History of collective farms

The first collective farms

Collective farms in the countryside in Soviet Russia began to emerge starting in 1918. At the same time, there were three forms of such farms:

• An agricultural commune in which all means of production (buildings, small implements, livestock) and land use were socialized. The consumption and domestic services of the members of the commune were entirely based on the public economy; distribution was egalitarian: not according to work, but according to consumers. The members of the commune did not have their own personal subsidiary plots. The communes were organized mainly on the former landlords and monasteries.

• Agricultural artel, in which land use, labor and the main means of production were socialized - draft animals, machinery, equipment, productive livestock, outbuildings, etc. The dwelling house and subsidiary plots (including productive livestock) remained in the personal property of the peasants, sizes which were limited by the charter of the artel. Incomes were distributed according to the quantity and quality of labor (by workdays).

• The Partnership for the Joint Cultivation of the Land (TOZ), in which land use and labor were socialized. Cattle, cars, inventory, buildings remained in the private property of the peasants. Incomes were distributed not only according to the amount of labor, but also depending on the size of share contributions and the value of the means of production provided to the partnership by each of its members.

As of June 1929, communes accounted for 6.2 percent of all communes in the country, TOZs 60.2 percent, and agricultural artels 33.6 percent.

Active collectivization

Since the spring of 1929, measures were taken in the countryside aimed at increasing the number of collective farms - in particular, Komsomol campaigns "for collectivization". Basically, the use of administrative measures managed to achieve a significant increase in collective farms (mainly in the form of TOZs).

This provoked sharp resistance from the peasantry. According to data from various sources cited by O. V. Khlevnyuk, in January 1930, 346 mass demonstrations were registered, in which 125 thousand people took part, in February - 736 (220 thousand), in the first two weeks of March - 595 (about 230 thousand), not counting Ukraine, where 500 settlements were covered by unrest. In March 1930, in general, in Belarus, the Central Black Earth region, in the Lower and Middle Volga regions, in the North Caucasus, in Siberia, in the Urals, in the Leningrad, Moscow, Western, Ivanovo-Voznesensk regions, in the Crimea and Central Asia, 1642 mass peasant uprisings, in which at least 750-800 thousand people took part. In Ukraine, at that time, more than a thousand settlements were already covered by unrest.

Fighting kinks

Collective farm charter

Most communes and TOZs in the early 1930s. switched to the Charter of the agricultural artel. Artel became the main, and then the only form of collective farms in agriculture. In the future, the name "agricultural artel" lost its meaning, and the name "collective farm" was used in the current legislation, party and government documents.

An exemplary charter for an agricultural artel was adopted in 1930; its new version was adopted in 1935 at the All-Union Congress of Collective Farmers-Shock Workers. The land was assigned to the artel for perpetual use and was not subject to sale or lease. The charters determined the size of the household land, which was in the personal use of the collective farm yard - from 1/4 to 1/2 ha (in some areas up to 1 ha). The number of livestock that could be kept on a collective farm was also determined. For areas of the 1st group of the West Siberian Territory, for example, the livestock norms were as follows: 1 cow, up to 2 young animals, 1 sow, up to 10 sheep and goats.

All workers over the age of 16 could become members of the artel, except for former kulaks and disenfranchised (that is, those deprived of voting rights). The head of the economy - the chairman - was elected by general vote. The board of the collective farm was elected to help the chairman.

Collective farms were obliged to conduct a planned economy, expand sown areas, increase productivity, etc. Machine and tractor stations were created to service the collective farms with machinery.

The distribution of products was carried out in the following sequence: the sale of products to the state at fixed, extremely low purchase prices, the return of seed and other loans to the state, the settlement with the MTS for the work of machine operators, then the filling of seeds and fodder for collective farm livestock, the creation of an insurance seed and fodder fund. Everything else could be divided among the collective farmers in accordance with the number of workdays they worked out (that is, the days they went to work during the year). One day worked on a collective farm could be counted as two or as half a day with different qualifications of the collective farmers. Blacksmiths, machine operators, and the leading staff of the collective farm administration earned the most workdays. Collective farmers earned the least in auxiliary work.

As a rule, collective farms did not have enough products to fulfill even the first two or three tasks. Collective farmers had to rely only on their subsidiary plots.

