From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

state farm (listen (inf.)- short for Soviet economy listen)) is a state agricultural enterprise in the USSR. Unlike collective farms, which were cooperative associations of peasants created at the expense of the peasants themselves, the state farm was a state enterprise. Those working on state farms were employees who received a fixed salary in cash, while workdays were used on collective farms until the mid-1960s.

The history of development

1918-1928

The need to create state agricultural enterprises was substantiated by V. I. Lenin as early as the period of preparation for the socialist revolution. Lenin's April Theses (1917) raised the question of organizing state farms on the basis of large landlord estates, which, in the conditions of the victory of the socialist revolution, were to serve as a model for large-scale socialist production. State farms began to be created after the publication of the Decree on Land of October 27 (November 9), on the basis of individual landlord estates. The first state farms were actually state stud farms; On the basis of government decrees, state farms of various specializations began to be organized: sugar beet, livestock breeding, etc. On February 14, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted the “Regulations on socialist land management and measures for the transition to socialist agriculture”, and on February 15, the SNK Decree “On the organization of Soviet farms by institutions and associations of the industrial proletariat ”, where the main tasks of state farm construction were determined. Land area of ​​state farms in thousand hectares by years: 1918/1919 - 2090; 1919/1920 - 2857; 1920/1921 - 3324; 1921/1922 - 3385. By there were 4316 state farms with a land area of ​​3324 thousand hectares. (out of more than 150 million hectares owned before October 1917 by large landowners). Mostly these were highly specialized agricultural enterprises engaged in industrial crops (sugar beet, flax, tobacco, cotton, etc.) - the so-called. trusted state farms. The governing structure was the Gosselsyndikat, which was part of the RSFSR People's Commissariat of Agriculture.

The main shortcomings of state farms at that time were (according to the decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the results of state and collective farm construction of December 30): insufficient leadership from the People's Commissariat of Agriculture; limited fixed and working capital; the bloat and high cost of the leading states (the seltrests, the State Sellsyndicate); high production overheads and mismanagement; lack of planned housekeeping and irrational use of labor force; the presence in a significant number of farms of backward forms and methods of farming (cropping, renting, low production technology, three-field land, weedy fields, unproductive livestock, etc.)

1928-1956

The year of the first five-year plan, “difficulties with grain procurements,” 1928, became the year of a “radical turning point” for state farms. In May 1928, in conversations with students of the Komakademy and Sverdlovsk University, Stalin pointed out as one of the ways out of the "grain problem" the mass construction of state farms "the way out consists, secondly, in expanding and strengthening the old state farms, organizing and developing new large state farms. The gross output of grain in the current state farms in 1927, according to the Central Statistical Bureau, was at least 45 million poods with a marketability of 65% ... There is a decision of the Soviet government, by virtue of which new large state farms (from 10 to 30 thousand acres each), which should give in 5-6 years 100 million poods of marketable grain.

After 1991

In connection with the transition to a market economy in the course of privatization, the vast majority of state farms were transformed into open joint-stock companies.

Grain farms

On July 11, the plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution “On the organization of new (grain) state farms”, paragraph 7 of which stated: “to approve the task for 1928 with a total plowing area sufficient to obtain in 1929 5-7 million pounds of marketable of bread".

The result of this resolution was the adoption of the Decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of August 1, 1928 "On the organization of large grain farms", paragraph 1 of which read: by the harvest to ensure the receipt of marketable grain from these farms in the amount of at least 1,650,000 tons (100,000,000) pounds. According to paragraph 4 of the same Decree, the new Soviet farms organized in accordance with paragraph 1 will be united into a trust of all-Union significance "Zernotrest", which is directly subordinate to the Council of Labor and Defense.

By the end of 1928, 10 (according to other sources 11) highly mechanized for that time grain state farms were created. Of these, 5 were created on the Lower Volga, 2 each in the Middle Volga and Kazakhstan, 1 each in the North Caucasus and the Urals, the first of which was the Gigant state farm in the Salsky steppes of the North Caucasian region (modern Rostov region). The total tractor fleet of state farms increased from 3,477 units in 1925 to 6,700 units at the end of the year.

In addition to the poor supply of equipment, qualified personnel and management in the areas of "risky farming", in the first years of development (1929-1932) grain state farms suffered from theories that prevailed in the initial period of creation, proving the "profitability" of building gigantic land areas of state farms (gigantomania - the area of ​​some state farms was increased to 200-250 thousand hectares), the "necessity" of creating state-farm-collective-farm combines with a common economy under the leadership of collective farms. The gigantic size of crops and the low availability of equipment, which was also inefficiently used for a number of reasons, led to large losses during harvesting and threshing of bread (grain crumbled and rotted in stacks). No less harmful was the theory according to which mechanization was opposed to agricultural technology, which ultimately led to the "simplification" of the latter - the introduction of shallow plowing, the ability to do without fallow and fallow, the transition to wheat monoculture, the combination of plowing and sowing winter crops, the "uselessness" of cleaning grain and fighting with weeds, etc. were widely used throughout the years 1930-1932. As a result, this led to soil degradation, weediness of fields and a decrease in yield.

