Discussions about agricultural land again raised the question of who can be an effective owner. In the hustle and bustle of controversy, they recalled the Soviet methods of farming in agriculture. And as often happens in the heat of an argument, they confused everything and everyone, so it is worth reminding one and telling others.

Due to numerous requests from readers, the editors of the dock continue to publish on the topic Agriculture THE USSR.

History exam puzzle

Teachers of the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union loved negligent students to ask a backfill question: "When did the state farms appear?" Many students recalled the film Virgin Soil Upturned and began to guess that state farms appeared either in the late 1920s or early 1930s. But, the answer turns out to be 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 are able to farm, so that out of envy all the peasants would run 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 accidental. Simply in this way, the communists decided to once again improve their material condition at someone else's expense. You can read how collectivization proceeded either in dissident literature, or, if you like, in Comrade Stalin's article in the Pravda newspaper, "Dizzy with Success." Both here and there it is shown that it was collectivization that destroyed the beginnings of private business in agriculture and returned the time 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 an empty phrase. 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 local state authorities, in agreement with the district party committee, but the collective farm chairman was elected by the collective farmers themselves at the meeting. In practice, everything looked different. A representative of the district party committee 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, all the same, everything is (cut by the censor)." 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 dismissed or appointed only with the approval of the same regional 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, a member of the CPSU could not be condemned, only public censure. It is not surprising that the same directors of state farms and chairmen of collective farms in their farms behaved like landowners on their estates. The peasants, although they were cursing their leaders, were also afraid, because they depended very much on them and understood that, if desired, the same collective farm chairman could easily put a rebel to chop wood in the taiga for a couple of years.

Who ran the agriculture

The USSR had a planned economy, which means that everyone lived according to the plans that were given to them by higher organizations. Initially, the USSR State Planning Committee and the USSR Gossnab developed a plan for the national economy, including agriculture. Despite the presence of huge scientific research institutes under the State Planning Committee and the State Committee for Construction, which were obliged to objectively calculate how much and what kind of agricultural products must be produced in order for the entire nation to have enough, in reality they used the proven "stele" method 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 in reality it was impossible to fulfill them, since these plans did not take into account either the natural and climatic conditions, or the availability of equipment and planting material, and even more so the specifics of agricultural work.

The plans developed in Moscow were sent down to the republics. Then the State Planning Committee of the Ukrainian SSR distributed the planning tasks according to the regional plans, and they were already according to the regional plans, they, in turn, already brought the plans to a specific state farm and collective farm. Moreover, this process was eternal. For the entire previous year, the plan assignments were coordinated and redistributed between state and collective farms, but the new year had just begun when endless adjustments were 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 amicably engaged in postscripts and fraud, from the collective farm chairman to the CPSU Central Committee secretary for agriculture. Everyone knew this and played this game together.

The clever chairman of a collective farm or director of a state farm, so skillfully knew how to organize a trip of the party and Soviet authorities on a fishing or hunting trip, that as a result, collective farms and state farms with record holders appeared in the country. They simply shamelessly underestimated the planned targets and as a result, the heads of these farms and individual milkmaids with combine operators received a Hero Socialist Labor... But food, as it was not on the shelves of the stores, did not exist further.

Agricultural production in 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 with cars, and ordinary collective farmers with sacks. Moreover, this theft was not considered something criminal, since the remuneration system in Soviet agriculture, as it were, prompted "your salary is not enough, so go and steal." Officially, wages in agriculture were 30-40% lower than in industry.

The output of collective and state farms was purchased 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 a canteen mineral water... But even low prices for agricultural products during the Soviet era were not a problem. The biggest problem is that the orders for goods were distributed to state and collective farms in last... In the USSR, the money in the account mattered little. Individual collective farms had millions of rubles in their bank accounts, but that meant nothing. Since it was possible to get equipment, fuel, other industrial goods and household goods only if there was an order for receiving the goods, which was issued by the local department of the Gossnab. First of all, Gossnab orders were issued to enterprises of the military-industrial complex, industrial and construction enterprises, and only finally to state 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, and factories strove to produce as little as possible and complained about the lack of food.

