The collectivization of peasant households in Cahul county

The collectivization of peasant households in the districts of Cahul County, just like in the other southern districts of the Moldavian SSR, began in the autumn of 1940. In June 1941, there were 18 kolkhozes in the county, comprising 2 789 peasant households. The first collective farms were organized on the former estates of ethnic Germans who left the USSR in the autumn of 1940. Interrupted by the war, and influenced, afterwards, by the famine of 1946- 1947, the process of the collectivization in the south of the Moldavian SSR resumed at an intensive pace in the summer of 1947. The main instrument used for transforming a peasant into a member of the Soviet agricultural cartel was coercion. Enormous tax pressure, arrests and deportations - this was the reality of the villages of Cahul County during the years of collectivization