How did collective farmers live in the 1930s?
To begin with, it is necessary to separate what period of the “Stalinist collective farms” we are talking about. The first years of the young collective farms are strikingly different from the mature collective farms of the late 1930s, to say nothing of the post-war collective farms of the early 1950s. Even the collective farms of the mid-30s of the twentieth century are already qualitatively different from the collective farms of literally 2-3 years ago.
Kolkhoz 30s. Photo caption by Y. Dolgushin:
The collective farm is collective farming. It works well when people are working in it, but everything works badly when people are idle.
The period of organizing any new business “from scratch” necessarily goes through a very difficult period, which not everyone manages to successfully pass. But so everywhere and always. The same is true everywhere under capitalism. There are so many life stories that, for example, a farmer first lived poorly and starving, and then settled down and began to grow rich quickly. Or an entrepreneur who lived with his family in a miserable apartment with bedbugs and cockroaches, but invested all his money and effort in the development of his business. This topic is constantly sucked up in books and films - how badly he lived at first, then he got rich, so you need to work better, behave correctly and everything will work out. It would be more than strange to throw a tantrum about how badly they lived "then" and on the basis of this blame, for example, America and capitalism. Such a propagandist would rightly be taken for an idiot. The same thing happened to the collective farms, and propaganda tirelessly hysteria for decades, about the difficulties of the organizational period. That which is accepted with puppyish enthusiasm "in countries with a market economy" as a model of reasonable and mastery behavior under capitalism.
Collective farms were not state enterprises, but were associations of private individuals. As in any such organization, a lot depended on the diligence and skills of the workers-owners themselves and, of course, on the leadership they chose. It is obvious that if such an organization will consist of drunkards, loafers and incompetent people, and at the head of it will be a good-for-nothing leader, then the workers-shareholders will live very poorly in any country. But then again, what is enthusiastically accepted as a model of justice in countries from the “highway of civilization” is presented as a model of a nightmare in relation to the USSR, although the reasons for the failure of such an organization are the same. Some insane demands are made on the Soviet Union, invented from the muddy heads of anti-Soviet people, it is understood that absolutely all collective farms should be provided with simply paradise, regardless of the efforts of the workers themselves, and all collective farmers, according to their ideas, live not only better than farmers in the warmest, fertile and developed countries, and live better than the best farmers.
In order to compare the life of a collective farmer, one must have a certain model for comparison and the parameters by which such a comparison is made. Anti-Sovietists always compare some speculative worker of incomprehensible qualities from the worst collective farm with a pre-revolutionary kulak or, in extreme cases, a very wealthy peasant, and not at all with a poor man without inventory tsarist Russia, which would be fair - the lowest income strata are compared. Or there is a comparison of the poorest collective farmers with wealthy hereditary farmers from the United States, and not semi-bankrupts, whose farm is mortgaged for debts. The reasons for this cheap fraud are understandable - after all, then it will be necessary for the lowest stratum of peasants to take into account the benefits that they did not even have close to in the countries from the “highway”, such as free medical care, education, nurseries, kindergartens, access to culture and etc. Will have to take into account natural conditions and the absence of wars and devastation and other factors. If we compare wealthy peasants from capitalist countries, then we should compare their life with rich collective farmers from millionaire collective farms. But then it will immediately become clear that the comparison, even under unfavorable historical conditions for us, will not be in favor of the enemies of the USSR. That is, here, as elsewhere, anti-Soviet people are ordinary swindlers. I emphasize once again that Soviet socialism never promised a paradise life to anyone, all that it promised was equality of opportunity and fair pay according to labor and abilities to the maximum achievable given the development of society. The rest is delusional fantasies of inadequate citizens or manipulative propaganda of conscious enemies.
2. Soviet women collective farmers of the Klisheva collective farm (Moscow region)
Selzozartel in the early 1930s became the main, and soon the only form of collective farms in agriculture - before that, collective farms were often called all forms of joint management. The first Charter of the agricultural artel was adopted in 1930, and its new edition- 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. All workers who had reached the age of 16 could become members of the artel, except for former exploiters (kulaks, landlords, etc.), but in certain cases the admission of “former” workers to collective farms was allowed. The chairman and the board were elected by the general vote of the members of the artel. In order to understand how the artel existed, one must understand how it disposed of its products. The products produced by the agricultural artel were distributed as follows:
“Of the harvest and livestock products received by the artel, the artel:
a) fulfills its obligations to the state for the supply and return of seed loans, pays in kind to the machine and tractor station for the work of the MTS in accordance with the concluded contract having the force of law, and fulfills contracting agreements;
b) fills up seeds for sowing and fodder for feeding livestock for the entire annual need, as well as for insurance against crop failure and lack of fodder, creates inviolable, annually renewable seed and fodder funds in the amount of 10-15 percent of the annual need;
c) creates, by decision of the general meeting, funds to help the disabled, the elderly who have temporarily lost their ability to work, needy families of Red Army soldiers, for the maintenance of nurseries and orphans - all this in an amount not exceeding 2 percent of gross output;
d) allocates in sizes determined general meeting members of the artel, part of the products for sale to the state or to the market;
e) the artel distributes the rest of the crop of the artel and its livestock products among the members of the artel according to workdays.
