“To prevent the starving peasants from fleeing to the towns an internal passport system was introduced and unauthorized change of residence was made punishable with imprisonment. Peasants were not allowed passports at all, and were therefore tied to the soil as in the worst days of feudal serfdom: this state of things was not altered until the 1970s. The concentration camps filled with new hordes of prisoners sentenced to hard labour. The object of destroying the peasants’ independence and herding them into collective farms was to create a population of slaves, the benefit of whose labour would accrue to industry. The immediate effect was to reduce Soviet agriculture to a state of decline from which it has not yet recovered, despite innumerable measures of reorganization and reform. At the time of Stalin’ s death, almost a quarter of a century after mass collectivization was initiated, the output of grain per head of population was still below the 1913 level; yet throughout this period, despite misery and starvation, large quantities of farm produce were exported all over the world for the sake of Soviet industry. The terror and oppression of those years cannot be expressed merely by the figures for loss of human life, enormous as these are; perhaps the most vivid picture of what collectivization meant is in Vasily Grossman’ s posthumous novel Forever Flowing.”

— Leszek Kolakowski

pg. 39
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume III: The Breakdown

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "To prevent the starving peasants from fleeing to the towns an internal passport system was introduced and unauthorized …" by Leszek Kolakowski?

Leszek Kolakowski 45

Philosopher, historian of ideas 1927–2009

Related quotes

“By destroying the peasant economy and driving the peasant from the country to the town, the famine creates a proletariat… Furthermore the famine can and should be a progressive factor not only economically. It will force the peasant to reflect on the bases of the capitalist system, demolish faith in the tsar and tsarism, and consequently in due course make the victory of the revolution easier… Psychologically all this talk about feeding the starving and so on essentially reflects the usual sugary sentimentality of our intelligentsia.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

From V. Vodovozov's memoirs about Lenin's position regarding the famine of 1891-1892, which is often cited
Was falsely attributed to Lenin by Michael Ellman, The Role of Leadership Perceptions and of Intent in the Soviet Famine of 1931-1934, Europe-Asia Studies, September 2005, page 823
Misattributed

“But we remember that it was just precisely in the reign of Richard II that the Peasants' War, following upon the changes wrought by the visitations of the Great Plague, virtually destroyed serfdom as a personal status.”

Edward Jenks (1861–1939) British legal scholar

Source: A Short History Of The English Law (First Edition) (1912), Chapter VI, Triumph Of The King's Courts, p. 72

“Conditions became intolerable by the time of Shahjahan when, according to Manucci, peasants were compelled to sell their women and children to meet the revenue demand. Manrique writes that the peasants were “carried off… to various markets and fairs, (to be sold) with their poor unhappy wives behind them carrying their small children all crying and lamenting…” Bernier too affirms that the unfortunate peasants who were incapable of discharging the demands of their rapacious lords, were bereft of their children, who were carried away as slaves. Here was also confirmation, if not actually the beginning, of the practice of bonded labour in India.”

Shah Jahan (1592–1666) 5th Mughal Emperor

Manucci, II, p. 451.,Manrique II, p. 272., Bernier, p.205., quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7

“In response to his grandchildren holding dual passports in a way said to be contrary to law - "What is the big deal? Their mother is an Indian diplomat, so they used an Indian passport. The passports were duly kept in the custody of Indian mission in New York once they had received US passports… When we were taking the kids to the US, we were told as they were natural US citizens they should get US passports."”

Uttam Khobragade (1951) bureaucrat

Devyani's daughters' dual passports raise a stink http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/khobragade-daughters-dual-passports-raise-a-stink-mea-unaware/article1-1194794.aspx, Hindustan Times, 14 March 2014.

“They dismissed me as a peasant, I dismissed them as shallow, and we were all happy like that.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Burn for Me

“Who keeps the tavern and serves up the drinks? The peasant. Who squanders and drinks up money belonging to the peasant commune, the school, the church? The peasant. Who would steal from his neighbor, commit arson, and falsely denounce another for a bottle of vodka? The peasant.”

Anton Chekhov book Peasants

Peasants (1897)

“…for destroying the harmony in the villages by interfering on behalf of the peasants and betraying the money lender.”

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920) Indian independence activist

His Criticism and opposition to the Agriculturist Relief Act 1879 and the reformist movement launched by others. Bal Gangadhar Tilak: Popular Readings, Page=15.

“Workers, peasants, we are
The great party of labourers.
The earth belongs only to men;
The idle will go to reside elsewhere.
How much of our flesh have they consumed?
But if these ravens, these vultures
Disappear one of these days,
The sun will still shine forever.”

Eugène Edine Pottier (1816–1887) French politician

Ouvriers, paysans, nous sommes
Le grand parti des travailleurs
La terre n'appartient qu'aux hommes
L'oisif ira loger ailleurs
Combien de nos chairs se repaissent
Mais si les corbeaux, les vautours
Un de ces matins disparaissent
Le soleil brillera toujours.
The Internationale (1864)

“I have peasant origins, this kneading hardness. One grandfather was a peasant, the other a foreman in a cigarette factory. I trained my mind whole life. For example, I studied poems by heart, from Mickiewicz to Mayakovsky.”

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

in answer to the question of how he managed to stay active scientifically for so long
Kobos, Andrzej (2009). Po drogach uczonych (in Polish). 4. Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, pp. 383–398. ISBN 978-83-7676-021-6.

“As the world changed, we reverted to social divisions that we'd thought were obsolete. The egalitarian pretenses of the high-octane decades had dissolved and nobody even debated it anymore, including the women of our town. A plain majority of the townspeople were laborers now, whatever in life they had been before. Nobody in town called them peasants, but in a effect that's what they'd become. That's just the way things were.”

James Howard Kunstler book World Made By Hand

Source: World Made By Hand (2008), Chapter 21, p. 101

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Leszek Kolakowski 45

Related quotes

Related topics