Employing the Ural-Siberian Collectivization Model in Slovakia: Imitating Dekulakization in a Slovak Village

• In Event: Waiting for Liberation: Authoritarian Rule in Slovakia

Abstract

Description: In 1952 and 1954, Communist activists strove to collectivize villages in the impoverished area of Zamagurie, Slovakia. They targeted two individuals in the village of Reľov as kulaks and undertook a concerted effort to harass and discredit them in the eyes of the local inhabitants. Authorities eventually imprisoned the alleged kulaks and deported their families. Ultimately, the collectivization effort failed, largely a reflection of the organizers’ lack of understanding of agricultural conditions in Zamagurie and the area’s low potential for agricultural productivity. Afterward, private agriculture remained the norm in Zamagurie until the late 1980s. Notable in the dekulakization campaign, based on documents related to one of the supposed kulaks, is the eagerness of the collectivizers to employ the Ural-Siberian method from the 1930s in the Soviet Union. Even though they failed, the collectivizers’ endeavors to follow the Soviet model serves as an example of how Communists persecuted kulaks and created collective farms elsewhere in Czechoslovakia.

Author

• Daniel E. Miller, U of West Florida