Collectivization in the Soviet Union began in October 1929 when approximately 7.5% of peasant households belonged to collective farms. By February 1930, that figure had surged to 52.7% as the program integrated individual landholdings into state-controlled entities known as kolkhozes and sovkhozes.
An estimated 5.7 to 8.7 million people died from starvation across the Soviet countryside during the famine of 1932. The center of the disaster lay in Ukraine and surrounding regions including the Don, the Kuban, the Northern Caucasus, and Kazakhstan where one million people perished.
The term Ural-Siberian Method was coined by Stalin to describe a new approach to grain procurement that targeted wealthy peasants. Article 107 of the criminal code provided the legal means by which the state acquired grain from those deemed uncooperative while about one million so-called kulak families were sent to forced labor camps.
Livestock slaughter served as a major form of protest against joining collective farms when peasants refused to surrender their animals. In the Central Black Earth Region during early 1930, peasants slaughtered 25% of cattle, 55% of sheep, 53% of pigs, and 40% of chickens within three months.
Latvia experienced delayed collectivization until after World War II when the first kolkhoz was established in November 1946. By March 1949, about 40,000 people were deported and resettled throughout the USSR before 1,740 new kolkhozes were established within two weeks following these deportations.