Note that everything is absolutely fair and exactly the same mechanism works in enterprises of all countries - first contractual obligations, taxes, funds aimed at maintaining the functioning of the organization, development funds, social assistance, and the rest can already be divided among shareholders. An indicative fact is the concern for the disabled, orphans, the elderly, etc. lay on agricultural artels, the village perceived this as completely normal - taking care of the weak "with the whole world" (that is, with the community) was fully consistent with the mentality of the Russian peasant. It was precisely on hushing up that the artel took care of the dependents (as, for example, about the nursery) that the hysteria raised during perestroika that “collective farmers in the Stalinist USSR did not receive pensions” was based. They did not receive a state pension, because their native collective farm, which knew them very well, was obliged to take care of them, and abstract payments from pension funds were not issued. Collective farms in the time of Stalin had a very large economic and managerial autonomy, greatly curtailed in the time of Khrushchev. It was then that pensions for collective farmers had to be introduced, because the collective farms, undermined by the administrative dictate, began to experience financial difficulties.
From the history of my family - in the village where my grandmother was from Southern Urals in the mid-1920s, one of the first collective farms was organized, or more precisely, it was originally a commune, then transformed into a collective farm. A blind man lived there by the beginning of the 20s after being wounded in Russo-Japanese War my great-grandfather. Both his sons and son-in-law (my grandfather) fought in the White Army. One son died, the daughter with her family and the other son left the village (by the way, no one did anything to them for the war on the side of the whites), and the great-grandfather was very prosperous (but not a kulak). The collective farm did this - the great-grandfather's house and its plot were transferred by the decision of the "peace" to two poor families (yes, the house was of that size), who lost their breadwinners in the First World War and Civil War, and the great-grandfather was taken by the commune (collective farm) for full life maintenance. In the house he was given a room, every day a collective farm girl came to him to cook and take care of him, whose family was counted for this workdays when they appeared (before that, the products in the agricultural commune were distributed equally). He lived like that until he died from the effects of a wound in the early 30s.
The principle of workdays was very simple and fair. The average workday was regarded as the result of the work of not an average, but a weak worker. In order to standardize the terms of payment in 1933, the People's Commissariat of Agriculture of the USSR issued resolutions that recognized the practice of workdays already established on collective farms as the official form of calculating wages. Once again - workdays were precisely a popular invention, a practice already established in reality, and not a scheme invented by "Stalin's cannibals" to "torture the peasants to the collective farm gulag." Agricultural work was divided into 7 levels with coefficients from 0.5 to 1.5. More skilled or hard work could be paid a maximum of three times more than the lightest and most unskilled. Blacksmiths, machine operators, and the leading staff of the collective farm administration earned the most workdays. Collective farmers earned the least in auxiliary unskilled work, which is quite fair. For work from "dawn to dawn" and increased output, additional workdays were recorded.
3. Issuance of bread for workdays. Ukraine, s.Udachnoe, 1932
A huge amount of lies have been piled up around workdays in recent years. The number of mandatory workdays for "disenfranchised slaves" was 60 (!) -100 (depending on the region) in the 30s. Only during the war, the number of mandatory workdays was increased to 100-150. But this is a mandatory norm, but how many peasants worked in reality? And here's how much: the average output per collective farm household in 1936 was 393 days, in 1937 - 438 (197 workdays per worker), in 1939 the average collective farm household earned 488 workdays.
In order to believe that “they didn’t give anything for workdays”, one must be mentally retarded in the clinical sense - the average peasant worked 2-3 times more than was required by the norm, therefore, payment depended on the quantity and quality of labor and this was sufficient motivation to give multiple output. If they really didn’t give anything for workdays, then no one would work more than the prescribed norm.
It is significant that with the beginning of the destruction of the Stalinist system by Khrushchev in 1956, the number of mandatory workdays was increased to 300-350. The results were not long in coming - the first problems with the products appeared.
What did they do in the "Stalinist collective farms" with those who did not fulfill the norm for workdays? Probably immediately sent to the Gulag or straight to the firing range? Still worse - the matter was dealt with by the collective farm commission, and if they did not find good reasons (for example, a person was sick), then they were shamed at a collective farm meeting and systematic violation standards (usually more than 2 years in a row), by the decision of the meeting, they could be expelled from the collective farm with the withdrawal of a personal plot. No one could deprive a collective farmer of housing. The human right to housing was guaranteed by the Constitution of the USSR. Naturally, in reality, a person, rejected by the rural community, left the village, as happens everywhere in the world. It is only in the heads of citizens divorced from reality that life in the village community is a popular pastoral, in fact it is very tough with very clear unwritten rules that are better not to be violated.