In order to stimulate collective farm work, in 1939 a mandatory minimum of workdays was established (from 60 to 100 for each able-bodied collective farmer). Those who did not work it out dropped out of the collective farm and lost all rights, including the right to a personal plot.

The state constantly monitored the use by the collective farms of the land fund allocated to them and the observance of the livestock quota. Periodic checks of the size of personal plots were arranged and excess land was seized. Only in 1939, 2.5 million hectares of land were cut off from the peasants, after which all the remnants of farmsteads resettled in collective farm settlements were liquidated.

Since 1940, the supply of animal products began to be carried out not by the number of livestock (there were fewer of them), but by the amount of land occupied by collective farms. Soon this order extended to all other agricultural products. Thus, the use by collective farms of all arable land assigned to them was stimulated.

Collective farms after the war

Until 1970, collective farmers did not have the right to have a passport, which was due to the desire of the authorities to keep the peasants in the countryside. In the “Instructions on the procedure for registration and discharge of citizens by the executive committees of rural and settlement Soviets of Working People’s Deputies”, adopted this year, approved by order of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, it was stated that “as an exception, it is allowed to issue passports to residents of rural areas working at enterprises and institutions, and also to citizens who, due to the nature of the work performed, require identification documents. This clause has become widely used for issuing passports to collective farmers. But only in 1974, a new “Regulation on the passport system in the USSR” was adopted, according to which passports began to be issued to all citizens of the USSR from the age of 16, for the first time including villagers and collective farmers. Full certification began, however, only on January 1, 1976 and ended on December 31, 1981. In six years, 50 million passports were issued in rural areas.

Stereotypical names

Kolkhoz named after Lenin- a common name for collective farms and other agricultural enterprises, used in different regions of the USSR, including both the RSFSR and all other union republics. After the collapse of the USSR and the liquidation of the system of Soviets, many collective farms were transformed into economic societies, only a small part of them remained cooperatives. However, some of the former and existing collective farms named after Lenin, nevertheless, retained their names.

Agricultural enterprises - Collective farms named after Lenin

• Collective farm named after Lenin in the Ryazan region. The collective farm in the village of Grebnevo, Starozhilovsky district, Ryazan region, was founded in the year. Grows grain, produces meat and milk. The number of staff is 250 people. 4,000 hectares of arable land, of which 2,500 are for grain, the harvest is 32-40 centners. 2500 heads of cattle, including 800 cows. Daily supplies - 300 tons of livestock, 2.5 tons of milk. The nearby secondary school, kindergarten, House of Culture and other social institutions are maintained at the expense of the collective farm. Chairman Balov Ivan Egorovich.

• Fishing collective farm named after Lenin in the Khabarovsk Territory. A collective farm in the village of Bulgin, Okhotsk District, Khabarovsk Territory. Engaged in fishing activities. Chairman Khomchenko Nikolai Mikhailovich.

• Collective farm named after V. I. Lenin in the Kamchatka Territory. Created in 1929. The largest fishing enterprise in the region. Engaged in the extraction and processing of fish and seafood, ship repair. It has: 29 ships, coastal infrastructure, refrigerator 6000 tons, fish processing factory, ship repair workshops, berths, warehouses, sewing shop, car fleet. Address Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, st. Cosmonauts, 40.

• Collective farm named after V. I. Lenin in Buryatia. Republic of Buryatia, Mukhorshibirsky district, Nikolsk village. Types of activity: Cultivation of sheep and goats, cultivation of grain and leguminous crops.

• People associated with the collective farms. Lenin. From 1985 to 1987, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko served as secretary of the party committee of the collective farm named after Lenin in the Shklovsky district.

Collective farm and collective farm life in art

• A guest from the Kuban (film) - shows the life of the collective farm, harvesting, the work of MTS machine operators
• Kalina Krasnaya (film) - shows the work of collective farmers (driver, machine operator)
• Kuban Cossacks (film) - the life of collective farmers is shown embellished, parade
• Ivan Brovkin on Virgin Land (film) - the life of a virgin sovkhoz is shown
• Chairman - shows the life of the collective farm in the post-war years

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 February 1917, when Russia was divided into dozens of territorial and national entities with the help of the West, from October 1917, after which the collapsed Russian state began to be assembled and collected 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 period of the Second World War produced twice as much 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), J. V. 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 by 5.5 times by 1986, and by 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 huge amounts 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 vast majority of books on agriculture in the USSR, published in these 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 authorities of the USSR began to create collective farms almost immediately after the end of the October Revolution. All peasants united for joint work in agricultural communes. There were several types of cooperatives, which differed in the method of socializing funds and distributing funds among the participants in the process.

