Collective farming
Encyclopedia
Collective farming and communal farming are types of agricultural production in which the holdings of several farmers are run as a joint enterprise. This type of collective
is essentially an agricultural production cooperative in which member-owners engage jointly in farming activities.
Typical examples of collective farms are the kolkhoz
y that dominated Soviet agriculture between 1930 and 1991 and the Israeli kibbutz
im. Both are collective farms based on common ownership
of resources and on pooling of labor and income in accordance with the theoretical principles of cooperative
organizations. They are radically different, however, in the application of the cooperative principles of freedom of choice and democratic rule.
The creation of kolkhozy in the Soviet Union during the country-wide collectivization campaign of 1928-1933 was an example of forced collectivization, whereas the kibbutz
im in Israel were traditionally created through voluntary collectivization and were governed as democratic entities. The element of forced or state-sponsored collectivization that was present in many countries during the 20th century led to the impression that collective farms operate under the supervision of the state, but this is not universally true, as shown by the counter-example of the Israeli kibbutz.
s between 1928 and 1933. The Baltic states
and most of the East European countries
(except Poland) adopted collective farming after World War II, with the accession of communist regimes to power. In Asia (People's Republic of China
, North Korea, Vietnam
) the adoption of collective farming was also driven by communist government policies. In all communist countries, the transition to collective farming involved an element of persuasion by force, and the collective farms in these countries, lacking the principle of voluntary membership, can be regarded at best as pseudo-cooperatives.
in the late 1920s as a way, according to the theories of socialist leaders, to boost agricultural production through the organization of land and labor into large-scale collective farms (kolkhoz
y). At the same time, Stalin argued that collectivization would free poor peasants from economic servitude under the kulak
s.
Stalin resorted to destruction of the plan by mass murder and wholesale deportation of farmers to Siberia
. Millions of unfortunates who remained also lived and did not die of starvation, and the centuries-old system of farming was destroyed in one of the most fertile regions in the world. His methods of collective farming bolstered the undeniable prosperity of his nation. In 1932-1933, an estimated 11 million people, 7 million in Ukraine
alone, died from famine
after Stalin forced the peasants into the collectives (Ukrainians call this famine Holodomor
). Most modern historians believe that this famine was caused by the sudden disruption of production brought on by collective farming policies and mass seizure of property (the proceeds of which were used, according to Aleksandr Bushkov
, to accelerate industrial development). These policies were implemented by the government of the Soviet Union, of which Ukraine was then a part. Some believe that, due to unreasonably high government quotas
, farmers often received far less for their labor than they did before collectivization, and some refused to work; others retaliated by destroying their crops. It was not until 1940 that agricultural production finally surpassed its pre-collectivization levels.
It has generally been agreed that Soviet agricultural policies failed. However, one Western observer - Joseph. E. Medley, denies the failure of collectivized agriculture which was acknowledged not only by Western critics but even by Soviet leadership.
He argues that "failure" is a term which indicates nothing about the magnitude of goals set and results achieved. For instance, the meat target set in the 1982-1990 Soviet Food Program was an average annual output of 20.25 million tons. The Food Program target was not met, though production in 1990 hit 20 million tons. Hence, the plan failed. However, focusing exclusively on the failure of the meat target overlooks the important facts that in 1990 meat output was up some 30% over that in 1981 (20 million vs. 15.2 million tons) and that 1990s per capita meat consumption (67 kg) was up some 18% over that of 1981. Thus, he argues that important progress with respect to the goal of increasing meat production and consumption was obtained through the socialist agricultural system even if the plan officially "failed".
