Agitating for the Kolkhoz

This chapter evaluates mass collectivization of Uzbekistan's cotton regions, which began at the same time as mass collectivization of the USSR's core grain-growing regions, in November 1929. The rationale underlying rapid collectivization lay in the Soviet state's desire to control grain and the peasants who grew it, but that rationale was irrelevant to cotton. The chapter begins by assessing why mass, rapid collectivization policies were applied in Uzbekistan. It then turns to an analysis of remembrances of the moment when kolkhozes were organized. Those whose families joined first voluntarily and enthusiastically remembered that activists who were from similar circumstances claimed that the kolkhoz would offer them an improved living. Those who joined due to coercion and fear remembered threats that they would be barred from obtaining seed loans or would be denounced as quloq. Ultimately, the process of collectivization shaped and consolidated identities with politicized class-based categories.