State farms in cinema

In 1974, the Leningrad Documentary Film Studio released the documentary Why Man Sows Bread (directed by Vladislav Efremov, cameraman Viktor Petrov). The film tells about the everyday life of Soviet farms on the example of the Verkhnyaya Troitsa state farm in the Kashinsky district of the Kalinin region (now the Tver region) and its director Vasiliev Ivan Zakharovich (during the war he was the personal radio operator of Marshal Zhukov). This state farm was not chosen by chance: at one time, a member of the Stalinist Politburo M. I. Kalinin was born in the village of Verkhnyaya Trinity. The film was heavily criticized by the CPSU. As the cameraman of the film Viktor Petrov recalls in the book Fear, or Life in the Land of the Soviets:

“The Kalinin regional committee did not like the film terribly. So much so that they sent their Head to the annual studio reporting creative conference. Agricultural Department, and he made an angry diatribe, in which, in fact, not a single specific claim was made. He said that the film was made at the request of the regional party committee (and I did not know this!), but did not justify their hopes. I realized that there is no sedition in the film, otherwise it would have simply been banned. But it is clear that here, as in the Ivanovo case, there was not what the regional committee needed: the leading role of the party was not shown. The director of the studio made a response speech of repentance, it was necessary to find the culprits.

Despite this, in 1976 the film was awarded at the All-Russian competition of agricultural films.

Sources

• Agricultural Encyclopedia 1st ed. 1932-1935 M. OGIZ RSFSR
• Agricultural encyclopedia 2nd ed. 1937-1940 M.-L. SELCHZOGIZ
• State farms for the XV anniversary of October. M. - L. 1932;
• Newspaper, Socialist Agriculture, Moscow, February 8, 1932;
• State farms in 1934. Statistical handbook. M. 1936;
• Central Statistical Office of the USSR. Agriculture of the USSR. Statistical collection. M. 1960 and 1971;
• Collection of decisions on agriculture. M. 1963;
• Petrov V. A. Fear, or life in the country of the Soviets. SPb. 2008 R. Aslanov Publishing House "Legal Center Press". pp.99-100.

see also

Write a review on the article "State Farm"

An excerpt characterizing the State Farm

But at the same moment he died, Prince Andrei remembered that he was sleeping, and at the same moment he died, he, having made an effort on himself, woke up.
“Yes, it was death. I died - I woke up. Yes, death is an awakening! - suddenly brightened in his soul, and the veil that had hidden the unknown until now was lifted before his spiritual gaze. He felt, as it were, the release of the previously bound strength in him and that strange lightness that had not left him since then.
When he woke up in a cold sweat, stirred on the sofa, Natasha went up to him and asked what was wrong with him. He did not answer her and, not understanding her, looked at her with a strange look.
This was what happened to him two days before Princess Mary's arrival. From the same day, as the doctor said, the debilitating fever took on a bad character, but Natasha was not interested in what the doctor said: she saw these terrible, more undoubted, moral signs for her.
From that day on, for Prince Andrei, along with the awakening from sleep, the awakening from life began. And in relation to the duration of life, it did not seem to him more slowly than awakening from sleep in relation to the duration of a dream.

There was nothing terrible and sharp in this relatively slow awakening.
His last days and hours passed in an ordinary and simple way. And Princess Marya and Natasha, who did not leave him, felt it. They did not cry, did not shudder, and lately, feeling it themselves, they no longer followed him (he was no longer there, he left them), but for the closest memory of him - for his body. The feelings of both were so strong that they were not affected by the outer, terrible side of death, and they did not find it necessary to exasperate their grief. They did not cry either with him or without him, but they never talked about him among themselves. They felt that they could not put into words what they understood.
They both saw him sinking deeper and deeper, slowly and calmly, away from them somewhere, and both knew that this was how it should be and that it was good.
He was confessed, communed; everyone came to say goodbye to him. When they brought him his son, he put his lips to him and turned away, not because he was hard or sorry (Princess Marya and Natasha understood this), but only because he believed that this was all that was required of him; but when they told him to bless him, he did what was required and looked around, as if asking if there was anything else to be done.
When the last shudders of the body left by the spirit took place, Princess Marya and Natasha were there.
– Is it over?! - said Princess Marya, after his body had been motionless for several minutes, growing cold, lying in front of them. Natasha came up, looked into the dead eyes and hurried to close them. She closed them and did not kiss them, but kissed what was the closest memory of him.
“Where did he go? Where is he now?..”

When the dressed, washed body lay in a coffin on the table, everyone came up to him to say goodbye, and everyone wept.
Nikolushka wept from the pained bewilderment that tore at his heart. The Countess and Sonya wept with pity for Natasha and that he was no more. The old count wept that soon, he felt, he was about to take the same terrible step.
Natasha and Princess Mary were weeping now too, but they were not weeping from their own personal grief; they wept from the reverent tenderness that seized their souls before the consciousness of the simple and solemn mystery of death that took place before them.