Peasants united to work together in agricultural communes // Photo: great-country.ru

How it all began

Before embarking on general collectivization, the authorities actively promoted it. The peasants were convinced that individual farming was extremely unprofitable. Officially, it was believed that every person should voluntarily join the collective farm, but in fact this was not at all the case. But one cannot say that absolutely all the peasants perceived such changes with extreme hostility.

Different segments of the population had different attitudes towards collective farm construction. The poor part of the population spoke quite positively about the coming changes. They were extremely hopeful for positive change. Most of the middle class also hoped for collective farms. However, they were extremely unstable politically and were very afraid of losing most of their property, rather than gaining something in return. It was the wealthy stratum of the population that was extremely aggressive towards such changes. They began to call them "fists" and declared a real "war"

The state declared a real “war” against the kulaks // Photo: stena.ee

Fist fighting

The government fought the kulaks because they were completely self-sufficient. It wanted to deprive citizens of the opportunity to exploit the poor and to involve them in common labor. The kulaks were even divided into several categories: counter-revolutionaries, rich people, and everyone else. Sometimes, some middle peasants and poor peasants who were noticed in "anti-collective farm actions" were also brought to the latter.

The dispossession of the population was carried out quite harshly. In some cases, it looked like outright robbery. The heads of families of kulaks of the first category were arrested. As a result, almost 19 thousand people were shot, and 180 thousand were sent to concentration camps. The second category was evicted to remote areas of the USSR (approximately 2 million). All property was taken away from the rest. They were resettled within the area where they previously lived, but at the same time they worked and lived exclusively on the conditions that the state provided them.

Only in 1929 did the authorities manage to achieve a significant increase in collective farms. However, the vast majority of them had the form of a partnership for the processing of land.

Positive and negative changes

The main advantage and at the same time disadvantage of collective farms was that the main means of production (animals, equipment, land, real estate) were issued for public use. However, it promised huge changes. First of all, with the help of collective farms, the state accumulated experience in running large agricultural enterprises. The peasants gradually became more conscious.

Animals, equipment, land, real estate were issued for public use // Photo: regnum.ru

Thanks to the creation of collective farms, a material and technical base was established, and this, in turn, made it possible to further develop the agricultural industry, using the industrial basis. The cultural and material level of the workers has risen many times over. They very actively began to take part in the construction of a socialist society. The collective farm system made it possible to save the collective farmers from poverty and built a new system of relationships.

Within 5 years, the state managed to perform an incredible operation. In its course, a lot of agricultural products were confiscated (mostly by force) from the population. At the same time, the authorities closely followed the processes that took place on their own in other countries. In the end, all peasants were deprived of independence, and the initiative was punished in the strictest way.

In the 1930s and 1940s, collectivization did not at all lead to an improvement in the general agricultural situation in the country, but to the destruction of the well-being of the people. The country was dominated by poverty and ruin. "Free collective farm life" turned the peasants into forced laborers, that is, practically into slaves.

From an economic point of view, we can say that collectivization led only to the inability to feed the population of the country. People most often lived hand to mouth. They unwillingly gave their lives in the name of industrialization.

The collective-farm system of agricultural production has gone down in history. More than 15 years have passed since then. Modern people who have not lived no longer understand how the state farm differed from the collective farm, what is the difference. We will try to answer this question.

How is a collective farm different from a state farm? Is the difference only in the name?

As for the differences, from a legal point of view, the difference is huge. Speaking in modern legal terminology, these are completely different organizational and legal forms. Approximately as much as today is the difference between the legal forms of LLC (limited liability company) and MUP (municipal unitary enterprise).

The state farm (Soviet economy) is a state enterprise, all the means of production of which belonged to it. The chairman was appointed by the local district executive committee. All workers were civil servants, received a certain salary under the contract and were considered employees of the public sector.

A collective farm (collective farm) is a private enterprise, although this sounds paradoxical in a state where there was no private property. It was formed as a joint farm of many local peasants. Future collective farmers did not want, of course, to give their property for common use. Voluntary entry was out of the question, except for those peasants who had nothing. They, on the contrary, happily went to the collective farms, since this was the only way out for them at that time. The director of the collective farm was nominally appointed by the general meeting, in fact, as in the state farm, by the district executive committee.

