Under Stalin, state control of the means of production extended to agriculture as well. Reasoning that economies of scale applied to farming as well as to manufacturing, central planners oversaw the collectivization of Soviet agriculture. The land holdings of landlords and peasants alike were seized and reorganized into agribusinesses known as sovkhozy and kolkhozy. A sovkhoz was owned outright by the state, and its workers were paid wages as if they were factory workers. A kolkhoz was a collective farm. Selfgoverned by a board of directors, it sold its produce directly to the government. At year's end, the profits were distributed to the kolkhozniki in accordance with how much and how hard they had worked.

Most landless peasants welcomed the development of collective farming because it promised to bring about a rise in their standard of living. Kulaks, peasants who owned so much land that they employed...