The totality of the causes of phenomena is inaccessible to the human mind. But the need to find causes is embedded in the human soul. And the human mind, not delving into the innumerability and complexity of the conditions of phenomena, each of which separately can be represented as a cause, grabs at the first, most understandable approximation and says: here is the cause. In historical events (where the subject of observation is the actions of people), the most primitive rapprochement is the will of the gods, then the will of those people who stand in the most prominent historical place - historical heroes. But one has only to delve into the essence of each historical event, that is, into the activity of the entire mass of people who participated in the event, in order to be convinced that the will of the historical hero not only does not direct the actions of the masses, but is itself constantly guided. It would seem that it is all the same to understand the significance of a historical event one way or another. But between the man who says that the peoples of the West went to the East because Napoleon wanted it, and the man who says that it happened because it had to happen, there is the same difference that existed between people who said that the land stands firmly and the planets move around it, and those who said that they do not know what the earth is based on, but they know that there are laws that govern the movement of both her and other planets. There are no and cannot be causes of a historical event, except for the single cause of all causes. But there are laws that govern events, partly unknown, partly groping for us. The discovery of these laws is possible only when we completely renounce the search for causes in the will of one person, just as the discovery of the laws of the motion of the planets became possible only when people renounced the idea of ​​the ground being established.

After the battle of Borodino, the occupation of Moscow by the enemy and its burning, the most important episode of the war of 1812, historians recognize the movement of the Russian army from the Ryazan to the Kaluga road and to the Tarutinsky camp - the so-called flank march behind Krasnaya Pakhra. Historians attribute the glory of this brilliant feat to various persons and argue about who, in fact, it belongs to. Even foreign, even French, historians recognize the genius of the Russian generals when they speak of this flank march. But why military writers, and after them all, believe that this flank march is a very thoughtful invention of some one person that saved Russia and ruined Napoleon is very difficult to understand. In the first place, it is difficult to understand what is the profoundness and genius of this movement; for in order to guess that the best position of the army (when it is not attacked) is where there is more food, no great mental effort is needed. And everyone, even a stupid thirteen-year-old boy, could easily guess that in 1812 the most advantageous position of the army, after retreating from Moscow, was on the Kaluga road. So, it is impossible to understand, firstly, by what conclusions historians reach the point of seeing something profound in this maneuver. Secondly, it is even more difficult to understand in what exactly historians see this maneuver as saving for the Russians and harmful for the French; for this flank march, under other, preceding, accompanying and subsequent circumstances, could be detrimental to the Russian and saving for the French army. If from the time this movement was made, the position of the Russian army began to improve, then it does not follow from this that this movement was the cause.
This flank march not only could not bring any benefits, but could ruin the Russian army, if other conditions did not coincide. What would have happened if Moscow had not burned down? If Murat had not lost sight of the Russians? If Napoleon had not been inactive? What if, on the advice of Bennigsen and Barclay, the Russian army had fought near Krasnaya Pakhra? What would happen if the French attacked the Russians when they were following Pakhra? What would have happened if later Napoleon, approaching Tarutin, attacked the Russians with at least one tenth of the energy with which he attacked in Smolensk? What would happen if the French went to St. Petersburg?.. With all these assumptions, the salvation of the flank march could turn into pernicious.
Thirdly, and most incomprehensibly, is that people who study history deliberately do not want to see that the flank march cannot be attributed to any one person, that no one ever foresaw it, that this maneuver, just like the retreat in Filiakh, in the present, was never presented to anyone in its integrity, but step by step, event after event, moment by moment, it followed from an innumerable number of the most diverse conditions, and only then presented itself in all its integrity when it was completed and became past.
At the council at Fili, the dominant thought of the Russian authorities was the self-evident retreat in a direct direction back, that is, along the Nizhny Novgorod road. Evidence of this is the fact that the majority of votes at the council were cast in this sense, and, most importantly, the well-known conversation after the council of the commander-in-chief with Lansky, who was in charge of the provisions department. Lanskoy reported to the commander-in-chief that food for the army was collected mainly along the Oka, in the Tula and Kaluga provinces, and that in the event of a retreat to Nizhny, the provisions would be separated from the army by the large river Oka, through which transportation in the first winter is impossible. This was the first sign of the need to deviate from the direct direction to the Lower, which had previously seemed the most natural. The army kept to the south, along the Ryazan road, and closer to the reserves. Subsequently, the inaction of the French, who even lost sight of the Russian army, concerns about the protection of the Tula plant and, most importantly, the benefits of approaching their reserves, forced the army to deviate even further south, to the Tula road. Having crossed in a desperate movement beyond Pakhra to the Tula road, the commanders of the Russian army thought to remain at Podolsk, and there was no thought of the Tarutino position; but countless circumstances and the reappearance of French troops, who had previously lost sight of the Russians, and the plans for the battle, and, most importantly, the abundance of provisions in Kaluga, forced our army to deviate even more to the south and move into the middle of their food routes, from the Tulskaya to the Kaluga road, to Tarutino. Just as it is impossible to answer the question when Moscow was abandoned, it is also impossible to answer when exactly and by whom it was decided to go over to Tarutin. Only when the troops had already arrived at Tarutino as a result of innumerable differential forces, only then did people begin to assure themselves that they wanted this and had long foreseen it.