4. A comradely trial of malingerers on a collective farm. Ukraine, Kyiv region 1933
How much did the collective farmers earn on workdays, otherwise for a quarter of a century all sorts of crooks in the media go into hysterics, talking about “starving collective farmers”, and when the crooks are pressed by facts, the stories of unnamed grandmothers who “remember” that “there is nothing for workdays” are pulled out as an argument didn't give." Even if we exclude completely invented characters, then in order to more or less realistically assess the surrounding reality and directly earn workdays (16 years) in the most difficult period for the collective farms of the early 30s, the average storyteller grandmother had to be, at the latest 1918 -1920 years of birth. No matter how you listen to anyone, they all had two cows before the Revolution, huge house, covered with iron, two horses, the most modern equipment and a couple of acres of land. I wonder where all these citizens came from, if before the Revolution in the village there were 65% of the poor, in almost 100% of cases they plowed the plow and 20% of the middle peasants with few land, who could not even talk about two cows? The wealthy middle peasants made up only 10% of the population, and the kulaks 5%. So where did these "grandmother's tales" come from? If we assume her honesty (although not counting the false information given out by the “grandmothers”) and the honesty of those who retell her stories even in the 90s, then the adequacy of the described picture can hardly be called high. A lot of questions remain unanswered - in what family did the person live, how well did the family work, how many workers were there, how successful was the collective farm itself, what years specifically are we talking about, and so on. Obviously, everyone wants to present their family in a favorable light, because few people will say “dad was an armless lazy person, and the whole family is like that, so we weren’t paid a damn thing”, and “the chairman who was chosen by my parents was a sloppy and drunkard, but he was a sincere man, dad and mom liked to drink with him, "" he himself stole and gave to others, only because of hunger they did not die." In this case, it is obvious that the causes of material difficulties in the family have nothing to do with the collective-farm organization of labor. Although for such citizens, of course, the Soviet Power is to blame for everything. By the way, what is her “fault” is that such citizens generally survived, grew up and often learned. In the God-saved-which-we-lost, the fate of the families of clumsy and lazy people developed, as a rule, in a very sad way. But in Tsarist Russia, this is enthusiastically accepted as a model of justice, and much more better life for the same citizens in the Stalinist collective farms causes fits of hatred.
But there is a lot of testimonies of stories that paint a completely different picture, both from family stories and testimonies of collective farmers of those years, collected by scientists as expected. Here is an example of such testimony about how collective farms lived in the early to mid-30s:
“Most of the Kharlamov peasants considered the collective farm to be a cell of a just social order. The feeling of unity, joint work and the prospects for improving the culture of agriculture, the culture of life in the conditions of the collective farm system inspired. Collective farmers in the evenings went to the reading room, where the hut read newspapers. Lenin's ideas were believed. On revolutionary holidays, the streets were decorated with kumach; on the days of May 1 and November 7, crowded columns of demonstrators from all over Vochkoma with red flags walked from village to village and sang ... At collective farm meetings they spoke passionately, frankly, the meetings ended with the singing of the Internationale. They went to work and from work with songs.
What is indicative is that the excerpt is not from "Stalinist propaganda" - but these are the memories of collective farmers, collected by honest and independent researchers, who are very hostile to the Stalinist period as a whole. I can add that my relatives said the same thing. Now it will seem surprising - but people went to work on a collective farm or factory with joy and sang along the way.
5. Kolkhoz youth. 1932, Shagin
But all personal memories, even those recorded properly, have their limitations - they can be superimposed on the memories of subsequent ones, emotions, superimposed interpretation, selective perception, propaganda from the time of "perestroika", the desire to tell something that does not go beyond public opinion, and so on. Is it possible to objectively assess how collective farmers actually lived? Yes, quite, statistical data and serious scientific research more than enough to speak of it as an established fact.
6. Amateur peasant brass band in a poor Jewish collective farm. Ukraine 1936, Panin
Gradation of collective farms according to solvency and, accordingly, average level life in them obeys, on average, the famous Gaussian distribution, which is not surprising, it was well known back in Stalin's times. Averaged over the years, 5% of collective farms were rich, successful collective farms, they were joined by about 15% of strong wealthy collective farms, on the other hand, 5% of poor collective farms, which were adjoined by a slightly more successful 15% of poor fellows, and about 60% were middle-peasant collective farms. It is probably even a hedgehog of average intelligence that the level of income and life of the peasants of wealthy collective farms was much higher than the standard of living of peasants of poor collective farms, and to talk about how they lived on the collective farm on average would significantly distort the picture, as in the expression "average temperature in the hospital." The average data will show the standard of living of the average collective farmer in about 60% of the collective farms and no more. Let's see how much higher was the standard of living of the peasants in various collective farms than before the Revolution and why. After all, we are assured that in the USSR there was an equalization and people were "completely uninterested in working." Yeah, “completely uninterested”, but nevertheless, on average in the country, the norm for workdays (50-100) was overfulfilled by 3-5 times.
