What is the difference between a collective farm and a state farm? Types of property of the USSR in the field of agriculture, or how a collective farm differs from a state farm.

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 of cooperation, differing in 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. The collective farm system not only delivered the working peasantry from exploitation and poverty, but also made it possible to establish in the countryside a new system of social relations that would lead to the complete elimination 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 Model 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 work of collective farmers, using various forms for this - tractor-field-growing and complex brigades, livestock farms, various units 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 the efficiency of social production, to carry out work on the communist education of collective farmers under the leadership of the party organization, and gradually transform villages and villages into modern comfortable settlements. In many collective farms, modern residential buildings have been built, gasification has been 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 of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, it was pointed out that it was necessary to further strengthen and develop the material and technical base of the collective farms and 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 an integral part of Lenin's cooperative plan. 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. 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 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.

State farms and other state farms account for up to 60% of grain procurements, up to 33% of raw cotton, up to 59% of vegetables, up to 49% of livestock and poultry, and up to 87% of 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 activity of state farms is 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 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.

Various auxiliary enterprises and trades can be created on state farms - repair shops, oil mills, cheese-making shops, the production of building materials, etc.

Planned management of state farms is based on the principle of democratic centralism. The higher organizations (a trust, an 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, economic and social development plans are drawn up here, in which activities for the coming (planned) year are determined.

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. 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 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 reconstruction 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 property. 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 took all necessary measures to provide the village with machinery. 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.

I'm willing to bet that the words "state farm" and "kolkhoz" sound ten times more often in the speech of our parents, and hundreds of times more often in the speech of our grandparents. The Soviet era has passed irrevocably, but the historicisms that it left us will live in people's memory for a long time to come. For example, such words 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" was formed by the favorite Soviet way of word formation - this is an abbreviation. It means in this case "collective economy". Imagine that rural workers have common tools of labor, land, they themselves distribute work, income, and the like among themselves. It was a whole system, a way of life with its charter, workdays, principles, and the like. What is the fate of the collective farm today? After the collapse of the former regime in 1991, the vast majority of collective farms ceased to exist or were reorganized, however, in the current legislation, surprisingly, there is a place for the “collective farm” as a complete synonym for the agricultural artel. In today's associations of this type, the degree of collectivization is high, however, not as high as in Soviet times.

state farm- This is a state agricultural association of the times of Soviet power. It was not created by the farmers themselves; this is its first difference from the collective farm. In state farms, people worked with a certain salary, which they were paid by the state, each for himself, in fact. Over time, it became difficult for the collective farm to compete with the larger state farm, which is why there was a mass reorganization of collective farms into state farms. Since, according to human psychology, people would be much more willing to go to state farms than collective farms, life on a collective farm was much more “drawn” by the media, cinema, and books. Therefore, some of the "romance" of that period is connected precisely with the collective farms. Some farmer associations have retained their state farm names to this day.

Findings 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 because of the difference in the scale of production and financing.

What is the difference between a collective farm and a state farm?

1. a collective farm is a collective farm. concept applicable to the Soviet period of our history. this is when the collective (the villagers) run a narrowly focused economy. i.e. livestock, or crops or orchards, etc.
   the state farm is the same as the collective farm, but the specialization is wider: livestock + grain + gardens + poultry. - analogue: corporation
   the collective farm is more dependent on the market and other (outside) enterprises. the state farm, on the contrary, is more self-sufficient, the economy is "closed" on itself. most of the raw materials consumed are produced locally. accordingly, there is more money on the state farm and the management device is different (as well as wages)
2. On the collective farm they work for workdays (sticks), and on the state farm they work for money.
3. the collective farm itself and the chances of survival are less than those of the state-funded state farm!!!
4. letters!!!
5. Kolkhoz, collective farming, a form of farming in the countryside in the USSR, in which the means of production (land, equipment, livestock, seeds, etc.) were in the public administration of its participants and the results of labor were also distributed by a common decision of the participants. There were also fishing collective farms.

