Andrew rothstein

1. Collective Farming in Soviet Economy

The fourth Five Year Plan, in the statement of its principal aims, associated agriculture with the industries producing consumer goods as requiring further development “in order to raise the material well-being of the people of the Soviet Union, and to secure an abundance of the principal items of consumer goods in the country”. Thus agriculture, like industry, had as its target the provision of butter rather than guns.

The section of the Plan dealing with agriculture laid down a programme of detailed figures and aims, starting from the principle that “measures shall be taken to strengthen the common husbandry of the collective farms”. Enormous sums (19.9 milliard roubles) were to be provided by the State for capital development in agriculture and twice as much was to come from capital investments by the collective farms themselves. Under the former heading were included large irrigation and drainage works, the provision of 325,000 tractors and agricultural machines, the establishment of many hundreds of State machine and tractor stations for servicing the collective farms, the building of numbers of small power-stations, large expenditure on developing the stock-breeding of collective farms, and every kind of investment on better agricultural technique.¹

“The most important task of agriculture in 1946-50”, it was stated in the Plan, “is the general improvement of crop yields and an increase in the gross harvest of agricultural produce, to be effected by considerably improving farm methods and applying the latest achievements in agricultural science.” It will be useful, perhaps, to show at this point how the main targets of the fourth Five Year Plan in agriculture compare with the highest points reached by Tsarist Russia and the U.S.S.R. respectively on the eve of the two world wars:²

	1913.	1940.	1950.
Area under grain (million hectares)	94.4	110.4	105.7
Output of grain (million tons)	80.1	118.8	127.1
Output of cotton (million tons)	0.7	2.5	3.1
Yield of cotton (centners per hectare)	10.8	12.0	18.4
Output of sugar-beet (million tons)	10.9	21.0	26.0
Yield of sugar-beet (centners per hectare)	168	171	190
Sunflower seed output (million tons)	0.7	3.3	3.7
Output of potatoes (million tons)	23.3	84.2	115.3
Mineral fertiliser supplied (million tons)	0.188	3.1	5.5

Special mention was made of the particular problems of collective farms:

“In order to strengthen and develop the common husbandry of the collective farms, measures shall be taken to increase their wealth, i.e., their incomes, indivisible funds, buildings, cattle, equipment and livestock, and also their reserve stocks and seed and forage reserves.

“Proper protection must be arranged for the common lands and property of the collective farms, and no breach tolerated of the collective farm statutes or of collective farm democracy, e.g., the election of the management boards of the collective farms and their accountability to the general meeting of farm members.

“Labour productivity on the collective farms shall be increased by correctly organising labour and strengthening and increasing the role of the work-day unit in distributing the collective farm income; the system of working brigades and teams on the collective farms shall be improved by the practice of individual and group piece-rates; the making of additional payments to collective farmers for obtaining higher harvest yields, rearing young cattle and increasing their productivity, shall be widely practised.

“Greater discipline shall be exercised by the collective farms in discharging their obligations to the State in respect of deliveries of farm produce.”

Quite a number of terms used in this passage are such as have never occurred in any previous system of agriculture known in world history; nor is this surprising, seeing that collective farming is an entirely new form of agriculture. In understanding the meaning of these new terms, one goes a fair way towards understanding the spirit in which the individual Soviet citizen engages in agriculture, and his part as a conscious agent in making that agriculture thrive or decay.

It is essential at the outset, however, to have fully in mind just how important collective farming is in the output of Soviet agriculture.¹ On the eve of the war, the 236,000 collective farms, comprising 19.2 million peasant families (97% of the total engaged in agriculture), were responsible for 290 million acres of cultivated soil. The 4000 State farms sowed about 24 million acres² (out of a total area of 168 million acres under their control). Some half-million small individual peasant farms covered 1½ million acres. In the gross output of agricultural produce, including cattle, the share of the collective farms was equally decisive—62.9% by the collective farms as units, and 21.5% by their individual members on their personal homesteads (amounting in the aggregate to 13 million acres). The share of the collective farms in the output of grain, however, was still higher, since the State farms concentrate particularly on industrial crops and livestock.

What, then, is a collective farm? In the first place, it is organised on land which belongs to the State—for all land in the U.S.S.R. is national property, and cannot be bought or sold—but it pays no rent for the land, the use of which is vested in the collective farm in perpetuity by a special deed from the State. Secondly, the productive equipment, buildings, stocks and stores on a collective farm are partly the property of the collective farm as a whole, and partly the individual property of the members—such as their private houses, the farm animals and poultry maintained on the small homestead attached to their house, and small agricultural implements which they possess for their own personal use. We have already seen what a small proportion of the total collective farm area falls on these homesteads, even added together over the whole country.³ Thirdly, on this economic basis, the members constitute a co-operative producing organisation, and manage their affairs in the same way as other co-operatives the world over—namely, by electing a chairman and a management committee, or board, at their annual general meeting. The general meeting is the supreme authority of the collective farm, and no important decision can be taken by the management committee without its assent. The management committee of the collective farm controls the allocation of jobs to different members, and their grouping in teams on this basis, through the chairman, team-leaders or charge-hands, etc. Fourthly, the members of the collective farms are not anyone’s employees, since they are working in an enterprise which they collectively own: in particular, they are not employees of the State, since the State is only the proprietor of the land on which they work. Nor are they paid wages, since they are not selling their labour-power to anyone. They are working together for themselves: and their work is measured accordingly, not in monetary form, but according to the number of workdays each contributes.