Though between 1956 and 1970 the Soviet Union was a net exporter of grain
, exporting (net) circa 3.5 million tons per year, from 1970 onward it became an importer. Import of net grain increased from circa 9.88 million tons per year between 1970 and 1974 to 20.52 million in the 1975-1979 period, to 30.88 in 1980-1984 and to 32.1 million tons in the four-year period 1985 1988 (USDA 1989:49). Before 1970, net meat imports of the USSR were small but by 1990 they were approaching the levels of the United States. These increases in imports of grain and meat were actually not triggered from declining production. Grain output increased from circa 181.6 million tons between 1971 and 1975 to an average 206.9 million in the period 1986-89. Moreover, meat production rose from 14.0 million tons in 1971-75 to 19.2 million tons in 1986-89, id est, a 37% increase. The imports were triggered by the increasing demand for meat which accompanied rather sharp increases in income. In fact, In the inception of 1965, when the average wage was 96.5 rubles per month, meat was an expensive item for the family. In the setting of the late 1980s when the average wage had risen to 257 rubles per month, it was relatively much cheaper and therefore people have purchased much more meat. Increased shortages have grown hand in hand with increased consumption because meat is so cheap.
, land collectivization began in 1948 and continued over more than a decade until its virtual completion in 1962.
was not aggressively pursued until the early 1960s because of the Soviet leadership's focus on a policy of Russification
of Moldavians
into the Russian way of life. Much of the collectivization in Moldova had undergone in Transnistria
, in Chişinău
, the present-day capital city of Moldova. Most of the directors who regulated and conducted the process of collectivization were placed by officials from Moscow.
. The first serious attempt at collectivization based on Stalinist agricultural policy was undertaken in July 1948. Both economic and direct police pressure were used to coerce peasants to join cooperative
s, but large numbers opted instead to leave their villages. In the early 1950s, only one-quarter of peasants had agreed to join cooperatives.
In the spring of 1955 the drive for collectivization was renewed, again using physical force to encourage membership, but this second wave also ended in dismal failure. After the events of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
, the Hungarian regime opted for a more gradual collectivization drive. The main wave of collectivization occurred between 1959 and 1961, and at the end of this period more than 95% of agricultural land in Hungary had become the property of collective farms. In February 1961, the Central Committee declared that collectivization had been completed.
This quick success should not be confused with enthusiastic adoption of collective idealism on the part of the peasants. Still, demoralized after two successive (and harsh) collectivization campaigns and the events of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
, the peasants were less keen to resist. As membership levels increased, those who remained outside likely grew worried about being permanently left out.
, land reforms after World War I distributed most of the land to peasants and created large groups of relatively well-to-do farmers (though village poor still existed). These groups showed no support for communist ideals. In 1945, immediately after World War II, new land reform started. The first phase involved a confiscation of properties of Germans, Hungarians, and collaborators of the Nazi regime in accordance with the so-called Beneš decrees
. The second phase, promulgated by so-called Ďuriš's laws (after the Communist Minister of Agriculture), in fact meant a complete revision of the pre-war land reform and tried to reduce maximal private property to 150 hectares (ha) of agricultural land and 250 ha of any land (forests, etc...).
The third and final phase forbade possession of land above 50 ha for one family. This phase was carried out in April 1948, two months after Communists took power by force. Farms started to be collectivized, mostly under the threat of sanctions. The most obstinate farmers were persecuted and imprisoned. The most common form of collectivization was agricultural cooperative (in Czech Jednotné zemědělské družstvo, JZD; in Slovak Jednotné roľnícke družstvo, JRD). The collectivization was implemented in three stages (1949–1952, 1953–1956, 1956–1969) and officially ended with implementation of the constitution establishing the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
, which made private ownership illegal.
Many early cooperatives collapsed and were recreated again. Their productivity was low since they provided tiny salaries and no pensions, and they failed to create a sense of collective ownership; small-scale pilfering was common, and food became scarce. Seeing the massive outflow of people from agriculture into cities, the government started to massively subsidize the cooperatives in order to make the standard of living of farmers equal to that of city inhabitants; this was the long-term official policy of the government. Funds, machinery, and fertilizers were provided; young people from villages were forced to study agriculture; and students were regularly sent (involuntarily) to help in cooperatives.