   Sovkho#769;z short for Soviet economy is a state agricultural enterprise in the USSR. Unlike collective farms, which were voluntary-compulsory public associations of peasants created at the expense of the peasants themselves, the state farm was fully funded and managed by the state. Those working on state farms were hired workers who received a fixed salary in cash, while workdays were used on collective farms until the mid-1960s.

6. State farms were created according to the plan of the State Planning Commission, the Ministry of Agrarian Industry and the Ministry of Agriculture. Collective farms were created by local authorities. The economic model was the same, and the differences were in state subsidies and purchase prices. Therefore, it was harder for the collective farms, and they were gradually absorbed by the state farms.
7. Already in chm: there is neither one nor the other ...
8. On the collective farm, wages were paid in goods accrued for workdays, and on the state farm in money.
9. Starting from the 70s. there were almost no differences in essence, but only in form. In collective farms, the chairman was elected at a meeting of collective farmers, of course, without alternative, at the suggestion of the district committee of the party. At the state farm, directors were appointed at the same suggestion. There were no more workdays in those years. And the production activity is the same and the standard of living depends on the success of the economy.
10. The difference is in the owner, in the owner. The state farm is the owner of the state. Uses hired labor, invests money, takes a steam bath for the result-the state. The collective farm-owners are not the state, but people in the village, they cooperate with each other, try for the result, one might say a common farm. Under the control of the state.

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 (as they understood little about the peculiarities of the Soviet way of life). Today, Russian youth strives to designate with this word everything that does not correspond to their ideas about a “beautiful” life, “modernity” and “progress”. Most likely the reason is the same.

Land for peasants

The Decree on Land became one of the first two decrees of the Soviet government. This document proclaimed the abolition of landownership 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 owners of the land (and this was downright their crystal dream). For this reason, a significant number of the peasantry supported the Soviet government.

The government itself believed that since it was building a state of workers and peasants, then everything that belonged to it, the state, belonged to them too. Thus it was assumed. That the land in the country is state-owned, only those who themselves begin to work on it, without exploiting others, can simply use it.

Artel economy

In the first years of Soviet power, this principle was quite successfully implemented in practice. No, far from all the lands taken from the “exploiting class” were handed out 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 combine their "production capacities" (land, equipment), jointly perform work, and then distribute the results of labor among themselves. In this way, the collective farm differed from the "state farm" ("Soviet economy"). These were created by the state, usually in landlord farms, and those who worked in them received a fixed salary.

There were a number of peasants who appreciated the benefits of working together. The collective farm is not difficult, if you think about it. So the first associations began to emerge from 1920 on a completely voluntary basis. Depending on the degree of socialization of property, different clarifying names were used for them - artels, communes. More often, only lands and the most important tools (horses, equipment for plowing and sowing) became common, 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, seed, tax breaks, occasionally equipment), but on the whole, an insignificant number of peasant farms united into collective farms. Depending on the region, the figure for the mid-20s could range from 10 to 40%, but more often it was no more than 20%. The rest of the peasants preferred to manage in 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 had largely been overcome. According to most economic indicators, the country has reached the level of 1913. But it was catastrophically small. Firstly, even then Russia was technically noticeably inferior to the leading world powers, and during this time they managed to move quite far ahead. Secondly, the "imperialist threat" was by no means the result of the paranoia of the Soviet leadership. It existed in reality, the Western states had nothing against the military destruction of incomprehensible Soviets, and at the same time the robbery 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 a 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 technologies - there was nothing like this “at home”. And only the agriculture of the USSR could provide funds.

Wholesale is more convenient

Individual peasants were difficult to control. It was impossible to reliably plan how much "food tax" they could get 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 food tax was received than expected.

In December 1927, the decision of the XV Party Congress on the collectivization of agriculture as a priority appeared. Collective farms in the USSR, where everyone was responsible for everyone, had to provide the country with the necessary amount of export products.

dangerous speed

The collective farm was a good idea. But it was let down by a very tight deadline. It turned out that the Bolsheviks, who criticized the populists for the theories 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 a joint economy and promising state interests were alien to them, and no time was allocated for explanation.