Were there real differences?

If you ask a worker living at that time about the difference between a collective farm and a state farm, the answer will be unequivocal: absolutely nothing. At first glance, it is difficult to disagree with this. Both collective farms and state farms sold their agricultural products to only one buyer - the state. Rather, officially the state farm simply handed over all the products to him, and they were bought from the collective farm.

Was it possible not to sell goods to the state? It turned out that no. The state distributed the volumes of mandatory purchases and the price of goods. After sales, which sometimes turned into free change, the collective farms had practically nothing left.

Sovkhoz is a budgetary enterprise

Let's simulate the situation. Imagine that today the state again creates both economic and legal forms. The state farm is a state-owned enterprise, all workers are state employees with official wages. The collective farm is a private association of several producers. How is a collective farm different from a state farm? Legal property. But there are several nuances:

1. The state itself determines how much goods it will buy. Besides him, it is forbidden to sell to anyone else.
2. The state also determines the cost, that is, it can buy products at a price below cost at a loss to collective farms.
3. The government is not obliged to pay wages to collective farmers and take care of their well-being, since they are considered owners.

Let us ask the question: "Who will actually live easier in such conditions?" In our opinion, the workers of the state farm. At the very least, they are limited from the arbitrariness of the state, since they fully work for it.

Of course, under the conditions of market ownership and economic pluralism, collective farmers are actually turning into modern farmers - the same “kulaks” who were liquidated in their time, having formed new socialist enterprises on their economic ruins. Thus, to the question "what is the difference between a collective farm and a state farm" (or rather, it differed earlier), the answer is this: the formal form of ownership and the sources of formation. We will tell you more about this later.

How were collective farms and state farms formed?

To better understand the difference between a collective farm and a state farm, it is necessary to find out how they were formed.

The first state farms were formed due to:

• Large former landlord farms. Of course, serfdom was abolished, but large enterprises - a legacy of past times, worked by inertia.
• Due to the former kulak and middle peasant farms.
• From large farms that were formed after dispossession.

Of course, the process of dispossession took place before collectivization, but it was then that the first communes were created. Most of them, of course, went bankrupt. This is understandable: in place of the industrious and diligent "kulaks" and middle peasants, workers were recruited from the poor who did not want and did not know how to work. But of those who still lived to see the collectivization process, the first state farms were formed.

In addition to them, there were large farms at the time of collectivization. Some miraculously survived the process of dispossession, others have already managed to develop after these tragic events in our history. Both those and others fell under a new process - collectivization, that is, the actual expropriation of property.

Collective farms were formed by "merging" many small private farms into a single large one. That is, nominally no one canceled the property. However, in fact, people with their property have become a state object. It can be concluded that in practice the communist system returned serfdom in a slightly modified version.

Kolkhozes today

Thus, we answered the question of how the collective farm differs from the state farm. Since 1991, all these forms have been eliminated. However, do not think that they do not actually exist. Many farmers also began to unite in single farms. And this is the same collective farm. Only, unlike the socialist predecessors, such farms are formed on a voluntary basis. And they are not obliged to sell all products to the state at low prices. But today, on the contrary, there is another problem - the state does not interfere in their lives in any way, and without real help from it, many enterprises cannot get out of debt on credit obligations for years.

We definitely need to find a golden mean when the state will help farmers, but not rob them. And then food crises will not threaten us, and food prices in stores will be acceptable.

Collective farm(from count lective household yaystvo) - a legal entity created for agricultural production on the basis of production cooperation, in which the means of production (land, equipment, livestock, seeds, etc.) were jointly owned and under the public control of its participants and the results of labor were also distributed by a common decision participants. They became widespread in the USSR, there were also fishing collective farms.

Analogues of collective farms in other countries: kibbutz(Israel), " people's communes» (China during the Great Leap Forward).

Story

The first collective farms

Collective farms in the countryside in Soviet Russia began to emerge from 1918. At the same time, there were three forms of such farms:

• Agricultural commune (unitary enterprise), in which all means of production (buildings, small implements, livestock) and land use were combined. The consumption and household services of the members of the commune were entirely based on the public economy; distribution was egalitarian: not according to work, but according to consumers. Members of the commune did not have their own personal subsidiary plots. Communes were organized mainly on former landowners and monasteries.

