Plaanimajanduse tuleproov – 1941. aasta kevadkülv

Trial by fire of the planned economy – spring sowing in 1941

Abstract

The sovietisation of the economy of the Republic of Estonia began in the first days after Estonia’s occupation in June of 1940. Planned economy was already adopted in the industrial sector in the 4th quarter of 1940. It took somewhat longer in agriculture because land reform had to be carried out first. The ensuing consequences turned the entire field of agriculture upside down in a short time. Prosperous farms, which had until then been the primary providers of jobs in the countryside, were broken up, creating tens of thousands of new small landholdings that were short of seed, ferti­liser, agricultural equipment, and draught animals for carrying out spring agricultural work. Thousands of new smallholders lacked all of that and also had no roof over their heads.

This article explores the most extensive economic campaign of the first year of Soviet occupation, in other words the post-land reform planned economy test experiment – the sowing campaign of 1941. In terms of pro­paganda, this was an exceedingly important undertaking that among other things was meant to prove the advantages of the Soviet economic model. At the same time, the propaganda was antagonistic – the unmasking of ‘enemies’ and ‘culprits’ took place pre-emptively and in parallel.

Economic, repressive, and propagandistic resources were combined in an effort to achieve success from a rather hopeless starting point, which representatives of the Soviet regime themselves indirectly admitted. Official prognoses made prior to the spring sowing predicted chaos if draconic mea­sures were not implemented. That is the approach that was chosen. Laws and regulations restricting private property and interpretations of them were used. The missing seed grain was essentially confiscated from those who had seed grain. To a smaller extent and more covertly, the same app­lied to horses and agricultural tools. Produce quotas in kind were imple­mented for carrying out actual agricultural work. At the same time, it can be presumed that the Soviet land reform was partially fictitious and that in some places, previous ownership relations remained in effect de facto.

According to initial summaries, the plan was fulfilled altogether 105.2%. In recalculated terms, that amounts to roughly 38,000 ha of cultivated land that exceeded the plan, which has no rational explanation. According to estimates from the time of the subsequent German occupation, the plan was fulfilled roughly 93%. In other words, cultivated surface area decrea­sed compared to the period preceding the German occupation. At the same time, that is not at all a poor result considering the upheavals caused by sovietisation. Yet any percentage of cultivated land does not indicate the quality of shock work carried out as part of a campaign. That star­ted emerging in the harvesting period. Crop yields dropped by up to half and in some cases even more in 1941 depending on the type of field crop. Needless to say, that could be blamed on the war that began in June of 1941 but in the longer perspective, the main problem was still the discord that accompanied Soviet serfdom. For instance, regardless of whatever subsi­dies were implemented, some qualitative agricultural indicators from the time of the independent Republic of Estonia remained unattainable under planned economy conditions, in some places until the 1970s.