The famous flank march consisted only in the fact that the Russian army, retreating straight back in the opposite direction of the offensive, after the French offensive had stopped, deviated from the direct direction taken at first and, not seeing persecution behind them, naturally leaned in the direction where it attracted an abundance of food.
If we imagined not brilliant commanders at the head of the Russian army, but simply one army without commanders, then this army could not do anything other than move back to Moscow, describing an arc from the side from which there was more food and the land was more abundant.

I'm willing to bet that the words "state farm" and "kolkhoz" sound ten times more often in the speech of our parents, and hundreds of times more often in the speech of our grandparents. The Soviet era has passed irrevocably, but the historicisms that it left us will live in people's memory for a long time to come. For example, such words as in the title of an article can be found in the names of streets in almost any city in our country. In this case, it is our duty to know what underlies these similar concepts.

Word " collective farm” was formed by the favorite Soviet way of word formation - this is an abbreviation. It means in this case "collective economy". Imagine that rural workers have common tools of labor, land, distribute work, income, and the like among themselves. It was a whole system, a way of life with its charter, workdays, principles, and the like. What is the fate of the collective farm today? After the collapse of the former regime in 1991, the vast majority of collective farms ceased to exist or were reorganized, however, in the current legislation, surprisingly, there is a place for the “collective farm” as a complete synonym for the agricultural artel. In today's associations of this type, the degree of collectivization is high, however, not as high as in Soviet times.

state farm- This is a state agricultural association of the times of Soviet power. It was not created by the farmers themselves; this is its first difference from the collective farm. In state farms, people worked with a certain salary, which they were paid by the state, each for himself, in fact. Over time, it became difficult for the collective farm to compete with the larger state farm, which is why there was a mass reorganization of collective farms into state farms. Since, according to human psychology, people would be much more willing to go to state farms than collective farms, life on a collective farm was much more “drawn” by the media, cinema, and books. Therefore, some of the "romance" of that period is connected precisely with the collective farms. Some farmer associations have retained their state farm names to this day.

Findings site

1. The state farm was a state farm, the collective farm was a voluntary independent association with internal management
2. On collective farms, workers worked for "workdays", on state farms they received wages
3. Collective farms "died out" before state farms because of the difference in the scale of production and financing.

When Russia's ill-wishers write about collective farms, they immediately declare their low efficiency and necessarily declare the annihilation of the peasantry by the Bolsheviks.

In fact, the Bolsheviks saved the whole of Russia from destruction by the West, including the peasantry, which made up the bulk of the country's inhabitants.

To understand this, it is necessary to distinguish between February 1917, when Russia was divided into dozens of territorial and national entities with the help of the West, and October 1917, after which the collapsed Russian state began to be assembled and assembled for four years from 1918 to 1922.

By reuniting the Russian lands, the Bolsheviks saved the country from imminent death and destroyed all the intricacies of the West's conspiracy against Russia. The peasants were also saved. The peasants were not only saved, but also united in large communities, collective farms, where they undoubtedly lived better than in tsarist Russia.

It was after the revolution that the peasants received landowners' lands, and the issue of landless peasants, which was tearing Russia apart, was resolved.

The collective farms received land for perpetual use, and the collective farmers worked on their own land on the collective farm and on their own land on their personal plots. What kind of de-peasantry is this when the peasant works on the land!?

Without collectivization, Russia and the Russian nation would have disappeared from the face of the earth. Why? Because the USSR could not provide itself with bread and build before the war of 1941-1945. 12,500 large industrial enterprises, which during the Great Patriotic War produced twice as many military equipment and other weapons as the total number of enterprises in Germany and the rest of Europe united by Hitler.

The population of the European states opposing us in 1941 was well over 300 million people. (in the USSR as of June 20, 1941 - 195 million people).

Collectivization was vital, since the production of grain in the USSR stopped at the level before the outbreak of the First World War: 1913 - 76.5 million tons; 1925 - 72.5; 1926 - 76.8; 1927-72.3; 1928 - 73.3; 1929-71.7.

That is why in 1927, at the 15th Congress of the CPSU(b), JV Stalin put forward the task of the all-out deployment of the collectivization of agriculture.

“Kolkhozes and state farms are, as you know,” I. V. Stalin noted in January 1928, “large farms capable of using tractors and machines. They are more commodity farms than landlord and kulak farms. It must be borne in mind that our cities and our industry is growing and will grow every year. This is necessary for the industrialization of the country. Consequently, the demand for bread will grow every year ... "That is, the issue of industrialization is inextricably linked with the issue of collectivization.

In 1937, the gross grain harvest already amounted to 97.5 million tons (according to American estimates, 96.3 million tons).

As a result of collectivization, all the problems mentioned above were solved. Industrial production grew at an unprecedented pace in the world, grain production increased, labor productivity rose sharply, as a result of which people were released for industrialization.

For example, in 1929, 80 million people were engaged in agriculture, and in 1933, 56 million people remained in agriculture. However, both in 1929 and in 1934 the same grain harvest was obtained - 74 million tons. That is, the number of people employed in the agricultural sector has decreased by about a third, but grain production has remained at the same level.

Agriculture freed up for industry the 24 million pairs of workers it desperately needed. It must be said that in the USSR, even forty years after collectivization, there were not enough workers, because the country was constantly building, developing, moving forward, overtaking the most developed countries. And in no country in the world did they protect workers and peasants in the same way as in the USSR.

