Peculiarities of agricultural tractorization in Ukraine in the early 20s of the XX century

Abstract

The article examines the features and preconditions for the emergence of agricultural tractorization process in Ukraine in the early 20s of the twentieth century. The evolution and meaning of the concepts «motor culture» and «tractorization» are briefly considered. The source base of the study consists of special periodicals of the Soviet and pre-Soviet period and scientific works of historians studied the Ukrainian peasantry history and the development of its productive forces.

Tractorization is known as the introduction of tractors into a certain branch of the national economy. Tractorization became one of the main tools of modernization in the context of global Bolshevik transformations. It is defined that the greatest influence on the agricultural tractorization in Ukraine was on the one hand, the policy of the central Bolshevik authorities which was formed in Moscow and on the other – increased demand of the rural population for tractor machinery. The Soviet government set a course for extensive agricultural tractorization that initially provided the centralized purchase of tractors abroad with their planned distribution among rural producers and further creation of domestic tractor industry. The establishment of the Intersection Tractor Commission at the State Plan in Moscow in early 1923 tasked for state planning of all aspects of agricultural industrialization was important for the further agricultural tractorization.

It is defined that scientists and engineers of tsarist Russia who cooperated with the Bolshevik authorities later developed the basic principles of agricultural tractorization. The contribution to tractorization of A.A. Baranovsky, V. D. Batiushkova, М.С. Vetchinkina is described briefly. The publication emphasizes that the process of tractorization was accompanied by the creation of certain ideological myths that have been rooted in the mass consciousness for a long time. Nevertheless, an unbiased analysis of historical materials suggests that tractorization has had a huge impact on the development and nature of socio-economic relations in the Ukrainian countryside raising the culture of agriculture and productivity of agricultural production. The process of tractorization at the initial stage of the NEP was developed due to the mass import of American tractors (mostly Fordzon) relatively cheap and well-established. Therefore, the process of agricultural tractorization in Ukraine was continued in the second half of the 20s and in the early 30s during the mass agricultural collectivization.