(a) Sources A and B differ significantly in their views towards the impact of collectivisation, agreeing on virtually nothing.
Source A is overwhelmingly positive, which is to be expected given that it came from a Soviet school textbook. Even after the death of Stalin, Soviet historians tended to emphasise the benefits of his policies during the collectivisation and industrialisation years. It was also written with the benefit of hindsight, in 1976. By this date, the emotional trauma caused by collectivisation had subsided somewhat and people were able to see the role that collectivisation had subsided somewhat and people were able to see the role that collectivisation had in changing the USSR from an agrarian society to an industrial one.
However, Source B was written in the years 1930-31, when the USSR was in the midst of the turmoil surrounding the attempts to set up the collective farming system. This is bound to harm the author’s view of the attempts to implement the collective and, therefore, make Source B inherently negative. Also, it was written by Victor Serge, who had been expelled from the party, and so may have had the urge to discredit the Communists’ policy, through jealousy.
Sources A and B primarily differ in their views on how collectivisation affected the peasants. Source A says that collectivisation’s presence benefited the peasants, saying that under it “The life of the peasants became richer and fuller”, whereas Source B implies that it made them poorer, and therefore worse-off, saying that “it was a new serfdom”, with the implied bad consequences for them. He also says that the collective gave the peasants “no incentive to work”, which is in contrast with Source A, which implies that the peasants actually became more enthusiastic to work than they already were, as it was “much easier to work” with all the new technology.
Source A mentions education for peasants, saying, “The collective farms did away with illiteracy” which Source B does not do, perhaps because it was a benefit of collectivisation.
Interestingly, neither of the sources mentions industrialisation, which was a main factor in the process of and inspiration behind collectivisation.
In conclusion, the views in Source A and Source B differ significantly, with minimal agreement, only really agreeing on things that they both left out.
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