ABSTRACT
Collective farms never achieved a dominant position in Polish agriculture. When the movement began in 1949, .3 percent of all arable land was collectivized. The Six Year Plan set no specific targets but a steady growth in the collective sector was anticipated (Barnett, 1958:233). At the height of the Stalinist period in 1952, only 4.8 percent collectivization had been reached. In December 1954 a high point of 8.5 percent was attained (Koenig, 1958:70), a figure which accounted for approximately 173,900 peasant households (Halecki, 1957:300). Collective farms in the new provinces represented 47.5 percent of all cooperatives and 55.7 percent of the most advanced Type III organizations (Korbonski, 1965:176). Yet in only two years these gains would be reversed and decollectivization on a massive scale would separate the agricultural system of Poland from that of its neighbors. In the previous section, analysis of the policy of forced collectivization in Poland focused on the nation's subservience to the Soviet Union as the determinative factor in the initiation of the movement. Neither class warfare, nor questions of agricultural productivity nor fear of village autonomy motivated Polish authorities. Rather the policy was dictated by the Cominform as part of a bloc-wide drive for conformity around the Soviet model of socialist development.