• An agricultural artel (production cooperative), in which land use, labor and the main means of production were socialized - draft animals, machinery, equipment, productive livestock, outbuildings, etc. cattle), the size of which was limited by the charter of the artel. Incomes were distributed according to the quantity and quality of labor (by workdays).

• Partnerships for joint cultivation land (TOZ), in which land use and labor were socialized. Cattle, cars, inventory, buildings remained in the personal property of the peasants. Incomes were distributed not only according to the amount of labor, but also depending on the size of share contributions and the value of the means of production provided to the partnership by each of its members.

As of June 1929, communes accounted for 6.2% of all collective farms in the country, TOZs - 60.2%, agricultural artels - 33.6%.

In parallel with the collective farms, since 1918, state farms were created on the basis of specialized farms (for example, stud farms), in which the state acted as the owner of the means of production and land. State farm workers were paid wages according to the standards and in cash, they were employees, not co-owners.

Mass collectivization

Since the spring of 1929, measures were taken in the countryside aimed at increasing the number of collective farms - in particular, Komsomol campaigns "for collectivization". Basically, the use of administrative measures managed to achieve a significant increase in collective farms (mainly in the form of TOZs).

This provoked sharp resistance from the peasantry. According to data from various sources cited by O. V. Khlevnyuk, in January 1930, 346 mass demonstrations were registered, in which 125 thousand people took part, in February - 736 (220 thousand), in the first two weeks of March - 595 ( about 230 thousand), not counting Ukraine, where 500 settlements were covered by unrest. In March 1930, a total of 1,642 mass peasant uprisings, in which at least 750-800 thousand people took part. In Ukraine, at that time, more than a thousand settlements were already covered by unrest.

Fighting kinks

On March 2, 1930, Stalin's letter "Dizziness from Success" was published in the Soviet press, in which the blame for the "excesses" during the collectivization was laid on local leaders.

On March 14, 1930, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution "On the fight against distortions of the party line in the collective farm movement." A government directive was sent to the localities to soften the course in connection with the threat of a "wide wave of insurgent peasant uprisings" and the destruction of "half of the grass-roots workers." After a sharp article by Stalin and bringing individual leaders to justice, the pace of collectivization slowed down, and the artificially created collective farms and communes began to fall apart.

Collective farm charter

Most communes and TOZs in the early 1930s switched to Charter of the agricultural artel. Artel became the main, and then the only form of collective farms in agriculture. In the future, the name "agricultural artel" lost its meaning, and the name "collective farm" was used in the current legislation, party and government documents.

The distribution of products was carried out in the following sequence: the sale of products to the state at fixed, extremely low purchase prices, the return of seed and other loans to the state, the settlement with the MTS for the work of machine operators, then the filling of seeds and fodder for collective farm livestock, the creation of an insurance seed and fodder fund. Everything else could be divided among the collective farmers in accordance with the number of workdays they worked out. One day worked on a collective farm could be counted as two or as half a day, given the varying severity and importance of the work performed and the qualifications of the collective farmers. Blacksmiths, machine operators, and the leading staff of the collective farm administration earned the most workdays [ ] . Collective farmers earned the least in auxiliary work.

In order to stimulate collective farm work, in 1939 a mandatory minimum of workdays was established (from 60 to 100 for each able-bodied collective farmer). Those who did not work it out dropped out of the collective farm and lost all rights, including the right to a personal plot.

The state constantly monitored the use by the collective farms of the land fund allocated to them and the observance of the livestock quota. Periodic checks of the size of personal plots were arranged and excess land was seized. Only in 1939, 2.5 million hectares of land were cut off from the peasants, after which all the remnants of farmsteads resettled in collective farm settlements were liquidated.

As a rule, collective farmers did not need a passport for registration. Moreover, peasants had the right to live without registration in cases where other categories of citizens were required to register. For example, Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated September 10, 1940 No. 1667 “On Approving the Regulations on Passports” established that collective farmers, individual farmers and other persons living in rural areas where the passport system has not been introduced, arriving in the cities of their region for up to 5 days, live without registration (other citizens, except for military personnel who also did not have passports, were required to register within 24 hours). The same decree exempted collective farmers and individual farmers temporarily working during the sowing or harvesting campaign in state farms and MTS within their district, even if the passport system was introduced there, from the obligation to reside with a passport.