Thanks to the collectivization carried out, grain production increased by more than one third in five years, and by January 1941 the USSR was able to create a state reserve of 6.162 million tons of grain and flour.

Having entered a stable regime after the war, the collective farms and state farms increased grain production in 1986/87 to 210-211 million tons, which ensured the food security of the USSR. The peasants of the USSR produced this grain, and the liberals claim that the peasantry was destroyed.

Thus, by the second half of the 1980s, grain production was increased by more than three times, and the production of milk, eggs and industrial crops by 8-10 times.

From year to year, the USSR increased agricultural production, and in the production of many types of agricultural crops, it began to outstrip such a country as the United States.

Even liberals write that during the 8th Five-Year Plan from 1966 to 1970. the volume of agricultural production increased by 21%, but they immediately speak of a decline in agricultural production in 1970-1980.

Most readers immediately get the impression that in the period indicated above, that is, in the 9th and 10th five-year plans, the amount of agricultural products produced in the country decreased, while agricultural production in the indicated period increased annually.

For example, grain production in million tons in the 8th five-year plan in the period from 1966 to 1970. the average was 167.6, in the 9th - 181.6, in the 10th - 205 million tons. They call a recession the growth of production in percentage terms lower than in the 8th Five-Year Plan.

On the whole, compared with 1917, gross agricultural output increased 5.5 times by 1986, and 4 times compared with 1913, including crop production - 3.8 times, livestock production - 4.2 times. times.

Further, they write that agriculture has become increasingly subsidized. Please note that in our country it has become subsidized, while in Western countries it has long been almost completely subsidized by the state budget, such as the armed forces. In the Western world, where conditions for agriculture are much more favorable than in Russia, in all countries, without exception, agriculture receives large subsidies from the state.

Criticism of the collective farms was of great importance in the destruction of the USSR. About agriculture in most of the information on the Internet, historical, economic books published since 1985, you will not find the truth about the collective farms and state farms of the USSR.

They write that the state allocated a lot of money for the development of agriculture, but the latter allegedly did not develop, that the money received from the sale of oil (as if at that time we lived off the sale of oil) and all the gold went abroad to buy grain. This is written in the overwhelming majority of books on agriculture in the USSR published in the indicated years. But when we begin to consider the facts, we are convinced that we are being told lies. I do not think that this untruth is generated by the insufficient competence of the authors. Perhaps there are some omissions. Now they are available in abundance in all fields of knowledge. But it looks more like a conspiracy of Russia's opponents among themselves. Hatred for our country and Western money gave rise to a mass of false books, articles and broadcasts about agriculture in the USSR.

In fact, under Brezhnev, the USSR bought a small amount of feed grain from abroad, since the number of cattle in the USSR exceeded that of the United States. In fact, the USSR was ahead of the USA in wheat production.

The opinion about the extreme inefficiency of collective farms in comparison with farming has been put into the minds of our citizens. Collective farms (collective farms) are the Russian community at a new stage in the development of society and the state. The same community that existed in Russia for centuries and formed the basis of the socialist society that was built.

Criticism of the collective farms, after the fictitious mass Stalinist repressions and the number of losses during the Great Patriotic War, can be called one of the main enemy attacks on the USSR. In total, tens of thousands of these blows were delivered, and today every day blows are being struck against the Soviet Union, that is, against our great past. Moreover, the criticism of the USSR and collective farms is based on information prepared in Western subversive centers.

We did not produce such an ideological weapon as untruth and did not use lies in the Cold War with the West. Therefore, they lost.

But it could not be otherwise, because we Russians belong to the most honest and noble nation on earth. And Russia has always been direct and honest in its foreign and domestic policy. Deceit and lies were completely unacceptable ideological methods, both in tsarist and Soviet Russia.

And the fact that only the community could provide food for Russia became obvious in the days of the post-Soviet widespread destruction of agriculture. “I will also make a reservation,” writes S. G. Kara-Murza, that I do not at all consider Soviet agriculture to be ideally arranged - the possibilities for its improvement were great. But they could be realized only through development, and not through defamation and destruction of what we really had. We are talking about the type of economy and the trend of its development within this type.

And if we compare it with the West, then we all had to, first of all, bow to our collective farms and state farms - in terms of efficiency, farmers were no match for them. For efficiency is the ratio of what is produced to what is invested in production.

Even in 1992, Russian collective farms were selling grain at a price of slightly more than 10 rubles per kg, while in the United States in the same autumn they were buying grain at 70 rubles per kg. The difference in price may be explained by the fact that, together with government subsidies and other investments, the cost of grain production by US farmers was 7 times higher than the cost of grain production by Soviet collective farms.

Collective farms were destroyed on purpose, as they deliberately destroyed faith in Stalin, socialism, and Soviet power. The architect of perestroika, that is, the destruction of the USSR, A.N. Yakovlev wrote: “We need will and wisdom to gradually destroy the Bolshevik community - the collective farm. There can be no compromise here, bearing in mind that the collective-farm and state-farm agro-GULAG is strong and limitlessly lumpenized. Decollectivization must be carried out legally, but strictly.

