Is there much known about what the peasants themselves felt about the process of collectivizing? It's often presented in the West as an authoritarian measure ordained from on high, as in: Stalin ordered the collectivization of this or that. A couple of years ago I watched Isabel Hinton's Long Bow Trilogy, her documentary on rural China in the 1980s, and a considerable part of it was dedicated to a discussion about the *de*collectivization process then recently undertaken. There was footage of farmers pointing to farming equipment that had been used by collectives but was now rusting in sheds, and one got the impression they were not so enthusiastic about the new direction. In other words, collectivization had worked for them.
As Mao said, one third are keen on it, one-third fence-sitters, and one-third opposed. Some of those collectives still exist. Mao's food-selling Co-op will sell $1 trillion in food this year. CR reunions are still a big thing..
It seems that the one-third that prospered under Mao was a different one-third that prospered under Deng.
Is there much known about what the peasants themselves felt about the process of collectivizing? It's often presented in the West as an authoritarian measure ordained from on high, as in: Stalin ordered the collectivization of this or that. A couple of years ago I watched Isabel Hinton's Long Bow Trilogy, her documentary on rural China in the 1980s, and a considerable part of it was dedicated to a discussion about the *de*collectivization process then recently undertaken. There was footage of farmers pointing to farming equipment that had been used by collectives but was now rusting in sheds, and one got the impression they were not so enthusiastic about the new direction. In other words, collectivization had worked for them.
As Mao said, one third are keen on it, one-third fence-sitters, and one-third opposed. Some of those collectives still exist. Mao's food-selling Co-op will sell $1 trillion in food this year. CR reunions are still a big thing..
It seems that the one-third that prospered under Mao was a different one-third that prospered under Deng.