A kolkhoz () was a form of collective farm in the Soviet Union. Kolkhozes existed along with state farms or sovkhoz. These were the two components of the socialized farm sector that began to emerge in Soviet agriculture after the October Revolution of 1917, as an antithesis both to the feudal structure of impoverished serfdom and aristocratic landlords and to individual or family farming.
The 1920s were characterized by spontaneous emergence of collective farms, under influence of traveling propaganda workers. Initially, a collective farm resembled an updated version of the traditional Russian obshchina "commune", the generic "farming association" (zemledel’cheskaya artel’), the Association for Joint Cultivation of Land (TOZ), and finally the kolkhoz. This gradual shift to collective farming in the first 15 years after the October Revolution was turned into a "violent stampede" during the forced collectivization campaign that began in 1928 as a means of countering "counterrevolutionary elements".
Name
The portmanteau is a contraction of . This Russian term was adopted into other languages as a loanword; however, some other languages calqued equivalents from native roots, such as Ukrainian , from , Belarusian ; Estonian ; Latvian ; and Lithuanian .
Kolkhoz as a pseudo-cooperative
As a collective farm, a kolkhoz was legally organized as a production cooperative. The Standard Charter of a kolkhoz, which since the early 1930s had the force of law in the USSR, is a model of cooperative principles in print. It speaks of the kolkhoz as a "form of agricultural production cooperative of peasants that voluntarily unite for the main purpose of joint agricultural production based on [...] collective labor". It asserts that "the kolkhoz is managed according to the principles of socialist self-management, democracy, and openness, with active participation of the members in decisions concerning all aspects of internal life".
In practice, the collective farm that emerged after Stalin’s collectivization campaign did not have many characteristics of a true cooperative, except for nominal joint ownership of non-land assets by the members (the land in the Soviet Union was nationalized in 1917). Importantly, remuneration had always been in proportion to labor and not from residual profits, implying that members were treated as employees and not as owners. Even the basic principle of voluntary membership was violated by the process of forced collectivization; members did not retain a right of free exit, and those who managed to leave could not take their share of assets with them (neither in kind nor in cash-equivalent form).
They imposed detailed work programs and nominated their preferred managerial candidates. Since the mid-1930s, the kolkhozes had been in effect an offshoot of the state sector (although notionally they continued to be owned by their members). Nevertheless, in locations with particularly good land or if it happened to have capable management, some kolkhozes accumulated substantial sums of money in their bank accounts. Subsequently, numerous kolkhozes were formally nationalized by changing their status to sovkhozes. In the late 1960s, Khrushchev's administration authorized a guaranteed wage to kolkhoz members, similarly to sovkhoz employees; this reduced the already minor distinction between state and collective farms. Essentially, his administration recognised their status as hired hands rather than authentic cooperative members. The guaranteed wage provision was incorporated in the 1969 version of the Standard Charter.
Work organization
Brigade
The question of internal organization was important in the new kolkhozes. The most basic measure was to divide the workforce into a number of groups, generally known as brigades, for working purposes. By July 1929 it was already normal practice for the large kolkhoz of 200–400 households to be divided into temporary or permanent work units of 15–30 households.' The authorities gradually became in favour of the fixed, combined brigadethat is, the brigade with its personnel, land, equipment and draught horses fixed to it for the whole period of agricultural operations, and taking responsibility for all relevant tasks during that period. The brigade was headed by a brigade leader (brigadir). This was usually a local man (a few were women).
After the kolkhoz amalgamations of 1950 the territorial successor of the old village kolkhoz was the "complex brigade" (brigade of brigades), a sub-unit of the new enlarged kolkhoz.
Zveno
Brigades could be subdivided into smaller units called zvenos (links) for carrying out some or all of their tasks.