The average collective farm yard by 1940 was 3.5 people, against 6 in tsarist Russia - the fragmentation of farms began immediately after the Civil after the division of landowners and tsar lands. , and in 1932 the average peasant family consisted of approximately 3.6-3.7 people. The critical famine limit in tsarist Russia was approximately 245 kg per person (15.3 poods) - excluding fodder grain for livestock and poultry, but by tsarist standards it was not even considered a hungry line, tsarist Russia reached this level only in a few years at the end of its existence. The brink of mass starvation by the standards of tsarist Russia was 160 kg per person, this is when children began to die from malnutrition. That is, on average, a collective farm peasant in the USSR received about as much bread for workdays in 1932 as was enough in literally not to die of hunger (162 kg). However, the royal peasant, apart from grain, grew little else in the grain-growing regions - almost all the land available for sowing grain went under grain, the energy value of wheat in our climate is the highest in relation to productivity. So, the average peasant in tsarist Russia was the most favorable years 1910-1913 consumed 130 kg per capita per year, vegetables and fruits 51.4 kg.
And what about the Soviet collective farmer? In the worst years of 1932-1933, the average peasant economy received from the collective farm 230 kg of potatoes and 50 kg of vegetables, that is, 62 and 13.7 kg per person.
However, the output received by the peasant is by no means exhausted by what he earns from his workdays. The second, and in some cases, the first income of the collective farm peasant in terms of importance is the product of a personal farmstead. However, we are still talking about the "average peasant" of the average collective farm. From personal farming in 1932-1933, collective farm peasants received an average of about 17 kg of grain per capita, potatoes - 197 kg, vegetables - 54 kg, meat and fat - 7 kg, milk - 141 liters. (ibid.)
That is, if we compare Russia in the most prosperous years and the USSR in the most unfavorable years of 1932-1933, then the picture of average food consumption in the countryside will be as follows:
The first column - Klepikov's data on the best years of tsarist Russia, the last column - tsarist Russia of the 20th century, on average, according to data for Russia until 1910, Prince Svyatopolk-Mirsky brought in 212 kg per capita at a meeting of the State Duma.
That is, the peasants of the USSR 1932-1933. began to eat much more potatoes, but less bread, compared to tsarist Russia. The average calorie content of wheat varieties of those years is about 3100 kcal / kg, potatoes 770 kcal / kg, that is, about 1 to 4. If we take the difference between the USSR in 1932 and the best years of tsarist Russia in potato consumption and recalculate into effective calories for grain, then this The average collective farmer would consume just 212 kg of conditional grain - exactly as much as the tsarist peasant of the beginning of the 20th century ate.
Plus, the Soviet peasant received from the collective farm other products and agricultural products - milk, hay, etc., but I could not find data on this for 1932-33. Also, the Soviet collective farmer received an additional 108 rubles for workdays per year, which slightly exceeded the average monthly salary in industry in 1932. The average Soviet collective farmer in 1933 (data not available for 1932) received 280 rubles from seasonal work and other cooperatives. in a year. That is, in total, the average peasant earned about 290 rubles a year - almost a quarter of the annual income of the average worker, and the tsarist peasant, in order to receive money, had to sell part of the crop.
As we can see from the data presented, there was no universal catastrophe in the countryside in the early years of the collective farms. It was hard, yes. But the whole country lived hard after the Civil and "skillful" tsarist rule. In general, the situation with food in 1932-1933 in the collective farms was approximately the same as the average for tsarist Russia, but noticeably worse than in Russia in 1913 or the USSR during the best years of the late NEP.
That is, on average, no catastrophic famine looms, despite the "grandmothers' stories" and the tantrums of all sorts of scammers from history. Also wrong are the fans of the USSR of the Stalin period, who claim that everything was fine and serious problems in the countryside are the slander of enemies. This is not true. In the medium-sized collective farms of 1932-1933, they lived from hand to mouth for two years; this is indeed confirmed by a simple analysis. Alas, life from hand to mouth has been commonplace for Russia for the last couple of centuries. The years 1932-1933 cannot be called a good life in the material sense, the same thing can be called a nightmare and poverty. It must not be forgotten at all that the Soviet peasant received free medical care and education, kindergartens and nurseries, about which tsarist times even very wealthy peasants could not dream, and one should not forget about the sharply increased level of culture in the countryside. Morally and spiritually, in terms of social security the village of 1932-1933 began to live simply incomparably better than the royal village and much better than the Soviet village during the late NEP.