But, apart from food production, the biggest problem in the USSR was the storage and processing of agricultural products. According to the Soviet guests, the loss of vegetables and fruits during storage was allowed at a rate of 30-40%. In practice, more than half of the grown harvest of vegetables and fruits perished. There was a shortage of elevators, warehouses and food industry enterprises themselves. At each congress of the CPSU, they called for more plants and food processing factories to be built. And they built it, but everything somehow got in the way, and as a result, already in the beginning of 1980, a commodity shortage began, which already in the late 80s buried the USSR with its methods of management.

Very briefly about lending to agriculture in the USSR

The economy is planned, therefore there was a plan for issuing loans to agriculture for a calendar year, broken down by months. The directors of state and collective farms rested with all their hands and feet so as not to take these loans. From time to time, for the shortfall in loans according to the plan, they received a thrashing in the bureau of the district party committee. And they had to do not want to take these loans. The rates were negligible 3-4%, there were even loans at 0.5% per annum. But they very often did not return these loans and did not pay interest. Firstly, they simply did not need money, they needed the outfits of the Gossnab. Secondly, they knew that from time to time these loans get canceled and everyone is happy. The State Bank on these loans was not able to collect the collateral, and even more so in some way to punish the debtor. But at every 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 developed by V.I.Lenin, in the process of collectivizing 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 joint cultivation of the land (TOZs), agricultural artels. These were different shapes cooperatives, distinguished by the level of socialization of the means of production and the procedure for distributing income among the participating peasants.

In the early 30s. throughout the country, a complete collectivization was carried out 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, machines, implements, outbuildings; the public and personal interests of the members of the artel are correctly combined. The collective farmers own residential buildings, part of the productive livestock, etc., they use small household plots... These basic provisions were reflected in the Approximate Charter of an Agricultural Artel, adopted by the Second All-Union Congress of Collective Farmers-Shock Workers (1935).

During the years of Soviet power, great changes have taken place in collective farm life. Collective farms have accumulated rich experience in managing large-scale collective farming. The political consciousness of the peasants has increased. The alliance of workers and peasants has become even stronger, with the leading role of the working class. A new material and technical base of production was created, which made it possible to develop agriculture on a modern industrial basis. The material and cultural standard of living of collective farmers has increased. They are actively involved in building a communist society. The collective farm system not only saved the working peasantry from exploitation and poverty, but also made it possible to establish new system public relations that lead to the complete overcoming of class differences in Soviet society.

The changes that have taken place were taken into account in the new Model collective farm charter, 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 international meaning and in any language means a large collective socialist agricultural enterprise.

The collective farm is a large mechanized socialist agricultural enterprise, its main activity is the production of crop and livestock products. The kolkhoz organizes production on land that is state property and is assigned to the kolkhoz for free and unlimited use. The collective farm bears full responsibility to the state for correct use land, increasing the level of its fertility in order to increase the production of agricultural products.

A collective farm can create and include subsidiary enterprises and trades, but not to the detriment of agriculture.

There are 25,900 collective farms in the USSR (1981). On average, a 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. In many collective farms, modern greenhouse and livestock complexes have been built, and production is organized on an industrial basis.

Collective farms in all types of their activities are guided by the Charter of the collective farm, which is adopted in each farm by the general meeting of collective farmers on the basis of the new Model Charter of the collective farm.

The economic basis of the kolkhoz is the kolkhoz-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 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 outfit with a lump-sum bonus payment (see State Farm).

