Social and economic conditions of changing rural population distribution of Tomsk region in the second half of the 1940s - early 1960s

At the integration of peasant farms into collective farms the population of the collective village as a labor force required to "treat" the historically given production capacity of collective farming became an indicator of the village viability. The village has inevitably become more sensitive to the social and economic reality, external and internal to it, and to the targeted population distribution policy. Changing rural population distribution in the post-war USSR could not but be caused by these factors. From the mid 1940s to the beginning of the 1960s the rural settlements have spontaneously disappeared as a result of social and economic processes, in particular, due to the difficult situation in the agricultural production of the northern districts of the region, causing migration of people from villages, consequently, the depopulation of rural settlements. Depressing factors of collective farming were a great diversion of the collective farmers from the direct work on the collective farms (e.g., work on logging); the duty of the collective farms of the northern districts of the region (since 1940 year) to carry out the bread delivery, therefore, the necessity to switch to grain production to the detriment to more profitable trades and lifestock breeding; the location of many collective farms of specially relocated people on inconvenient land for agricultural production. In the study period ideological, but mostly social and economic background for the formation of population distribution policies were arisen. During coexistence with the collective farms peasants have acquired the adaptative practices which threaten to the social production in terms of authorities. Farmers are increasingly focused on work in private farms and have an indifferent attitude toward the work on the collective farm. For authorities the fight with the village as a place of preservation and reproduction of peasant identity and the transformation of peasants into agricultural workers became relevant. Therefore, a new consolidation of the collective farms was done and the idea to create agro cities existing in the early decades was revived. By the end of the study period the logic of adaptative peasant behavior is being changed due to their worldview modification under the influence of government attempts to force the collective farmers to work more on collective farms by limiting private farms. In turn, this has reinforced the strong migration of peasants from the countryside. However, in terms of authorities the reasons for the disposal of the population of the collective farms in the second half of the 1950s - early 1960s were low pay in collective farms and shortcomings in the organization of cultural, household, health care, and schooling. The authorities planned to reduce the migration through the development of agricultural production and improvement cultural and household services for the rural population. They very soon come to the conclusion that the economic and cultural development of the collective farms is prevented by the historically established rural population distribution on small inhabited locality. The logical consequence of such approaches to attach the personnel in rural areas was the relocation policy embodied in practice since the early 1960s to eliminate "unpromising villages" and to concentrate of the rural population in the central collective farm.

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