Kolkhoz projects

The mass collectivisation of Lithuania’s territory started in 1947, four years after the second occupation in 1944 in the midst of famine in Ukraine and Russia. Dekulakization measures forced the peasants to sign away their land property rights and join collective farms. All the bigger landowners and political opponents to the new regime were sent to labour camps in Siberia. At the time the 250 000 farmsteads that were spread in the territory with houses built on plots of private land in non-centralised manner formed a significant challenge for the Soviet occupation, making them uncontrollable in the midst of partisan resistance. Straightforward collectivisation processes made about 7000 villages disappear, peasants were forced to abandon individual farmsteads and move into newly planned villages formed around the collective farms were they worked since. The centralised and concentrated villages required less military and administrative resources to be controlled and thus presented less threat to the Soviet government.