Members of a collective farm can be citizens who have reached the age of 16 and who have expressed a desire to participate in social production through their work. Each member of the collective farm has the right to get work in the public sector and is obliged to participate in social production. The collective farm has a guaranteed wage. 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 of all the affairs of the collective farm is the general meeting of collective farmers (in large farms, the meeting of delegates). The basis for the organization of collective farm management is collective farm democracy. This means that all production and social issues of the development of a given collective farm are decided by the members of this farm. General meetings of collective farmers (meetings of authorized representatives) should be held, in accordance with the Model Charter 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 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 development collective farm democracy, collective discussion of the most important issues the life and activities of collective farms, collective farm councils were created - Union, republican, regional and district.

Socialist society exercises the planned management of collective farm production by establishing a state plan for the purchase of agricultural products for each collective farm. The state provides the collective farms modern technology, fertilizers and other material means.

The main tasks of the collective farms: to develop and strengthen the social economy in every possible way, to increase the production and sale of agricultural products to the state, to steadily increase labor productivity and the efficiency of social production, to carry out work on the communist education of collective farmers under the leadership of the Party organization, and to gradually transform villages and villages into modern, comfortable settlements. Many collective farms have built modern dwelling houses and provided gasification. All collective farmers use electricity from public networks... The modern collective farm village has excellent cultural centers- clubs, libraries, their own art galleries, museums, etc. are created here. The difference between a city dweller and a collective farmer in terms of education is practically obliterated.

At the XXVI Congress of the Communist Party Soviet Union it was pointed out the need to further strengthen and develop the material and technical base of collective farms, improve the cultural and consumer services for their workers (see Agriculture).

In the Constitution of the USSR it is written: "The state promotes the development of collective-farm and cooperative property and its rapprochement with the state."

State farm (Soviet economy) is a state agricultural enterprise. It, like any industrial enterprise - a plant, a factory, is state property, the property of the entire people.

The creation of state farms was part of cooperative plan of V.I. Lenin. They were called upon to serve as a school for the working peasantry for large-scale collective agricultural production.

The economic basis of state farms is made up of public, state ownership of land and other means of production. Their economic activity is 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 Manufacturing Enterprise.

There are 21.6 thousand state farms in the system of the Ministry of Agriculture (1981). On average, one state farm accounts for 16.3 thousand hectares of agricultural land, including 5.3 thousand hectares of arable land, 57 tractors.

State farms and other state farms account for up to 60% of grain procurements, 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. A distinctive feature of the production activities of state farms is a higher level of specialization.

When creating any state farm, the main agricultural industry is determined for it, according to which it receives its main production direction - grain, poultry, cotton, pig, etc. better use state farm land, agricultural machinery and labor resources create additional agricultural sectors - plant growing combined with livestock and vice versa.

A large role is assigned to state farms in raising the general culture of 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.

State farms can create various subsidiary enterprises and industries - repair shops, butter mills, cheese making shops, production of building materials, etc.

The planned management of state farms is based on the principle of democratic centralism. Higher-level organizations (trust, union of state farms, etc.) determine for each state farm a state plan for the purchase of agricultural products for a five-year plan and distribute it for each year. Production planning (the size of the cultivated areas, the number of animals, the timing of the work) is carried out directly in the state farms themselves. Every year, plans are made here for economic and social development, which determine the activities for the coming (planned) year.

The organizational and production structure of a state farm is determined by the specialization of the farm, its size in terms of land area and gross production. The main form of labor organization is a production brigade (tractor, complex, livestock, etc.) - The collective of such a brigade consists of permanent workers.

Depending on the size of the state farm, various forms of management are used. For the most part, this is a three-stage structure: state farm - department - 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, an increase in production volumes created conditions in state farms for the application of the sectoral structure of the organization of production and management. In this case, instead of departments, appropriate shops 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. As a rule, the shops are headed by the chief specialists of the state farm. It is also possible to use a mixed (combined) structure of the organization of production and management. This option is used in cases where one sector in the economy has a higher level of development. Under such a scheme, a branch unit is created for this industry (a vegetable growing workshop for protected soil, a dairy cattle breeding workshop, a fodder production workshop), and all other branches operate in departments.