For this purpose all the works to be performed on a collective farm have been divided since 1933 into seven groups. The lowest group comprises the simplest unskilled jobs—and one day’s work under this heading counts as half a work-day. The highest group covers the most complex and skilled jobs—and here one day’s work counts as two work-days. There is a quota of output for each job, fixed by the general meeting in accordance with the nature of the ground to be covered, crops dealt with, state of machinery available, the particular animals dealt with, and so forth. To receive the full value of the workday or portion of it allotted for the job, this quota must be completed. If less is done, there is a proportionate reduction in the amount of work-day credited to the individual: if more than the quota is done, there should be a bonus for exceeding it. There are also bonuses in the shape of additional work-days for particular distinction in yields of produce, milk, etc., or in other jobs. In 1945, over 30% of the collective farms were operating bonus systems of payment.

At the end of each day if possible—but not less frequently than once a week—the team-leader enters the “credit” of each collective farmer under his charge, measured in work-days, in his work-book, and corresponding entries are made in the books of the collective farm. Finally, the distribution of the produce, and of the cash income of the collective farm—secured by realising part of the produce and by deliveries at fixed prices to the State—takes place on the basis of the number of work-days credited to the various members. Thus, just as in the State factories and State-owned farms, the collective farmer gives according to his ability, and receives according to the quantity and quality of work he has performed: but he does so, not on the basis of a wages system, but by distribution of the net produce of the collective farm among its members proportionate to the work they have contributed.

It should be noticed that, in this ingenious system,⁴ it is not the entire produce that can be distributed in this way. The collective farm has to bear its share of the costs of the State, and as an enterprise it must meet its own running costs. Therefore the collective farm supplies from its total produce a proportion, determined by law, compulsorily sold to the State at a fixed price: with usually an additional quantity, at the discretion of the collective farm itself, sold by contract to the State at a higher price. The collective farm repays to the State any advances made in the shape of seeds. By selling part of its produce during the year, the collective farm is enabled to pay income tax (at 4% on its collectively-used produce and on the cash coming in from its sales by contract to the State; at 8% on the produce distributed among members, and on cash revenues from sales in collective farm markets, disposal of products from subsidiary enterprise, etc.), as well as insurance premiums. It also repays any cash advances which may have been made by the State for construction purposes.

The running costs of the collective farm itself include payment for work done by the local machine and tractor station (this is paid in kind), additions to the “indivisible fund” (for building or maintenance of works of common interest, like communal nurseries, cattle-sheds, baths, power-stations, etc.), cultural and administrative expenses (the last two heads in cash) and the building-up of reserve funds of produce of all kinds, both as insurance for hard times and for the maintenance of the sick, aged, invalids and children’s welfare institutions.

For the distribution of the net income, the following method is then adopted. The totals of work-days earned by all the members of the collective farm are added together, and the resulting aggregate figure is divided into the total amount of the net produce, in kind and in cash. In this way a quotient is arrived at, representing the value of one work-day, in terms of both produce and cash.¹

Thus a work-day may be found to be worth, say, 10 lbs. of grain, 20 lbs. of potatoes, 4½ lbs. of meat, so much of sugar, or cotton, or tobacco—according to the nature of the produce of the particular collective farm— and, say, 2.3 roubles in cash. These amounts are then multiplied, in the case of each member of the collective farm, by the number of work-days he has to his credit, and the result is his share of the total net produce of the year’s working of the collective farm—distributed, as is obvious, strictly in accordance with the amount of work he had put in.

The distribution of the proceeds of Soviet collective farms in 1940, according to a recent writer,² was as follows (in percentages of the total):

	In kind.	In cash.
Payments to State	13.7	9.4
Costs of production	50.4	27.7
Net income paid out^3 to members	35.9	62.9

It should be noted that, by law, all members of collective farms must put in a minimum number of actual days of work on their farm in the course of a year. Before the war, the numbers varied from sixty days in the less fertile central regions, the North and the Far East, to 100 days in the cotton-growing regions of Asia and the Caucasus. In April, 1942, the minima were raised by roughly 50%, and they have not been lowered since, owing to the needs of reconstruction. Average work-days earned per able-bodied collective farmer rose from 254 in 1940 to 352 in 1942.⁴

A letter published in Pravda (28th October, 1946) from the chairman of a small collective farm in the Kuibyshev region, numbering 50 households, may be taken as a fair example.