Farm Collectivization and Famine
Stalin found himself faced with the problem of how to feed his cities and countries. When Vladimir Lenin was in power and at the beginning of Joseph Stalins leadership almost 80% of farmers and peasants were not controlled by the government. In 1928 Stalin started taking over many privately owned farms and turned them into collective farms. A collective farm was when the government took your farm and combined it with many other families farms that way you are producing food for the state and not your own individual family. This really showed how intent and vicious Joseph Stalin was. Although some did try to resist Stalins actions. Stalin used violence and fear to make peasants work on collective farms, those who did not were shipped to Siberia or killed. A groups called the Kulaks were very strong among the resistance. Close to 10 million people died from this famine. By 1938 more than 90% of all peasants worked on collective farms.