7. Meeting of collective farmers, Donetsk region, mid-30s
It is not difficult to guess that teachers in schools, professors in institutes, doctors in hospitals, librarians in libraries and all other workers had to be paid, and moreover, to train them, and not only for free, but also paying a scholarship, as it was in the USSR. It’s just that the Soviet state redistributed the received taxes, surplus value and other funds not among a narrow handful of rich people, but returned them to the people in one form or another, and for those who wanted to appropriate the people’s goods there were GULAG and NKVD. We missed one more "small" detail - the peasants "robbed" by the Soviet Power for the first time in history received absolutely the same rights as other classes, or, more correctly, social groups- do not count the peasant children who made not just a dizzying, but a fantastic career under Soviet power. Some have achieved that in any state beyond fantasy - young peasants have grown to the level of the state elite of the highest level. Absolutely all roads were open for the Soviet peasant - the peasants became doctors, engineers, professors, academicians, military leaders, cosmonauts, writers, artists, artists, singers, musicians, ministers ... By the way, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Chernenko, Gorbachev, Yeltsin - natives of peasants.
If we take into account the sharply increased level of mechanization and the much more reasonable organization of labor, life in the countryside has become somewhat easier than before collectivization, given both the much more reasonable collective-farm organization of labor, as well as the services received on the collective farm for the same workdays, for example, the delivery of building materials or plowing a personal plot. Those who believe that this is a trifle, I strongly recommend that you personally dig up half a hectare of arable land with a shovel for a more adequate perception of reality. The falsifiers who describe the "horrors of the kolkhoz gulag" and "kolkhoz slavery" are trying to make it appear that what they got for workdays was the only source of food for the kolkhoz workers. This is very wrong. We have already shown the great contribution of private farming, which was an integral part of collective farm life. But even that is not all. There were a few other fairly prominent food sources that didn't exist before. Almost everywhere on collective farms during the period field work food was organized at the expense of the collective farm for all able-bodied workers - collective farm canteens for brigades working in the field. This was very reasonable - the average labor costs for preparing a meal for 50 people are many times less than if everyone cooks individually. There were preferential or free lunches in schools, meals in kindergartens and nurseries were practically free and came from collective farm funds, and in their absence, from district, regional, republican and, further, state funds.
8. Komsomolets and collective farm workers protect seed and insurance funds, p. Olshana, Kharkov region, 1933
Also completely ignored are aid funds that were put in place when the food situation became dangerous. The collective farm was given grain loans or gratuitous assistance, as, by the way, individual farmers were also given food to the collective farm canteens, schools, nurseries and kindergartens. However, at the very beginning of its formation, this system was ineffective in a number of places, for example, in Ukraine in the early 1930s, where local authorities concealed the real catastrophic state of affairs and aid from the state reserve began to be allocated too late. It is to these funds that the famous hysterical “memoirs of grandmothers” on the topic, “they didn’t give out anything,” but the question of how you survived, they answer the question “somehow survived.” This “somehow” refers to the state and inter-collective farm assistance organized by the Soviet Power, which is not noticed point-blank by unworthy people.
9. Collective farm "New Life". 1931. Shagin
In general, if we take into account the sharply increased level of mechanization and a much more reasonable organization of labor (canteens, kindergartens, collective plowing of plots, etc.), then living in the countryside has become noticeably easier than before collectivization, even in 1932-1933.
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 party committee. 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 numbers of past years, looked at the ceiling (stele) and came up with new tasks for New Year and the next five years. As a result, the plans were not balanced, and it was impossible to actually fulfill them, since these plans did not take into account either the 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 farms 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 smart chairman of a collective farm or director of a state farm was so competent in organizing a trip for fishing or hunting by the party and Soviet authorities that as a result, record-breaking 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 enterprises themselves Food Industry. 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.
A collective farm (collective farm) is a cooperative organization of voluntarily united peasants for the joint conduct of large-scale socialist agricultural production on the basis of social means of production and collective labor. Collective farms in our country were created in accordance with the cooperative plan worked out by V. I. Lenin, in the process of the collectivization of agriculture (see Cooperative plan).
Collective farms in the countryside began to be created immediately after the victory of the October Revolution. The peasants united for the joint production of agricultural products in agricultural communes, partnerships for the joint cultivation of the land (TOZs), and agricultural artels. These were different forms cooperatives, distinguished by the level of socialization of the means of production and the distribution of income among the participating peasants.
In the early 30s. All-round collectivization was carried out throughout the country, and the agricultural artel (collective farm) became the main form of collective farming. Its advantages are that it socializes the main means of production - land, working and productive livestock, machinery, inventory, outbuildings; the public and private interests of the members of the artel are correctly combined. Collective farmers own residential buildings, part of the productive livestock, etc., they use small household plots. These basic provisions were reflected in the Exemplary Charter of the Agricultural Artel, adopted by the Second All-Union Congress of Collective Farmers-Shock Workers (1935).