In all state farms, as in industrial enterprises, workers are paid in the form of wages. Its size is determined by the norms of production for a 7-hour working day and prices for each unit of work and products. In addition to basic wages, there is material incentives for overfulfilling planned targets, for receiving products High Quality, for saving money and materials.

Increasingly, mechanized units, detachments, brigades and farms work in a single outfit with lump-sum bonus wages. 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 hectares cultivated, but on the final result of the farmer's work - the harvest. Livestock breeders receive material incentives not for the head of livestock, but for high milk yield and weight gain. This allows us to more closely link the interests of each employee and the entire team, to increase their responsibility for achieving high end results with minimal labor and cost.

Collective contracts are increasingly being introduced in state and collective farms. It is successfully used in the Yampolsky district of the Vinnytsia region, regional agro-industrial associations of Estonia, Latvia, Georgia, and other republics.

Party, trade union, and Komsomol organizations render great assistance to the leadership 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, to 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. The introduction of the achievements of scientific and technological progress, the transfer of agricultural production to an industrial basis contribute to their transformation into real factories of grain, milk, eggs, meat, fruits, etc.

The widespread use of new methods of organizing production also introduces changes in the qualifications of state farm workers, new professions appear, for example: a milking machine operator, a fitter for a livestock farm, etc. for instrumentation and instruments, heating engineers, process engineers for the processing of agricultural products and many other specialists.

Cooperative plan is a plan for the socialist reorganization of the countryside through the gradual voluntary unification of small private peasant farms in large collective farms, in which the achievements of scientific and technological progress are widely used and a wide scope opens up 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 way of 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, 34% had no inventory. The "equipment" of peasant households consisted of 7.8 million plows and roe deer, 6.4 million plows, 17.7 million wooden harrows. Need, darkness, ignorance were the lot of millions of peasants. VI Lenin, who studied in detail the difficult and disenfranchised situation of the villagers, wrote: “The peasant was brought to a miserable standard of living: he was accommodated with cattle, dressed in rags, fed on swans ... The peasants were chronically starving and dying of hunger in tens of thousands and epidemics during crop failures, which returned more and more often. "

The socialist transformation of agriculture has been the most difficult task since the conquest of power by the working class. VI Lenin worked out the foundations of the Communist Party's policy 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. Lenin outlined the plan for the socialist reorganization 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 a cooperative plan of V.I. Lenin. In it, Vladimir Ilyich outlined the basic principles of cooperation: voluntariness for peasants to join the collective farm; gradual transition from lower to higher forms of cooperation; material interest in joint production cooperation; combination of personal and public interests; establishing a strong link between town and country; the strengthening of the fraternal alliance of workers and peasants and the formation of a socialist consciousness among the villagers.

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, one can proceed to production cooperation. This was a simple and accessible way for many millions of peasants to move from small individual farms to large socialist enterprises, a way to involve the peasant masses in the construction of socialism.

The Great October Socialist Revolution put an end to the oppression of the capitalists and landowners in our country forever. On October 25, 1917, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets, based on the report of V.I. Lenin, adopted the Decrees on Peace and Land. The land decree announced the confiscation of all landlord and church land and its transfer to state ownership. The nationalization of 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 for joint cultivation of land and agricultural artels began to be created. Part landlord 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 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, a program of total collectivization was adopted. Work has begun in the country on an unprecedented scale to socialize agricultural production. Collective farms were organized everywhere, the foundations of a new life in the countryside were laid. The Soviet government took all the 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 massive 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 agents of the party's policy. With the help of the MTS, the greatest technical revolution in the agriculture of the USSR was carried out. At the call of the party, about 35 thousand. best representatives working class went to the countryside and headed the collective farms.

