Sharapov Sergey V.,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Harvesting and Grain Collection in the Novosibirsk Region in 1941
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2020-3-17
Study of the state’s grain collection policy during the years of the Great Patriotic war remains an urgent task for historians studying the functioning of Soviet economy during the war period. This article shows how harvesting and grain collection campaigns took place in 1941 in one of the main grain-producing regions of Western Siberia – Novosibirsk region. As a result of military mobilization, region’s agriculture lacked manpower (a special problem was mobilization of skilled workers in the army) and machinery. Lack of machinery led to increase of the share of manual labor in the total volume of agricultural work. Despite the fact that the state urgently needed Siberian bread, the grain collection plan for the Novosibirsk region in 1941 turned out to be lower than that of 1940. This was due, firstly, to the limited capabilities of MTS, which affected the decrease in volumes payment in kind. Secondly, in 1941 the state lowered the regional annual norms for compulsory grain supplies for the region, which, coupled with a reduction in the taxable supply of land of collective farms, affected the size of the grain collection plan. Grain collection campaign of 1940, carried out in accordance with the new hectare principle of calculating compulsory deliveries, was devastating for the Novosibirsk region. Weakening of the grain procurement “press” in 1941 was probably due to the need to preserve agricultural production potential of the Novosibirsk Region, which was undermined by the excessive seizure of grain in the previous year.
Publishing: 29/06/2020
How to cite: Sharapov S.V. Harvesting and Grain Collection in the Novosibirsk Region in 1941 // Historical Courier, 2020, No. 3 (11), pp. 176–187. [Available online:] http://istkurier.ru/data/2020/ISTKURIER-2020-3-17.pdf
Links: Issue 3 2020
Keywords: agrarian policy of the Soviet state; agriculture, grain collection; Great Patriotic war; Siberia