Kolkhoz

Three forms and standardization

Collective farms existed in three forms: the TOZ, which pooled only the cultivation of land; the artel, which pooled land, principal equipment, and labour while leaving households a plot and some livestock; and the commune, which pooled domestic life as well. When full collectivization began in 1930 the intermediate form, the artel, was adopted as the standard, and the Model Charter published on 1 March 1930 with its revision at the Second Congress of Collective Farm Shock Workers in February 1935 fixed the legal framework.

The charter granted the collective farm perpetual free use of state land and regulated, by region, the size of the household plot and the number of animals a household could keep. This provision for household plots created the dual structure of Soviet agriculture that followed.

Relation to the state

Formally the kolkhoz was a cooperative whose general meeting elected its chairman. In practice it was a subordinate unit of state planning. Sowing plans came down from above, the harvest went first to the state as compulsory deliveries, and procurement prices were fixed below the cost of production. Machine Tractor Stations held the equipment and were paid in kind for its use, functioning at the same time as instruments of political supervision in the countryside.

Members were not paid a money wage but credited in labour days. What remained after compulsory deliveries and other deductions was distributed according to labour days accumulated, so a poor harvest or an excessive procurement quota translated directly into the disappearance of the member's share. The internal passport system introduced in December 1932 was not issued to peasants, which restricted movement, and the constraint persisted in part into the 1970s.

Later changes

Postwar amalgamation made collective farms much larger, and the abolition of the Machine Tractor Stations in 1958 transferred equipment to the farms themselves. In 1966 a guaranteed minimum cash payment replaced settlement purely in labour days, which improved the stability of member incomes. Some collective farms were converted into state farms.

The weight of household plots and private sideline production never fell away. Plots amounting to a few percent of agricultural land carried a disproportionate share of the output of potatoes, vegetables, meat, and eggs, and this structure lasted until the Soviet Union dissolved. The repeated experiments with small autonomous work teams, the zveno among them, in the 1980s show that the problem of labour incentive inside the kolkhoz was never resolved.