The destruction of the collective farms was carried out according to plan with the aim of destroying the Russian community, on which the Russian state had been based for centuries.

The word "collective farm" for foreigners has always been one of the symbols of the USSR. Perhaps because they did not understand what it meant (as they understood little about the peculiarities of the Soviet way of life). Today, domestic youth strives to designate with this word everything that does not correspond to their ideas about a “beautiful” life, “modernity” and “progress”. Most likely the reason is the same.

Land for peasants

The Decree on Land became one of the first two decrees of the Soviet government. This document proclaimed the abolition of landownership and the transfer of land to those who work on it.

But this slogan could be understood in different ways. The peasants perceived the norm of the decree as an opportunity for themselves to become owners of the land (and this was downright their crystal dream). For this reason, a significant number of the peasantry supported the Soviet government.

The government itself believed that since it was building a state of workers and peasants, then everything that belonged to it, the state, belonged to them too. Thus it was assumed. That the land in the country is state-owned, only those who themselves begin to work on it, without exploiting others, can simply use it.

Artel economy

In the first years of Soviet power, this principle was quite successfully implemented in practice. No, far from all the lands taken from the “exploiting class” were handed out to the peasants, but such divisions were carried out. At the same time, the Bolsheviks carried out explanatory work in favor of organizing collective farms. This is how the abbreviation "collective farm" (from "collective farm") arose. A collective farm is a peasant association of a cooperative type, in which the participants combine their "production capacities" (land, equipment), jointly perform work, and then distribute the results of labor among themselves. In this way, the collective farm differed from the "state farm" ("Soviet economy"). These were created by the state, usually in landlord farms, and those who worked in them received a fixed salary.

There were a number of peasants who appreciated the benefits of working together. The collective farm is not difficult, if you think about it. So the first associations began to emerge from 1920 on a completely voluntary basis. Depending on the degree of socialization of property, different clarifying names were used for them - artels, communes. More often, only lands and the most important tools (horses, equipment for plowing and sowing) became common, but there were also cases of socialization of all livestock and even small implements.

little by little

The first collective farms for the most part achieved success, albeit not very significant. The state provided them with some assistance (materials, seed, tax breaks, occasionally equipment), but on the whole, an insignificant number of peasant farms united into collective farms. Depending on the region, the figure for the mid-20s could range from 10 to 40%, but more often it was no more than 20%. The rest of the peasants preferred to manage in the old fashioned way, but "on their own".

Machines for the dictatorship of the proletariat

By the mid-1920s, the consequences of the revolution and wars had largely been overcome. According to most economic indicators, the country has reached the level of 1913. But it was catastrophically small. Firstly, even then Russia was technically noticeably inferior to the leading world powers, and during this time they managed to move quite far ahead. Secondly, the "imperialist threat" was by no means the result of the paranoia of the Soviet leadership. It existed in reality, the Western states had nothing against the military destruction of incomprehensible Soviets, and at the same time the robbery of Russian resources.

It was impossible to create a powerful defense without a powerful industry - guns, tanks and aircraft were required. Therefore, in 1926, the party proclaimed the start of a course towards the industrialization of the USSR.

But grandiose (and very timely!) plans required funds. First of all, it was necessary to purchase industrial equipment and technologies - there was nothing like this “at home”. And only the agriculture of the USSR could provide funds.

Wholesale is more convenient

Individual peasants were difficult to control. It was impossible to reliably plan how much "food tax" they could get from them. And it was necessary to know this in order to calculate how much income would be received from the export of agricultural products and how much equipment would have to be purchased as a result. In 1927, there was even a "grain crisis" - 8 times less food tax was received than expected.

In December 1927, the decision of the XV Party Congress on the collectivization of agriculture as a priority appeared. Collective farms in the USSR, where everyone was responsible for everyone, had to provide the country with the necessary amount of export products.

dangerous speed

The collective farm was a good idea. But it was let down by a very short timeframe. It turned out that the Bolsheviks, who criticized the populists for the theories of "peasant socialism", themselves stepped on the same rake. The influence of the community in the countryside was, to put it mildly, exaggerated, and the possessive instinct of the peasant was very strong. In addition, the peasants were semi-literate (this legacy of the past had yet to be overcome), they knew how to count poorly and thought in very narrow terms. The benefits of a joint economy and promising state interests were alien to them, and no time was allocated for explanation.

As a result, it turned out that the collective farm is an association into which the peasants were forced to drive. The process was accompanied by repressions against the most prosperous part of the peasantry - the so-called kulaks. The persecution was all the more unfair because the pre-revolutionary "world-eaters" had been dispossessed of kulaks a long time ago, and now there was a struggle against those who successfully took advantage of the opportunities provided by the revolution and the New Economic Policy. Also, “fists” were often recorded at the denunciation of a malicious neighbor or because of misunderstandings with a representative of the authorities - in some regions, a fifth of the peasantry was repressed!