I bet that the words "state farm" and "collective farm" are heard ten times more often in the speech of our parents, and hundreds of times more often in the speech of our grandfathers and grandmothers. The Soviet era has passed irrevocably, but the historicisms that it left to us will live on in the people's memory for a long time to come. For example, words such as in the title of an article can be found in the names of streets in almost any city in our country. In this case, it is our duty to know what underlies these similar concepts.

Word " collective farm"Formed by a loved one the Soviet way word formation is an abbreviation. In this case, it means "collective farm". Imagine that rural workers have common tools, land, and they themselves distribute work, income, and the like. It was a whole system, a way of life with its own charter, workdays, principles, and the like. What is the fate of the collective farm today? After the collapse of the previous regime in 1991, the overwhelming majority of collective farms ceased to exist or were reorganized, however, in the current legislation, surprisingly, there is a place for a "collective farm" as a complete synonym for an agricultural artel. In today's associations of this type, the degree of collectivization is high, however, not as much as in Soviet times.

State farm Is a state agricultural association of the Soviet era. It was not created by the cultivators of the land themselves; this is its first difference from the collective farm. In state farms, people worked with a certain salary, which was paid to them by the state, each for himself, in fact. Over time, it became difficult for the collective farm to compete with the larger state farm, and therefore there was a massive reorganization of collective farms into state farms. Since, according to human psychology, people would much more willingly go to state farms than collective farms, life on a collective farm was much more "traced" by the media, cinema, and books. Therefore, some of the "romance" of that period is associated with collective farms. Some farming associations have retained their state farm names to this day.

Conclusions site

1. The state farm was a state farm, the collective farm was a voluntary independent association with internal management.
2. On collective farms, workers worked for "workdays", on state farms they received wages
3. Collective farms "died out" before state farms due to differences in the scale of production and financing.

The word "collective farm" for foreigners has always been one of the symbols of the USSR. Perhaps because they did not understand what it meant (how little they understood in the peculiarities of the Soviet way of life). Today, domestic youth strives to designate with this word everything that does not correspond to their ideas about "beautiful" life, "modernity" and "progress". Most likely, the reason is the same.

Land - to the peasants

The Land Decree was one of the first two decrees of the Soviet government. This document proclaimed the abolition of landlord ownership and the transfer of land to those who work on it.

But this slogan could be understood in different ways. The peasants perceived the norm of the decree as an opportunity for themselves to become the owners of the land (and this was downright their crystal dream). For this reason, a significant number of the peasantry supported the Soviet regime.

The government itself believed that since it was building a state of workers and peasants, then everything that belongs to it, the state, belongs to them. So it was supposed. That the land in the country is state owned, it can only be used by those who themselves will work on it, without exploiting others.

Artel economy

In the first years of Soviet power, this principle was rather successfully implemented in practice. No, far from all the land taken from the "exploiting class" was distributed to the peasants, but such divisions were carried out. At the same time, the Bolsheviks carried out explanatory work in favor of organizing collective farms. This is how the abbreviation "collective farm" (from "collective farm") arose. A collective farm is a peasant association of a cooperative type, in which the participants unite their " production capacity»(Land, equipment), jointly perform work, and then distribute the results of the work among themselves. This is how the collective farm differed from the “state farm” (“Soviet economy”). These were created by the state, usually on landlord farms, and those who worked in them received a fixed salary.

There were a number of peasants who appreciated the advantages working together... A collective farm is not difficult when you think about it. So the first associations began to emerge in 1920 on a completely voluntary basis. Depending on the degree of socialization of property, different qualifying names were used for them - artels, communes. More often only lands and essential tool(horses, equipment for plowing and sowing), but there were also cases of socialization of all livestock and even small implements.

Little by little

The first collective farms for the most part achieved success, albeit not very significant. The state provided them with some assistance (materials, seeds, tax incentives, occasionally machinery), but in general, a small number of peasant farms were united into collective farms. Depending on the region, the figure in the mid-1920s could be from 10 to 40%, but more often it was no more than 20%. The rest of the peasants preferred to manage the old-fashioned way, but on their own.