During the years of Soviet power, great changes took place in collective-farm life. Collective farms have accumulated rich experience in managing large-scale collective farming. The political consciousness of the peasants increased. The alliance of workers and peasants under the leading role of the working class became even stronger. A new material and technical base of production has been created, which has made it possible to develop agriculture on a modern industrial basis. The material and cultural standard of living of collective farmers has risen. They actively participate in the construction of a communist society. Kolkhoz system not only delivered the working peasantry from exploitation and poverty, but also made it possible to establish in the countryside new system social relations that lead to the complete overcoming of class differences in Soviet society.
The changes that had taken place were taken into account in the new Model Charter of the Collective Farm, adopted by the Third All-Union Congress of Collective Farmers in November 1969. The name “agricultural artel” was omitted from it, because the word “collective farm” acquired an international meaning and in any language means a large collective socialist agricultural enterprise.
The collective farm is a large mechanized socialist agricultural enterprise whose main activity is the production of crop and livestock products. The collective farm organizes the production of products on land that is state property and is assigned to the collective farm for free and indefinite use. The collective farm bears full responsibility before the state for the correct use of the land, for raising the level of its fertility in order to increase the production of agricultural products.
The collective farm may create and have auxiliary enterprises and trades, but not to the detriment of agriculture.
There are 25.9 thousand collective farms in the USSR (1981). On average, the collective farm has 6.5 thousand hectares of agricultural land (including 3.8 thousand hectares of arable land), 41 physical tractors, 12 combines, 20 trucks. Many collective farms have built modern greenhouses and livestock complexes, and are organizing production on an industrial basis.
Collective farms are guided in all their activities by the Collective Farm Rules, which are adopted in each farm by the general meeting of collective farmers on the basis of the new Exemplary Collective Farm Rules.
The economic basis of the collective farm is the collective-farm cooperative ownership of the means of production.
The collective farm organizes agricultural production and the labor of collective farmers, using for this various forms- tractor-field-breeding and complex brigades, livestock farms, various links and production sites. The activities of production units are organized on the basis of cost accounting.
As in state farms, a new, progressive form of labor organization is being used more and more widely - according to a single line with lump-sum bonus payment (see State Farm).
Citizens who have reached the age of 16 and who have expressed a desire to participate in social production by their labor can be members of a collective farm. Each member of the collective farm has the right to receive work in the social economy and is obliged to participate in social production. The collective farm has guaranteed wages. In addition, additional payment is applied for the quality of products and work, various forms of material and moral incentives. Collective farmers receive pensions for old age, disability, in case of loss of a breadwinner, vouchers to sanatoriums and rest homes at the expense of social insurance and security funds created in collective farms.
The supreme governing body for all the affairs of the collective farm is the general meeting of collective farmers (in large farms, the meeting of delegates). Collective-farm democracy forms the basis for organizing the management of the collective economy. This means that all production and social issues related to the development of a given collective farm are decided by the members of this farm. General meetings of collective farmers (meetings of representatives) must be held, in accordance with the Model Rules of the collective farm, at least 4 times a year. The governing bodies of the collective farm and its production subdivisions are elected by open or secret ballot.
For the permanent management of the affairs of the collective farm, the general meeting elects the chairman of the collective farm for a period of 3 years and the board of the collective farm. Control over the activities of the board and all officials is carried out by the audit commission of the collective farm, which is also elected at the general meeting and is accountable to it.
In order to further develop collective-farm democracy and collectively discuss the most important issues in the life and activities of collective farms, Soviets of collective farms have been created - Union, republican, regional and district.
Planned management of collective-farm production is carried out by socialist society by establishing a state plan for the purchase of agricultural products for each collective farm. The state, on the other hand, provides the collective farms with modern machinery, fertilizers and other material resources.
The main tasks of the collective farms are: to develop and strengthen the public economy in every possible way, to increase the production and sale of agricultural products to the state, to steadily increase labor productivity and efficiency. social production to carry out work on the communist education of collective farmers under the leadership of the party organization, to gradually transform villages and villages into modern comfortable settlements. Many collective farms have built modern residential buildings, gasification was carried out. All collective farmers use electricity from state networks. The modern collective-farm village has excellent cultural centers - clubs, libraries, its own art galleries, museums, etc. are being created here. The difference between a city dweller and a collective farmer in terms of education is practically erased.
At the 26th Congress Communist Party The Soviet Union pointed out the need to further strengthen and develop the material and technical base of the collective farms, improve the cultural and welfare services for their workers (see Agriculture).
The Constitution of the USSR states: "The state promotes the development of collective-farm and cooperative property and its convergence with the state."
Sovkhoz (Soviet economy) is a state agricultural enterprise. It, like any industrial enterprise - a plant, a factory, is state property, the property of all the people.