Comrades Davydov

As a result of the “pedaling” of collectivization in the USSR, it was not only wealthy peasants who suffered. Many victims were also among the grain purveyors, as well as the so-called "twenty-five thousandths" - communist workers sent to the countryside in order to stimulate collective farm construction. Most of them were really true to the cause; the type of such an ascetic was portrayed by M. Sholokhov in the image of Davydov in Virgin Soil Upturned.

But the book also truthfully described the fate of most of these Davydovs. Already in 1929, anti-collective farm riots began in many regions, and twenty-five thousand people were brutally killed (more often with their whole family). Rural communists also died en masse, as well as activists of the "committees of the poor" (Makar Nagulnov from the same novel is also a true image).

I don't um...

The acceleration of collectivization in the USSR led to its most terrible consequence - the famine of the early 30s. It covered precisely those regions where most of all marketable bread was produced: the Volga region, the North Caucasus, the Saratov region, some regions of Siberia, Central and Southern Ukraine. Kazakhstan suffered greatly, where they tried to force the nomads to grow bread.

The guilt of the government, which set unrealistic tasks for the procurement of grain in conditions of a serious crop failure (an abnormal drought occurred in the summer of 1932), in the death of millions of people from malnutrition, is enormous. But no less fault lies with the possessive instinct. The peasants massively slaughtered cattle, so that it would not become common. It’s terrible, but in 1929-1930 there were frequent cases of death from overeating (again, let’s turn to Sholokhov and remember grandfather Shchukar, who ate his cow in a week, and then the same amount “did not get out of sunflowers”, suffering from a stomach). On the collective farm fields they worked carelessly (not mine - it’s not worth trying), and then they died of starvation, because there was nothing to get for workdays. It should be noted that the cities were also starving - there was also nothing to bring there, everything was exported.

Will grind - there will be flour

But gradually things got better. Industrialization gave its results in the field of agriculture - the first domestic tractors, combines, threshers and other equipment appeared. It began to be supplied to collective farms, and labor productivity increased. The hunger has receded. By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, there were practically no individual peasants in the USSR, but agricultural production was growing.

Yes, just in case, they did not provide for mandatory passportization for rural residents, so that they could not run away to the city solely of their own free will. But mechanization in the countryside reduced the need for workers, and industry demanded them. So leaving the village was quite possible. This caused an increase in the prestige of education in the countryside - the industry did not need illiterates, a Komsomol-excellent student had much more chances to go to the city than a loser who was always busy in his own garden.

The winners are judged

The millions of victims of collectivization should be blamed on the Soviet leadership of the 1930s. But this will be a trial of the winners, since the country's leadership has achieved its goal. Against the backdrop of the world economic crisis, the USSR made an incredible industrial breakthrough and caught up with (and in part even surpassed) the most developed economies in the world. This helped him repel Hitler's aggression. Consequently, the victims of collectivization were at least not in vain - the industrialization of the country took place.

Together with the country

Collective farms were the brainchild of the USSR and died with it. Even in the era of perestroika, criticism of the collective farm system began (sometimes fair, but not always), all sorts of "rental farms", "family contracts" appeared - again a transition was made to individual farming. And after the collapse of the USSR, the elimination of collective farms took place. They became victims of privatization - their property was taken home by new "effective owners". Some of the former collective farmers became "farmers", some - "agricultural holdings", and some - hired laborers in the first two.

But in some places collective farms exist to this day. Only now it is customary to call them "joint-stock companies" and "rural cooperatives."

As if by changing the name, the yield will increase ...

Discussions about agricultural land have again raised the question of who can be an effective owner. In the bustle of disputes, they also remembered Soviet methods of managing in agriculture. And as often happens in the heat of a dispute, they mixed up everything and everyone, so it’s worth reminding one and telling the other.

Due to numerous requests from readers, the editors of the dock continue to publish on the topic of agriculture in the USSR.

History exam puzzle

History teachers of the CPSU liked to ask negligent students a dumb question: "When did state farms appear?" Many students recalled the film "Virgin Soil Upturned" and began to guess that state farms appeared either in the late 20s or early 30s. But, the answer is simple. The first state farms appeared in 1918, as the first socialist farms, which, according to the idea of ​​their creators, were supposed to show how well the socialists know how to farm, so that out of envy all the peasants ran to work in these state farms. But, it didn't work out. And it turned out that in the mid-1920s, the most effective owners were kulaks. So the emergence of collective farms was not without reason. Just in this way, the communists decided once again to improve their financial condition at the expense of others. You can read how collectivization took place either in dissident literature, or, if you like, in Comrade Stalin's article in the Pravda newspaper, "Dizziness from Success." Both here and there it is shown that it was collectivization that destroyed the beginnings of private business in agriculture and returned the times of serfdom.