Machines for the dictatorship of the proletariat

By the mid-1920s, the consequences of the revolution and wars were largely overcome. In terms of most economic indicators, the country has reached the level of 1913. But that was too little. Firstly, even then, in technical terms, Russia was noticeably inferior to the leading world powers, and those during this time managed to move quite far forward. Secondly, the "imperialist threat" was not at all the result of the exclusively paranoia of the Soviet leadership. It existed in reality, the Western states had nothing against military destruction incomprehensible tips, and at the same time the plunder of Russian resources.

It was impossible to create a powerful defense without a powerful industry - guns, tanks and aircraft were required. Therefore, in 1926, the party proclaimed the start of the course towards the industrialization of the USSR.

But grandiose (and very timely!) Plans required funds. First of all, it was necessary to purchase industrial equipment and technology - there was nothing like it “at home”. And only the agriculture of the USSR could provide funds.

Wholesale more convenient

The individual peasants were difficult to control. It was impossible to reliably plan how much "food tax" would be obtained from them. And it was necessary to know this in order to calculate how much income would be received from the export of agricultural products and how much equipment would have to be purchased as a result. In 1927, there was even a "grain crisis" - 8 times less tax in kind was received than expected.

In December 1927, a decision of the 15th Party Congress appeared on the collectivization of agriculture as a priority task. Collective farms in the USSR, where everyone was responsible for everyone, were supposed to provide the country the required amount export products.

Dangerous speed

The collective farm was a good idea. But it was summed up by a very tight deadline for implementation. It turned out that the Bolsheviks, who criticized the Narodniks for the theory of "peasant socialism", themselves stepped on the same rake. The influence of the community in the countryside was, to put it mildly, exaggerated, and the possessive instinct of the peasant was very strong. In addition, the peasants were illiterate (this legacy of the past had yet to be overcome), they knew how to count poorly and thought in very narrow terms. The benefits of joint farming and promising state interests were alien to them, and no time was allocated for clarification.

As a result, it turned out that the collective farm is an association into which the peasants were forced to be forced. The process was accompanied by repressions against the most prosperous part of the peasantry - the so-called kulaks. The persecutions were all the more unfair because the pre-revolutionary "world eaters" had been dispossessed for a long time, and now there was a struggle against those who successfully took advantage of the opportunities provided by the revolution and the NEP. Also, they were often recorded as “kulaks” on a denunciation of a malicious neighbor or because of misunderstandings with a representative of the authorities - in some regions, a fifth of the peasantry was repressed!

Comrades Davydovs

As a result of the "pedaling" of collectivization in the USSR, it was not only the well-to-do peasants who suffered. Many victims were also among the grain procurers, as well as the so-called "twenty-five thousand" - communist workers sent to the village to stimulate collective farm development. Most of them were truly true to the cause; the type of such an ascetic was portrayed by M. Sholokhov in the image of Davydov in Virgin Land Upturned.

But the book truthfully described the fate of most of these Davydovs. Already in 1929, anti-collective farm riots began in many regions, and twenty-five thousand people were brutally killed (more often together with the whole family). Rural communists, as well as activists of the "committees of the poor" (Makar Nagulnov from the same novel is also a true image) also died en masse.

I'm not myself ...

The acceleration of collectivization in the USSR also led to its most terrible consequence - the famine of the early 1930s. It covered precisely those regions where most of all marketable grain was produced: the Volga region, North Caucasus, Saratov region, some areas of Siberia, Central and Southern Ukraine. Kazakhstan suffered greatly, where they tried to force the nomads to grow bread.