The creation of state farms was integral part cooperative plan of V. I. Lenin. They were called upon to serve as a school for large-scale collective agricultural production for the working peasantry.
The economic basis of state farms is public, state ownership of land and other means of production. Them economic activity aimed at the production of products for the population and raw materials for industry. All state farms have a charter. They carry out their activities on the basis of the Regulations on the Socialist State Production Enterprise.
There are 21,600 state farms in the system of the Ministry of Agriculture (1981). On average, one state farm has 16.3 thousand hectares of agricultural land, including 5.3 thousand hectares of arable land, 57 tractors.
To state farms and others state farms accounts for up to 60% of grain harvests, up to 33% - raw cotton, up to 59% - vegetables, up to 49% - livestock and poultry, up to 87% - eggs.
State farms organize their production depending on natural and economic conditions, taking into account state plans, on the basis of cost accounting. Distinctive feature production activities of state farms - a higher level of specialization.
When creating any state farm, the main agricultural sector is determined for it, from which it receives its main production direction - grain, poultry, cotton, pig breeding, etc. In order to better use the land of the state farm, agricultural machinery and labor resources, additional agricultural sectors are created - crop production is combined with animal husbandry and vice versa.
State farms play a large role in raising common culture agriculture in our country. They produce seeds of high-quality varieties of agricultural crops, highly productive breeds of animals and sell them to collective farms and other farms.
Various auxiliary enterprises and industries can be created on state farms - repair shops, oil mills, cheese-making shops, production building materials etc.
Planned management of state farms is based on the principle of democratic centralism. The higher organizations (trust, association of state farms, etc.) determine for each state farm a state plan for the purchase of agricultural products for a five-year period and distribute it for each year. Production planning (area under crops, number of animals, timing of work) is carried out directly at the state farms themselves. Every year, plans are made here for the economic and social development, which define activities for the coming (planned) year.
The organizational and production structure of the state farm is determined by the specialization of the economy, its size in terms of land area and gross output. The main form of labor organization is the production team (tractor, complex, livestock, etc.) - the team of such a team consists of permanent workers.
Depending on the size of the state farm, various forms of management organization are used. For the most part, this is a three-stage structure: a state farm - a department - a brigade (farm). At the head of each subdivision is the corresponding leader: the director of the state farm - the manager of the department - the foreman.
The development of specialization processes and the increase in production volumes have created conditions on state farms for the application of a sectoral structure for the organization of production and management. In this case, instead of departments, corresponding workshops are created (plant growing, animal husbandry, mechanization, construction, etc.). Then the management structure looks like this: the director of the state farm - the head of the shop - the foreman. Shops are headed, as a rule, by the chief specialists of the state farm. It is also possible to use a mixed (combined) structure for the organization of production and management. This option is used in cases where one branch of the economy has a higher level of development. With this scheme, an industry division is created for this industry (a greenhouse vegetable growing workshop, a dairy cattle breeding workshop, a fodder production workshop), and all other industries operate in departments.
In all state farms, as well as in industrial enterprises, the work of workers is paid in the form of wages. Its size is determined by the norms of output for a 7-hour working day and the prices for each unit of work and output. In addition to the basic salary, there is a material incentive for overfulfillment of planned targets, for obtaining high-quality products, for saving money and materials.
Increasingly, mechanized units, detachments, brigades and farms are working on a single outfit with lump-sum bonus pay. Such a collective contract is based on cost accounting. Payment does not depend on the total amount of work performed, not on the number of cultivated hectares, but on the final result of the work of the farmer - the harvest. Livestock breeders receive material incentives not for a head of livestock, but for high milk yields and weight gain. This allows you to more closely link the interests of each employee and the entire team, increase their responsibility for obtaining final high results with minimal labor and funds.
Collective contracting is being introduced more and more widely on state farms and collective farms. It is successfully used in the Yampolsky district of the Vinnitsa region, regional agro-industrial associations of Estonia, Latvia, Georgia, and other republics.
The party, trade union and Komsomol organizations render great assistance to the management of the state farm in solving its production and social problems. The public of the state farm takes part in the discussion and implementation of measures to fulfill the planned targets for the production and sale of products to the state, improve the working and living conditions of all workers of the state farm.
Modern state farms in terms of production are the largest agricultural enterprises in the world. Implementation of achievements scientific and technological progress, the transfer of agricultural production to an industrial basis contributes to their transformation into real factories of grain, milk, eggs, meat, fruits, etc.
The widespread use of new methods of organizing production also changes the qualifications of state farm workers, new professions appear, for example: machine milking operator, livestock farm fitter, etc. Among the engineering and technical personnel of state farms are electronic equipment engineers, engineers and technicians. for control and measuring equipment and instruments, heat engineering engineers, process engineers for the processing of agricultural products and many other specialists.
co-op plan This is a plan for the socialist reorganization of the countryside through the gradual voluntary amalgamation of small private peasant farms into large collective farms, in which the achievements of scientific and technological progress are widely used and wide scope is opened for the socialization of production and labor.