On the question of forms of ownership

For the Soviet people, the words about the existence of collective property in the conditions of the USSR were empty words. Formally, the collective farm was considered a collective farm, to the surprise of the collective farmers themselves. It was believed that the state farm was headed by a director, who was appointed by representatives of state local authorities, in agreement with the district committee of the party, but the chairman of the collective farm was elected by the collective farmers themselves at the meeting. In practice, things looked different. A representative of the district committee of the party came to the meeting and indicated who could be the chairman of the collective farm. The voting itself was a complete fiction, and the peasants knew perfectly well that "vote, don't vote, it's all the same (censored out)". In fact, both the director of the state farm and the chairman of the collective farm depended on the goodwill of the district committee of the party. At the same time, he knew that he could be removed from work or appointed only with the approval of the same district party committee. Moreover, if he committed a criminal offense, he could not be afraid of anything if the district committee of the party stood up for him and he was not expelled from the party. Since there was an unwritten rule, it was impossible to condemn a member of the CPSU, only public censure. It is not surprising that the same directors of state farms and chairmen of collective farms behaved on their farms like landlords on their estates. The peasants, although they cursed their leaders, they were also afraid, because they depended on them very much and understood that, if desired, the same collective farm chairman could easily cut down a rebel for a couple of years in the taiga.

Who managed agriculture

The USSR had a planned economy, which means that everyone lived according to the plans given to them by higher organizations. Initially, Gosplan of the USSR and Gossnab of the USSR developed a plan for the national economy, including agriculture. Despite the presence of huge scientific research institutes under the State Planning Commission and the State Supply Committee, which were obliged to objectively calculate how much and what kind of agricultural products needed to be produced in order to have enough for the whole people, in reality, the proven “stele” method was used in planning. This is when they took the figures of past years, looked at the ceiling (stele) and came up with new tasks for the new year and the next five years. As a result, the plans were not balanced, and it was really impossible to fulfill them, since these plans did not take into account either natural and climatic conditions, or the availability of machinery and planting material, and even more so the specifics of agricultural work.

Plans developed in Moscow descended into the republics. Later, the State Planning Committee of the Ukrainian SSR distributed the planned tasks according to the regional plans, and they already according to the regional plans, they, in turn, already brought the plans to a specific state farm and collective farm. And this process was eternal. For the entire previous year, plan targets were coordinated and redistributed between state and collective farms, but as soon as the new year began, endless adjustments began to be made to the plan, which were made throughout the calendar year. At the end of the year, when it was necessary to report on the implementation of the plan, it was very difficult to understand what the original plan was. As a result, everyone was unanimously engaged in postscripts and fraud, from the chairman of the collective farm to the secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU for agriculture. Everyone knew this and played this game together.

A clever chairman of a collective farm or director of a state farm knew how to organize a trip for fishing or hunting trips of the party and Soviet authorities so competently that as a result, collective farms and state farms appeared in the country. They simply shamelessly underestimated the planned targets, and as a result, the leaders of these farms and individual milkmaids with combine operators received the Hero of Socialist Labor. But food, just as it was not on the shelves of stores, was not further.

On agricultural production in the conditions of the USSR

The problem with agriculture was that it had no real owner. As a result, the head of a collective farm or state farm stole cars, and ordinary collective farmers stole bags. Moreover, this theft was not considered something criminal, since the wage system in Soviet agriculture, as it were, prompted "you don't have enough wages, so go and steal." Officially, wages in agriculture were 30-40% lower than in industry.

The produced products of collective farms and state farms were redeemed only by the state. Accordingly, since there was one buyer, he set deliberately low prices for agricultural products. There was a time when a liter of milk was cheaper than a liter of table mineral water. But even the low prices for agricultural products during the Soviet era were not a problem. The biggest problem is that orders for goods were distributed to state and collective farms last. In the USSR, the money in the account mattered little. Individual collective farms had millions of rubles in bank accounts, but that meant nothing. Since it was possible to get equipment, fuel, other industrial and household goods only if there was an order for receiving the goods, which was issued by the local department of the State Security Service. First of all, Gossnab outfits were issued to military-industrial complex enterprises, industrial and construction enterprises, and only finally to state farms and collective farms. Therefore, getting the most basic industrial goods for rural enterprises was a problem.

This is how collective farms competed with factories. Collective farms strove to work as little as possible and hand over food to the state as little as possible, while factories strove to produce as little as possible and complained about the lack of food.

But, in addition to food production, the biggest problem in the USSR was the storage and processing of agricultural products. According to Soviet state standards, the loss of vegetables and fruits during storage was allowed at a rate of 30-40%. In practice, more than half of the grown crop of vegetables and fruits perished. There were not enough elevators, warehouses and food industry enterprises themselves. At each congress of the CPSU, they called for the construction of more factories and factories for the food industry. And they built it, but everything somehow interfered, and as a result, already in the beginning of 1980, a commodity famine began, which already in the late 80s buried the USSR with its management methods.

Very briefly about lending to agriculture in the USSR

The economy is planned, so there was a plan for issuing loans to agriculture for a calendar year, broken down by months. The directors of state and collective farms resisted with all hands and feet in order not to take these loans. From time to time, for shortfalls in loans according to the plan, they received a thrashing at the bureau of the district committee of the party. And they had to through do not want to take these loans. The rates were negligible 3-4%, there were even loans at 0.5% per annum. But they often did not repay these loans and did not pay interest. Firstly, they simply did not need money, they needed Gossnab outfits. Secondly, they knew that from time to time these loans are canceled and everyone is satisfied. The State Bank on these loans was not able to collect collateral, and even more so to somehow punish the debtor. But at each congress of the CPSU, they were very fond of telling how much money was invested in agriculture and how many loans were issued for its development.