Subsidies and constant pressure destroyed the remaining private farmers; only a handful of them remained after the 1960s. The lifestyle of villagers had eventually reached the level of cities, and village poverty was eliminated. Czechoslovakia was again able to produce enough food for its citizens. The price of this success was a huge waste of resources because the cooperatives had no incentive to improve efficiency. Every piece of land was cultivated regardless of the expense involved, and the soil became heavily polluted with chemicals. Also, the intensive use of heavy machinery damaged topsoil. Furthermore, the cooperatives were infamous for over-employment.
In the late 1980s, the economy of Czechoslovakia stagnated, and the state-owned companies were unable to deal with advent of modern technologies. A few agricultural companies (where the rules were less strict than in state companies) used this situation to start providing high-tech products. For example, the only way to buy a PC-compatible computer in the late 1980s was to get it (for an extremely high price) from one agricultural company acting as a reseller.
After the fall of Communism
in Czechoslovakia (1989) subsidies to agriculture were halted with devastating effect. Most of the cooperatives had problems competing with technologically advanced foreign competition and were unable to obtain investment to improve their situation. Quite a large percentage of them collapsed. The others that remained were typically insufficiently funded, lacking competent management, without new machinery and living from day to day. Employment in the agricultural sector dropped significantly (from approximately 25% of the population to approximately 1%).
provides its negative counterpart. In the late 1990s, the collective farming system collapsed under the strain of droughts. Estimates of deaths due to starvation ranged into the millions, although the government did not allow outside observers to survey the extent of the famine. Aggravating the severity of the famine, the government was accused of diverting international relief supplies to its armed forces.
on April 30, 1975, South Vietnam
briefly came under the authority of a Provisional Revolutionary Government, a puppet state under military occupation by North Vietnam
, before being officially reunified with the North under Communist rule as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on July 2, 1976. Upon taking control, the Vietnamese communists banned other political parties, arrested suspects believed to have collaborated with the United States and embarked on a mass campaign of collectivization of farms and factories. Reconstruction of the war-ravaged country was slow and serious humanitarian and economic problems confronted the communist regime.
In a historic shift in 1986, the Communist Party of Vietnam implemented free-market reforms known as (Renovation). With the authority of the state remaining unchallenged, private ownership of farms and companies, deregulation and foreign investment were encouraged. The economy of Vietnam
has achieved rapid growth in agricultural and industrial production, construction and housing, exports and foreign investment. However, the power of the Communist Party of Vietnam
over all organs of government remains firm.
of the 1950s, the new Cuban authorities experimented with agricultural production cooperatives. Between 1977 and 1983, farmers began to collectivize into CPA
s — (agricultural production cooperatives). Farmers were encouraged to sell their land to the state for the establishment of a cooperative farm, receiving payments for a period of 20 years while also sharing in the fruits of the CPA. Joining a CPA allowed individuals who were previously dispersed throughout the countryside to move to a centralized location with increased access to electricity, medical care, housing, and schools. Democractic practice tends to be limited to business decisions and is constrained by the centralized economic planning of the Cuban system.
Another type of agricultural production cooperative in Cuba is UBPC
— Unidad Básica de Producción Cooperativa (basic unit of cooperative production in Spanish). The law authorizing the creation of UBPCs was passed on September 20, 1993. It has been used to transform many state farms into UBPCs, similarly to the transformation of Russian sovkhoz
es (state farms) into kolkhoz
es (collective farms) after 1992. The law granted indefinite usufruct to the workers of the UBPC in line with its goal to link the workers to the land, establish material incentives for increased production by tying workers' earnings to the overall production of the UBPC, and increase managerial autonomy and workers' participation in the management of the workplace.
im in Israel, which began to be created in 1909 as a unique combination of Zionism
and socialism
. The concept has faced occasional criticism as economically inefficient and over-reliant on subsidized credit.
A less known type of collective farm in Israel is moshav shitufi
(lit. collective moshav), where production and services are managed collectively, as in a kibbutz, whereas consumption decisions are left to individual households. In terms of cooperative organization, moshav shitufi is distinct from the much more common moshav
(or moshav ovdim), which is essentially a village-level service cooperative, not a collective farm.
In 2006 there were 40 moshavim shitufiim in Israel, compared with 267 kibbutzim.
