The Soviet Union enforced the
collectivization of its
agricultural sector between 1928 and 1940 during the ascendancy of
Joseph Stalin. The policy aimed to consolidate individual landholdings and labour into
collective farms: mainly
kolkhozy and
sovkhozy. The Soviet
leadership confidently expected that the replacement of individual peasant farms by collective ones would immediately increase the food supply for the urban population, the supply of raw materials for processing industry, and agricultural exports. Planners regarded collectivization as the solution to the crisis of agricultural distribution (mainly in grain deliveries) that had developed from 1927. This problem became more acute as the
Soviet Union pressed ahead with its
ambitious industrialization program.