Kolkhoz

A kolkhoz (Russian plural: kolkhozy; anglicized plural: kolkhozes (колхо́з) was a form of collective farm in the Soviet Union. Kolkhozes existed along with state farms or sovkhozes. These were the major components of the agriculture in the Soviet Union. The term continued to exist in some post-Soviet states.

Name

The portmanteau is a contraction of .[1] This Russian term was adopted into other languages as a loanword; however, some other languages calqued equivalents from native roots, such as Ukrainian, from .[2] In Belarus, the term was known as , in Lithuania – kolūkis, kolektyvinis ūkis.

The Russian terms for members of a kolkhoz is "kolkhoznik" (male) and "kolkhoznitsa" (female).

Organization of kolkhozes

As a collective farm, a kolkhoz was legally organized as a production cooperative. The Standard Charter of a kolkhoz, which since the early 1930s had the force of law in the USSR, is a model of cooperative principles in print. It speaks of the kolkhoz as a "form of agricultural production cooperative of peasants that voluntarily unite for the main purpose of joint agricultural production based on [...] collective labor". It asserts that "the kolkhoz is managed according to the principles of socialist self-management, democracy, and openness, with active participation of the members in decisions concerning all aspects of internal life".[3]

In practice, the collective farm that emerged after Stalin’s collectivization campaign did not have many characteristics of a true cooperative, except for nominal joint ownership of non-land assets by the members (the land in the Soviet Union was nationalized in 1917). Even the basic principle of voluntary membership was violated by the process of forced collectivization; members did not retain a right of free exit, and those who managed to leave could not take their share of assets with them (neither in kind nor in cash-equivalent form).[4]

The role of the sovereign general assembly and the democratically elected management in fact reduced to rubber-stamping the plans, targets, and decisions of the district and provincial authorities, who together with imposition of detailed work programs also nominated the preferred managerial candidates.[5]

Kolkhoz conditions in the Stalin period

In a kolkhoz, a member, called a kolkhoznik (, feminine form kolkhoznitsa, ), received a share of the farm's product and profit according to the number of days worked, whereas a sovkhoz employed salaried workers. In practice, most kolkhozy did not pay their members in cash at all. In 1946, 30 percent of kolkhozy paid no cash for labour at all, 10.6 paid no grain, and 73.2 percent paid 500 grams of grain or less per day worked.[8] In addition the kolkhoz was required to sell its grain crop and other products to the State at fixed prices. These were set by Soviet government very low, and the difference between what the State paid the farm and what the State charged consumers represented a major source of income for the Soviet government. This profit was used to fund the purchase of foreign machinery to accelerate the industrialisation of the Soviet Union, which Stalin and the AUCP believed was necessary to modernise the USSR and its population to avoid military disasters like those suffered in the First World War and the Russo-Japanese War.

In 1948 the Soviet government charged wholesalers 335 rubles for 100 kilograms of rye, but paid the kolkhoz roughly 8 rubles.[9] Nor did such prices change much to keep up with inflation. Prices paid by the Soviet government hardly changed at all between 1929 and 1953, meaning that the State came to pay less than one half or even one third of the cost of production.[9]

Basic statistics for the Soviet Union

Kolkhozes and sovkhozes in the Soviet Union: number of farms, average size, and share in agricultural production

Source: Statistical Yearbook of the USSR, various years, State Statistical Committee of the USSR, Moscow.

Kolkhozes after 1991

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the general policy of transition from the Soviet centrally planned economy to a market economy was announced. The number of kolkhozes and sovkhozes declined rapidly after 1992, while other corporate forms gained in prominence.

Still, field surveys conducted in CIS countries in the 1990s generally indicated that, in the opinion of the members and the managers, many of the new corporate farms behaved and functioned for all practical reasons like the old kolkhozes.[16] Formal re-registration did not produce radical internal restructuring of the traditional Soviet farm.

Number of kolkhozes and all corporate farms in Russia, Ukraine, and Moldova 1990–2005 Sources:

Kolkhozes have disappeared almost completely in Transcaucasian and Central Asian states. In Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, the disappearance of the kolkhoz was part of an overall individualization of agriculture, with family farms displacing corporate farms in general. In Central Asian countries, some corporate farms persist, but no kolkhozes remain. Thus, in Turkmenistan, a presidential decree of June 1995 summarily "reorganized" all kolkhozes into "peasant associations" .[16]

See also

• Collective farming – similar type or organization in other countries
• Labour Cooperative Agricultural Farm, similar type or organization in the People's Republic of Bulgaria.
• Kibbutz, in Israel

External links

• Mārtiņš Ķibilds (November 9, 2018). Kolkhozs: How collectivization changed the Latvian countryside, utterly. Atslēgas. Public Broadcasting of Latvia. Retrieved November 19, 2018.