the site of almost half of the March disturbances. The authorities were particularly alarmed by rebellions in border regions. As of 16 March, fifteen out of Tulchin District’s seventeen administrative areas were in a state of revolt. Representatives of the Soviet government were driven out of fifty villages and replaced with starostas, traditional village elders. Kolkhozes were abolished in most of the district’s villages. Rebels beat members of the Communist Party and Komsomol and banished them from villages. In some places, armed rebels engaged in gun battles with OGPU punitive detachments.
For Moscow, the unrest along Ukraine’s western border raised the specter of Polish intervention. On 19 March, Stalin gave Ukrainian State Political Directorate (GPU) chief Vsevolod Balitsky a dressing down, demanding that he stop “making speeches and act more decisively.” The wounded Balitsky replied that he was personally traveling to “the sectors under threat” and was not just overseeing the fight “from a train car.”24 But he did carry out Stalin’s orders. Ordzhonikidze, who traveled to Ukraine for an inspection, wrote that the disorders in border areas were being put down with “armed forces using machine guns and in some places cannons. There are 100 killed and shot and a few hundred wounded.”25
Having very little weaponry, the peasants could not withstand well-armed OGPU detachments and mobilized Communists. Their isolated attempts to join forces—by sending messengers and delegations to neighboring villages or sounding the alarm using church bells—were ineffective. The uprisings remained fractured and uncoordinated. Such weaknesses made the task of mobile punitive detachments easier and permitted them to control large areas at once. Mass arrests of the uprisings’ ringleaders, kulaks, and the rural intelligentsia, along with the demonstrative brutality of government forces, undermined the resistance. Furthermore, the peasants’ behavior was much more civilized than the government’s. They generally did not kill their tormentors but merely drove them out of their villages. As a result, the government forces suffered few casualties, partly due to false promises. Another important factor in the diminishing disturbances was the spring sowing. The peasants had little time for rebellion when there were crops to be planted. The fall harvest—on which life itself depended—would not come unless they dropped what they were doing and headed to the fields. By the time the 1930 harvest came, ruthless collectivization had resumed, and the majority of peasants had been forced into kolkhozes.