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A kolkhoz (Russian plural: kolkhozy; anglicisation plural: kolkhozes (p=kɐlˈxos) was a form of collective farm in the Soviet Union. Kolkhozes existed along with state farms or sovkhoz. These were the two components of the socialized farm sector that began to emerge in Soviet agriculture after the October Revolution of 1917, as an antithesis both to the feudalism structure of impoverished serfdom and aristocracy landlords and to individual or .
The Russian terms for members of a kolkhoz is "kolkhoznik" (male) and "kolkhoznitsa" (female).
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).Fedor Belov, The History of a Soviet Collective Farm, Praeger, New York (1955), p. 82.
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.V.I. Semchik , Cooperation and the Law, Naukova Dumka, Kiev (1991) ( Russian).E.V. Serova, Agricultural Cooperation in the USSR, Agropromizdat, Moscow (1991) ( Russian).
In 1948 the Soviet government charged wholesalers 335 Soviet ruble for 100 kilograms of rye, but paid the kolkhoz roughly 8 rubles.Caroline Humphrey, Karl Marx Collective: Economy, society and religion in a Siberian collective farm, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1983), p. 96. 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.
Members of kolkhozes had the right to hold a small area of private land and some animals. The size of the private plot varied over the Soviet period, but was usually about . Before the Russian Revolution of 1917 a peasant with less than was considered too poor to maintain a family.Leonard E. Hubbard, The Economics of Soviet Agriculture, Macmillan, London (1939), p. 233. However, the productivity of such plots is reflected in the fact that in 1938 3.9 percent of total sown land was in the form of private plots, but in 1937 those plots produced 21.5 percent of gross agriculture output.Roy D. Laird, Collective Farming in Russia: A Political Study of the Soviet Kolkhozy, University of Kansas Publications, Lawrence, Kansas (1958), p. 120. Kolkhoz members had to perform a minimum number of labor days per year both on the kolkhoz and on other government work (such as road building). In one kolkhoz, the official requirements were a minimum of 130 labor days a year for each able-bodied adult and 50 days per boy aged between 12 and 16. This work requirement was unevenly distributed around the year according to the agricultural cycle, ranging from 30 required labor days between January 1 and June 15, to 30 required labor days in a single month during harvest.Fedor Belov, The History of a Soviet Collective Farm, Praeger, New York (1955), p. 87. If kolkhoz members did not complete the required minimum, the penalties could involve confiscation of the farmer's private plot and a trial in front of a People's Court that could result in three to eight months of hard labour on the kolkhoz or up to one year in a corrective labour camp.Fedor Belov, op. cit., pp. 110–11.
However, the number of labor days completed by laborers was often much higher than the minimum. For that same kolkhoz mentioned above, the average number of labor days completed by each able-bodied member was 275, more than twice the official minimum. In essence, the requirement was the amount of labor days below which kolkhoz members would become subject to punitive state measures, but fulfilling this minimum would not then release the laborers from obligations to perform additional work demanded by the kolkhoz or state authorities.Fedor Belov, The History of a Soviet Collective Farm, Praeger, New York (1955), p. 88.
Specific tasks on kolkhozes were assigned a particular number of labor days, with the rates determined in advance by state authorities. For example, thinning a tenth of a hectare of sugar beets was typically equivalent to two and a half labor days. However, the official rates and the actual ability of individual laborers were often highly disproportionate. Completing one labor day of work (nominally 8 hours) would often require multiple twelve-hour days of work to complete. Because laborers were compensated based on the number of labor days they completed,Fedor Belov, The History of a Soviet Collective Farm, Praeger, New York (1955), p. 86. not time spent working, the labor day ultimately functioned more as an abstract method by which state authorities predetermined labor costs and kolkhoz production requirements, rather than as a method for fairly compensating workers for their labor. As such, the official rates greatly underrepresent both the labor requirements of agricultural production on kolkhozes and the demand placed on kolkhoz workers for that labor.
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.Z. Lerman, C. Csaki, and G. Feder, Agriculture in Transition: Land Policies and Evolving Farm Structures in Post-Soviet Countries, Lexington Books, Lanham, MD (2004), Chapter 4. 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
Kolkhozes have disappeared almost completely in Transcaucasian and 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" (). In Tajikistan, a presidential decree of October 1995 initiated a process of conversion of kolkhozes into share-based farms operating on leased land, agricultural production cooperatives, and dehkan (peasant) farms. Murat Aminjanov, How many farms are there in Tajikistan?, Policy Brief 3, European Commission "Support for the Development, Implementation and Evaluation of Agricultural Policy in Tajikistan" Project, Dushanbe (October 2007). However, contrary to the practice in all other CIS countries, one-third of the 30,000 peasant farms in Tajikistan are organized as collective dehkan farms and not family farms. These collective dehkan farms are often referred to as "kolkhozy" in the vernacular, although legally they are a different organizational form and the number of "true" kolkhozes in Tajikistan today is less than 50. Similarly in Uzbekistan the 1998 Land Code renamed all kolkhozes and sovkhozes shirkats (Uzbek language for agricultural cooperatives) and just five years later, in October 2003, the government's new strategy for land reform prescribed a sweeping reorientation from shirkats to peasant farms, which since then have virtually replaced all corporate farms.
In Belarus, kolkhozes survived, Сельскохозяйственные предприятия на территории Беларуси Agricultural Колхозы рб although it is no longer an official classification: in 2014 Lukashenka ordered to formally reorganize them into the enterprises of types "хозяйственное общество" and "коммунальное унитарное предприятие". О реорганизации колхозов (сельскохозяйственных производственных кооперативов) – Указ № 349 от 17 июля 2014 г. The land in Belarus is owned by the state, but for small plots privatized for personal use.
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.
38% 35% 32% 32% 29% 28% 26%
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.
Sources:
1,891 1,232 1,386 1,846
See also
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