Collectivization in the Ukrainian SSR

Collectivization in Ukraine, officially the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was part of the policy of Collectivization in the USSR and dekulakization that was pursued between 1928 and 1933 with the purpose to consolidate individual land and labour into collective farms called kolkhoz and to eliminate enemies of the working class. The idea of collective farms was seen by peasants as a revival of serfdom.

In Ukraine this policy had a dramatic effect on the Ukrainian ethnic population and its culture as 86% of the population lived in rural settings. The forceful introduction of the policy of collectivization was one of the main causes of the Holodomor. In Ukraine collectivization had specific goals and outcomes. The Soviet policies related to collectivisation have to be understood in the larger context of the social "revolution from above" that took place in the Soviet Union at the time.

The formation of Collective farms were based on the large village farms in collective ownership of village inhabitants. Estimated yields were expected to increase by 150%. The ultimate goal of collectivization was to resolve "grain problems" of the late 1920s.

In the early 1920s only 3% of the peasantry of the Soviet Union were collectivised. Within the first five-year plan 20% of peasant households were to be collectivised, although in Ukraine the number was set at 30%.

Approaches to changing from individual farming to a collective type of agricultural production had existed since 1917, but for various reasons (lack of agricultural equipment, agronomy resources, etc.) were not implemented widely until 1925, when there was a more intensive effort by the agricultural sector to increase the number of agricultural cooperatives and bolster the effectiveness of already existing sovkhozes. In late 1927, after the XV Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, then known as the All-Union Communist party (bolsheviks) or VKP(b), a significant impetus was given to the collectivization effort.

...
Wikipedia