The government is to blame for the death of millions of people from malnutrition, which set unrealistic tasks for the procurement of grain in a serious crop failure (in the summer of 1932 an abnormal drought occurred). But no less blame lies with the possessive instinct. The peasants slaughtered cattle en masse, if only it did not become common. It is scary, but in 1929-1930 there were frequent cases of deaths from overeating (again, let us turn to Sholokhov and remember the grandfather Shchukar, who ate his cow in a week, and then “did not crawl out of sunflowers” ​​as much, suffering from a stomach). On the collective farm fields, they worked carelessly (not mine - you shouldn't even try), and then they starved to death, because there was nothing to receive for workdays. It should be noted that the cities were also starving - there was nothing to transport there either, everything was exported.

Will grind - there will be flour

But gradually things went smoothly. Industrialization gave its results in the field of agriculture - the first domestic tractors, combines, threshers and other equipment appeared. They began to supply it to collective farms, and labor productivity increased. The hunger has receded. By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, there were practically no individual peasants in the USSR, but agricultural production was growing.

Yes, just in case for villagers did not provide for compulsory certification so that they could not escape to the city solely of their own free will. But mechanization in the countryside reduced the need for workers, and industry demanded them. So it was quite possible to leave the village. This caused an increase in the prestige of education in the countryside - the industry did not need illiterates, an excellent Komsomol member had much more chances to leave for the city than a poor student who is always busy in his own garden.

The winners are judged

The Soviet leadership of the 1930s should be blamed for the millions of victims of collectivization. But this will be a case of trial over the winners, since the country's leadership has achieved its goal. Against the backdrop of the global economic crisis, the USSR made an incredible industrial breakthrough and caught up with (and partly surpassed) the most developed economies in the world. This helped him repel Hitler's aggression. Consequently, the sacrifices of collectivization were, at least, not in vain - the industrialization of the country took place.

Together with the country

Collective farms were the brainchild of the USSR and died with it. Even in the era of perestroika, criticism of the collective farm system began (in some places fair, but far from always), all sorts of "lease farms", "family contracts" appeared - again a transition to individual farming was made. And after the collapse of the USSR, the liquidation of collective farms took place. They became victims of privatization - their property was taken home by new “effective owners”. Some of the former collective farmers became a “farmer”, some became an “agricultural holding”, and some became a hired laborer in the first two.

But in some places collective farms exist to this day. Only it is now customary to call them " joint stock companies”And“ rural cooperatives ”.

As if the name change will increase the yield ...

The collective and state farm system of agricultural production has become history. More than 15 years have passed since that time. Modern people who did not live in the Soviet Union no longer understand how the state farm differed from the collective farm, what is the difference. We will try to answer this question.

How did the collective farm differ from the state farm? The only difference is in the name?

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

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

A collective farm (collective farm) is a private enterprise, although this sounds paradoxical in a state in which there was no private property. It was formed as a joint farm of many local peasants. The 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. On the contrary, they happily went to 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 regional 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 compulsory purchases and the price of goods. After sales, which sometimes turned into free change, the collective farms had practically nothing left.

State farm - 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 enterprise, all workers are state employees with an official wages... A collective farm is a private association of several producers. What is the difference between a collective farm and a state farm? Legal property. But there are several nuances:

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

Let us ask the question: "Who will actually live easier in such conditions?" In our opinion, to the workers of the state farm. At least, they are limited from the arbitrariness of the state, since they completely work for it. Of course, under the conditions of market ownership and economic pluralism, collective farmers are actually turning into modern farmers - the very "kulaks" who were liquidated in due time by creating new socialist enterprises on their economic ruins. Thus, to the question “how does a collective farm differ from a state farm?” We will discuss this in more detail below.

How collective and state farms were 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 by:

• Large former landowners' holdings. Of course, serfdom was abolished, but large enterprises - a legacy of the past, worked by inertia.
• At the expense of 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 broke. This is understandable: in place of the hardworking 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 nevertheless survived to the process of collectivization, the first state farms were formed.

Besides them, there were large farms at the time of collectivization. Some miraculously survived the process of dispossession, others have already developed 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 due to the "unification" of many small private farms into a single large one. That is, no one has nominally 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.

"Collective farms" today

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

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