There are 25,900 collective farms in the USSR. Each farm is a large highly mechanized enterprise with qualified personnel. Collective farms annually supply the state with a significant amount of grain, potatoes, raw cotton, milk, meat and other products. Every year the culture of the village grows, the life of collective farmers improves.
Let's remember history. What did the village look like in pre-revolutionary Russia? Before the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia, there were over 20 million small peasant farms, of which 65% were poor, 30% were horseless, and 34% had no inventory. The “equipment” of peasant households consisted of 7.8 million plows and roe deer, 6.4 million plows, and 17.7 million wooden harrows. Need, darkness, ignorance were the lot of millions of peasants. V. I. Lenin, who studied in detail the difficult and disenfranchised situation of the villagers, wrote: “The peasant was brought to a beggarly standard of living: he was placed with cattle, dressed in rags, fed on swan ... The peasants starved chronically and tens of thousands died of starvation and epidemics during crop failures, which returned more and more often.
The socialist transformation of agriculture was the most difficult task after the conquest of power by the working class. V. I. Lenin worked out the principles of the policy of the Communist Party on the agrarian question. The great genius of mankind clearly saw the socialist future of the peasantry and the paths along which it was necessary to go to this future. V. I. Lenin outlined the plan for the socialist reconstruction of the countryside in his articles “On Cooperation”, “On the Food Tax” and some other works. These works entered the history of our state as the cooperative plan of V. I. Lenin. In it, Vladimir Ilyich outlined the basic principles of cooperation: the voluntary entry of peasants into the collective farm; gradual transition from lower to higher forms of cooperation; material interest in joint production cooperation; combination of personal and public interests; the establishment of a strong link between town and country; the strengthening of the fraternal alliance of workers and peasants and the formation of socialist consciousness among the inhabitants of the countryside.
V. I. Lenin believed that at first it was necessary to widely involve the peasants in simple cooperative associations: consumer associations, for the sale of agricultural products, the supply of goods, etc. Later, when the peasants are convinced by experience of their great advantage, it is possible to move on to production co-operation. It was a simple and accessible path for many millions of peasants to move from small individual farms to large socialist enterprises, the path of drawing the peasant masses into the building of socialism.
The Great October Socialist Revolution put an end forever to the oppression of the capitalists and landlords in our country. On October 25, 1917, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, following the report of V. I. Lenin, adopted the Decrees on Peace and Land. The Decree on Land announced the confiscation of all landlord and church land and its transfer to state ownership. The nationalization of the land and its transformation into public property became an important prerequisite for the further transition of agriculture to the socialist path of development.
In the very first years of Soviet power, societies began to be created for the joint cultivation of the land, agricultural artels. Part of the landowners' estates turned into state Soviet farms - state farms. But all these were only the first steps of collectivization. That is why in 1927, at the XV Congress of the CPSU(b), a program of complete collectivization was adopted. Work on the socialization of agricultural production, unprecedented in its scale, began in the country. Collective farms were organized everywhere, the foundations of a new life in the countryside were laid. The Soviet government accepted everything necessary measures to provide the village with equipment. Already in 1923-1925. the village received about 7 thousand domestic tractors.
In 1927, the first state machine and tractor station (MTS) was organized. Subsequently, their mass construction began. MTS served the collective farms with a variety of equipment. The MTS became the strongholds of the Soviet state in the countryside, active conductors of the Party's policy. With the help of the MTS, the greatest technological revolution in agriculture in the USSR was carried out. At the call of the party, about 35,000 of the best representatives of the working class went to the countryside and headed the collective farms.
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 land on the collective farm and on their land on personal plot. 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. 12.5 thousand large industrial enterprises, on which during the period of the Second World War two times more military equipment and other weapons were produced than in total at the enterprises of 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 developing the collectivization of agriculture in every possible way.
“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 agriculture 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 24,000,000 pairs of laborers, which were sorely needed by industry. 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 immediately they 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, for example, armed forces. AT 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 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 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 in its external and domestic politics has always been direct and honest. Deceit and lies were completely unacceptable ideological methods, both in tsarist and Soviet Russia.
And the fact that only the community could provide Russia with food 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 improving it 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 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. About the same as today's difference between legal forms 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.
The collective farm (collective farm) is a private enterprise, although this sounds paradoxical in a state in which 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 the 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:
- The state itself determines how much goods it will buy. Besides him, it is forbidden to sell to anyone else.
- The state also determines the cost, that is, it can buy products at a price below cost at a loss to collective farms.
- 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, the 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 "how does a collective farm differ from 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 zealous "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 to the state all products according to 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 for years cannot get out of debt on credit obligations.
We need to find 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.
