Editing Eastern Bloc (section)

===Agricultural collectivization===
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1987-0122-023, Infografik, Landwirtschaft der DDR Getreideerträge.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Graphic showing change in [[East Germany|East German]] agricultural production between 1981 and 1986]]
[[Collectivization]] is a process pioneered by [[Joseph Stalin]] in the late 1920s by which [[Marxism–Leninism|Marxist–Leninist]] regimes in the Eastern Bloc and elsewhere attempted to establish an ordered socialist system in rural agriculture.<ref name="frucht144">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Frucht|2003|p=144}}</ref> It required the forced consolidation of small-scale peasant farms and larger holdings belonging to the landed classes for the purpose of creating larger modern "[[collective farms]]" owned, in theory, by the workers therein. In reality, such farms were owned by the state.<ref name="frucht144"/>

In addition to eradicating the perceived inefficiencies associated with small-scale farming on discontiguous land holdings, collectivization also purported to achieve the political goal of removing the rural basis for resistance to Stalinist regimes.<ref name="frucht144"/> A further justification given was the need to promote industrial development by facilitating the state's procurement of agricultural products and transferring "surplus labor" from rural to urban areas.<ref name="frucht144"/> In short, agriculture was reorganized in order to proletarianize the peasantry and control production at prices determined by the state.<ref name="turnock34"/>

The Eastern Bloc possesses substantial agricultural resources, especially in southern areas, such as [[People's Republic of Hungary|Hungary]]'s [[Great Hungarian Plain|Great Plain]], which offered good soils and a warm climate during the growing season.<ref name="turnock34">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Turnock|1997|p=34}}</ref> Rural collectivization proceeded differently in non-Soviet Eastern Bloc countries than it did in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s.<ref name="bideleux473"/> Because of the need to conceal the assumption of control and the realities of an initial lack of control, no Soviet [[dekulakisation]]-style liquidation of rich peasants could be carried out in the non-Soviet Eastern Bloc countries.<ref name="bideleux473">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Bideleux|Jeffries|2007|p=473}}</ref>

Nor could they risk mass starvation or agricultural sabotage (e.g., [[holodomor]]) with a rapid collectivization through massive state farms and agricultural producers' cooperatives (APCs).<ref name="bideleux473"/> Instead, collectivization proceeded more slowly and in stages from 1948 to 1960 in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany, and from 1955 to 1964 in Albania.<ref name="bideleux473"/> Collectivization in the Baltic republics of the [[Lithuanian SSR]], [[Estonian SSR]] and [[Latvian SSR]] took place between 1947 and 1952.<ref name="oconnorxx">{{Harvard citation no brackets|O'Connor|2003|p=xx–xxi}}</ref>

Unlike Soviet collectivization, neither massive destruction of livestock nor errors causing distorted output or distribution occurred in the other Eastern Bloc countries.<ref name="bideleux473"/> More widespread use of transitional forms occurred, with differential compensation payments for peasants that contributed more land to APCs.<ref name="bideleux473"/> Because [[Czechoslovak Socialist Republic|Czechoslovakia]] and [[East Germany]] were more industrialized than the Soviet Union, they were in a position to furnish most of the equipment and fertilizer inputs needed to ease the transition to collectivized agriculture.<ref name="bideleux474">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Bideleux|Jeffries|2007|p=474}}</ref> Instead of liquidating large farmers or barring them from joining APCs as Stalin had done through [[dekulakisation]], those farmers were utilised in the non-Soviet Eastern Bloc collectivizations, sometimes even being named farm chairman or managers.<ref name="bideleux474"/>

Collectivisation often met with strong rural resistance, including peasants frequently destroying property rather than surrendering it to the collectives.<ref name="frucht144"/> Strong peasant links with the land through private ownership were broken and many young people left for careers in industry.<ref name="turnock34"/> In [[People's Republic of Poland|Poland]] and [[Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]], fierce resistance from peasants, many of whom had resisted the Axis, led to the abandonment of wholesale rural collectivisation in the early 1950s.<ref name="bideleux474"/> In part because of the problems created by collectivisation, agriculture was largely de-collectivised in Poland in 1957.<ref name="frucht144"/>

The fact that Poland nevertheless managed to carry out large-scale centrally planned industrialisation with no more difficulty than its collectivised Eastern Bloc neighbours further called into question the need for collectivisation in such planned economies.<ref name="bideleux474"/> Only Poland's "western territories", those eastwardly adjacent to the [[Oder-Neisse line]] that were annexed from Germany, were substantially collectivised, largely in order to settle large numbers of Poles on good farmland which had been taken from German farmers.<ref name="bideleux474"/>