village of western ukraine: collectivization of peasant economies (1944–1952)

In this article it has been analysed the three stages of the collectivization in a Western Ukrainian village. The first one was held during the initial establishment of the Soviet power (1940– the first half of 1941) and its re-establishment (1944–1946), when the political preconditions of the collectivization were laid out. During that stage there appeared the separate collective farms – the segments of the totalitarizm in the village. The second stage was characterized by the total transformation to collectivization., the beginning of the peasants’ mass alienation from their property, the starting of the terror against the national liberation movement and the deportation policy (1947- 1948). The third one was also characterized by the completion of the collectivization, the establishment of the collective farming system, the transformation of the peasants-owners into the modern serfs, the destruction of the socio-economic base of the national liberation movement (1949–1952). In the article it has also been shown that the collectivization’s violent methods of the Western Ukrainian village: beatings, intimidation, blackmail and provocations, arrests, deportations, destruction of farms limited the social base of the liberation movement, thus opening the way for the organization of collective farms. The armed struggle of the OUN-UPA had impact upon the rates and methods of collectivization. The collectivization’s fate depended upon the results of that struggle, which on the one hand, was the instrument for the suppression of the liberation movement, and on the other hand was the means to its «nutrition». Up to the end of 1952 the total and violent collectivization was finished in the Western Ukrainian lands. Therefore, «the revolutionary restructuring» of the Western Ukrainian village was done – the alienation of the peasant from his property, the destruction of the farmer-breadwinner.