collectivize

/kəˌlɛktəˈvaɪz/

Other forms: collectivized; collectivizing

To collectivize is to give up individual ownership of an industry and form a collaborative group instead. In the early 1930s, the Soviet Union collectivized almost all of its agricultural land into large-scale shared farms.

Collectivize means "to form into a collective," a term that’s most often associated with communism. In the Soviet Union, it was Joseph Stalin who came up with the idea of collective farms as a way to boost productivity and free peasants from poverty. However, some historians see collectivization as one of the causes of the Soviet Union's terrible famines during the 1930s.

Definitions of collectivize

1. verb

   bring under collective control; of farms and industrial enterprises
   synonyms: collectivise

   type of:

   organise, organize

   cause to be structured or ordered or operating according to some principle or idea