According to the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR No. 2193 of September 19, 1934 "On the registration of passports of collective farmers-otkhodniks entering work in enterprises without contracts with economic agencies", in the areas provided for by the Instruction on the issuance of passports to citizens of the USSR: in Moscow, Leningrad and Kharkov, and also, in the 100-kilometer strip around Moscow and Leningrad and in the 50-kilometer strip around Kharkov, a otkhodnik collective farmer (a peasant who went to work at industrial enterprises, construction sites, etc., but retained membership in the collective farm) could not be hired without an agreement registered with the collective farm board with the economic agency, otherwise than in the presence of a passport (it was already noted above that in these areas the collective farmers were issued passports) and a certificate from the collective farm board about his consent to the departure of the collective farmer. Registration in this case was made for a three-month period.

It should be noted that the Decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of March 17, 1933 “On the procedure for seasonal work from collective farms” established that a collective farmer, without an agreement registered with the collective farm board with a “hozorgan” - an enterprise where he got a job, who left the collective farm, subject to exclusion from the collective farm.

Thus, a peasant could leave the collective farm, retaining the status of a collective farmer, only by notifying the management of the collective farm.

At the same time, the obstacle on the part of local authorities, collective farm organizations to the departure of peasants entailed criminal liability for the relevant leaders [ ] .

In the “Instructions on the procedure for registration and discharge of citizens by the executive committees of rural and settlement Soviets of Workers’ Deputies”, adopted in 1970, approved by the Order of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, it was stated that “as an exception, it is allowed to issue passports to residents of rural areas working at enterprises and institutions, and also to citizens who, due to the nature of the work performed, require identification documents” [ ] .

Finally, in 1974, a new “Regulation on the Passport System in the USSR” was adopted (approved by the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of August 28, 1974 N 677), according to which passports began to be issued to all citizens of the USSR from the age of 16, for the first time including villagers, collective farmers. Full passportization began on January 1, 1976 and ended on December 31, 1981. In six years, 50 million passports have been issued in rural areas.

Collective farms after Stalin's death

Most of the collective farms in the 1990s ceased to exist or were transformed into economic companies, production cooperatives, partnerships or peasant (farm) enterprises (an analogue of a private unitary enterprise).

In the current Russian legislation (Federal Law No. 193-FZ On agricultural cooperation), the term "collective farm" is used as a synonym for the term "agricultural (fishing) artel" - a type of agricultural production cooperative, which is characterized by the combination of property contributions with their transfer to a share fund cooperatives and personal labor participation. At the same time, in everyday life the word "collective farm" is often still used to refer to any agricultural commodity producers - legal entities, regardless of their organizational and legal form, and often even to refer to rural areas in general.

The project for the revival of collective farms, as a tool for eliminating unemployment and raising the village, was discussed back in 2008 as part of the global program of Self-Sufficient Russia, but the initiative was postponed until "better times" due to the economic crisis of 2008.

On May 27, 2016, the Governor of the Irkutsk Region, Sergey Levchenko, announced plans to revive collective farms in the remote northern territories of the region. Farms will be created in remote northern areas to bring together local farmers and entrepreneurs. .

Collective farm and collective farm life in art

In the 1930s-1960s, many songs, films and books promoted life on collective farms, told about the good and friendly work of collective farmers, where the characters were satisfied with their lives and work.

In cinema

• Kuban Cossacks (1949) - the life of collective farmers is shown embellished, parade
• Guest from Kuban (1955) - shows the life of the collective farm, harvesting, the work of MTS machine operators
• Ivan Brovkin on virgin lands (1958) - the life of a virgin sovkhoz is shown
• Upturned virgin soil (1959) - shows the process of formation of collective farms, collectivization
• Quarrel in Lukash (1959) - shows the life of the collective farm in the late 50s.
• A simple story (1960) - shows the life of a collective farm at the turn of the 1950s - 1960s.
• Chairman (1964) - shows the life of the collective farm in the difficult post-war years
• Kalina red (1973) - shows the work of collective farmers (driver, machine operator)
• Farewell, Gyulsary! (2008) - collective farm drama in Soviet Kazakhstan of the 50s

In literature

• "Virgin Soil Upturned" (1932/1959) - a novel by M. A. Sholokhov
• "Prokhor XVII and others" (1954) - a collection of satirical stories