As a result, it turned out that the collective farm is an association into which the peasants were forced to drive. The process was accompanied by repressions against the most prosperous part of the peasantry - the so-called kulaks. The persecution was all the more unfair because the pre-revolutionary "world-eaters" had long been dispossessed of the kulaks, and now there was a struggle against those who successfully took advantage of the opportunities provided by the revolution and the New Economic Policy. Also, the "kulaks" were often recorded at the 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 Davydov

As a result of the “pedaling” of collectivization in the USSR, it was not only wealthy peasants who suffered. Many victims were also among the purveyors of bread, as well as the so-called "twenty-five thousandths" - communist workers sent to the countryside in order to stimulate collective farm construction. Most of them were really true to the cause; the type of such an ascetic was portrayed by M. Sholokhov in the image of Davydov in Virgin Soil Upturned.

But the book also 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 with their whole family). Rural communists also died en masse, as well as activists of the "committees of the poor" (Makar Nagulnov from the same novel is also a true image).

I don't um...

The acceleration of collectivization in the USSR led to its most terrible consequence - the famine of the early 30s. It covered precisely those regions where most of all marketable bread was produced: the Volga region, the North Caucasus, the Saratov region, some regions of Siberia, Central and Southern Ukraine. Kazakhstan suffered greatly, where they tried to force the nomads to grow bread.

The guilt of the government, which set unrealistic tasks for the procurement of grain in conditions of a serious crop failure (an abnormal drought occurred in the summer of 1932), in the death of millions of people from malnutrition, is enormous. But no less fault lies with the possessive instinct. The peasants massively slaughtered cattle, so that it would not become common. It’s terrible, but in 1929-1930 there were frequent cases of death from overeating (again, let’s turn to Sholokhov and remember grandfather Shchukar, who ate his cow in a week, and then the same amount “did not get out of sunflowers”, suffering from a stomach). On the collective farm fields they worked carelessly (not mine - it’s not worth trying), and then they died of starvation, because there was nothing to get for workdays. It should be noted that the cities were also starving - there was also nothing to bring there, everything was exported.

Will grind - there will be flour

But gradually things got better. Industrialization gave its results in the field of agriculture - the first domestic tractors, combines, threshers and other equipment appeared. It began to be supplied 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, they did not provide for mandatory passportization for rural residents, so that they could not run away to the city solely of their own free will. But mechanization in the countryside reduced the need for workers, and industry demanded them. So leaving the village was quite possible. This caused an increase in the prestige of education in the countryside - the industry did not need the illiterate, the Komsomol-excellent student had much more chances to go to the city than the loser, always busy in his own garden.

The winners are judged

The millions of victims of collectivization should be blamed on the Soviet leadership of the 1930s. But this will be a trial of the winners, since the country's leadership has achieved its goal. Against the backdrop of the world economic crisis, the USSR made an incredible industrial breakthrough and caught up with (and in part even surpassed) the most developed economies in the world. This helped him repel Hitler's aggression. Consequently, the victims 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 (sometimes fair, but by no means always), all sorts of “rental farms”, “family contracts” appeared - the transition to individual farming was again made. And after the collapse of the USSR, the elimination 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 "farmers", some - "agricultural holdings", and some - hired laborers in the first two.

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

As if by changing the name, the yield will increase ...

The collective-farm system of agricultural production has gone down in history. More than 15 years have passed since then. 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 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. Approximately as much as today is the difference between the legal forms of 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.

A collective farm (collective farm) is a private enterprise, although this sounds paradoxical in a state where 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 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:

1. The state itself determines how much goods it will buy. Besides him, it is forbidden to sell to anyone else.
2. The state also determines the cost, that is, it can buy products at a price below cost at a loss to 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, 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 diligent "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 all products to the state at 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 cannot get out of debt on credit obligations for years.

We definitely need to find a 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.