Conclusion

Abstract

The Soviet authorities had succeeded in collectivizing Western Ukraine over the course of seven postwar years. Once mass collectivization was introduced, it spread relatively quickly. It was achieved by the same sort of coercive means that had been used in the USSR in the interwar period. Villages were garrisoned, the MVD and MGB troops evidently took an active part in the process and the MTS political sections were reintroduced in 1949 to complete the campaign. The raion, party and Soviet organizations were considered too weak to carry out the task—small numerically, made up partially of “unreliable” Western Ukrainians (by 1950–51) and failing lamentably in their mission to “attract” the Western Ukrainian peasantry to collective farming.