Collective farming in Israel differs from collectivism in communist states in that it is voluntary.
Non-rural collectivization:
Collective
A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together on a specific project to achieve a common objective...
is essentially an agricultural production cooperative in which member-owners engage jointly in farming activities.
Typical examples of collective farms are the kolkhoz
Kolkhoz
A kolkhoz , plural kolkhozy, was a form of collective farming in the Soviet Union that existed along with state farms . The word is a contraction of коллекти́вное хозя́йство, or "collective farm", while sovkhoz is a contraction of советское хозяйство...
y that dominated Soviet agriculture between 1930 and 1991 and the Israeli kibbutz
Kibbutz
A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...
im. Both are collective farms based on common ownership
Common ownership
Common ownership is a principle according to which the assets of an enterprise or other organization are held indivisibly rather than in the names of the individual members or by a public institution such as a governmental body. It is therefore in contrast to public ownership...
of resources and on pooling of labor and income in accordance with the theoretical principles of cooperative
Cooperative
A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...
organizations. They are radically different, however, in the application of the cooperative principles of freedom of choice and democratic rule.
The creation of kolkhozy in the Soviet Union during the country-wide collectivization campaign of 1928-1933 was an example of forced collectivization, whereas the kibbutz
Kibbutz
A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...
im in Israel were traditionally created through voluntary collectivization and were governed as democratic entities. The element of forced or state-sponsored collectivization that was present in many countries during the 20th century led to the impression that collective farms operate under the supervision of the state, but this is not universally true, as shown by the counter-example of the Israeli kibbutz.
Communist collectivization
The Soviet Union introduced collective farming in its constituent republicRepublics of the Soviet Union
The Republics of the Soviet Union or the Union Republics of the Soviet Union were ethnically-based administrative units that were subordinated directly to the Government of the Soviet Union...
s between 1928 and 1933. The Baltic states
Baltic states
The term Baltic states refers to the Baltic territories which gained independence from the Russian Empire in the wake of World War I: primarily the contiguous trio of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania ; Finland also fell within the scope of the term after initially gaining independence in the 1920s.The...
and most of the East European countries
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
(except Poland) adopted collective farming after World War II, with the accession of communist regimes to power. In Asia (People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
, North Korea, Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
) the adoption of collective farming was also driven by communist government policies. In all communist countries, the transition to collective farming involved an element of persuasion by force, and the collective farms in these countries, lacking the principle of voluntary membership, can be regarded at best as pseudo-cooperatives.
Soviet Union
In the Soviet Union, collectivization was introduced by Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
in the late 1920s as a way, according to the theories of socialist leaders, to boost agricultural production through the organization of land and labor into large-scale collective farms (kolkhoz
Kolkhoz
A kolkhoz , plural kolkhozy, was a form of collective farming in the Soviet Union that existed along with state farms . The word is a contraction of коллекти́вное хозя́йство, or "collective farm", while sovkhoz is a contraction of советское хозяйство...
y). At the same time, Stalin argued that collectivization would free poor peasants from economic servitude under the kulak
Kulak
Kulaks were a category of relatively affluent peasants in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and early Soviet Union...
s.
Stalin resorted to destruction of the plan by mass murder and wholesale deportation of farmers to Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
. Millions of unfortunates who remained also lived and did not die of starvation, and the centuries-old system of farming was destroyed in one of the most fertile regions in the world. His methods of collective farming bolstered the undeniable prosperity of his nation. In 1932-1933, an estimated 11 million people, 7 million in Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
alone, died from famine
Famine
A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...
after Stalin forced the peasants into the collectives (Ukrainians call this famine Holodomor
Holodomor
The Holodomor was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian SSR between 1932 and 1933. During the famine, which is also known as the "terror-famine in Ukraine" and "famine-genocide in Ukraine", millions of Ukrainians died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of...
). Most modern historians believe that this famine was caused by the sudden disruption of production brought on by collective farming policies and mass seizure of property (the proceeds of which were used, according to Aleksandr Bushkov
Aleksandr Bushkov
Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Bushkov is a best-selling Russian author who has written books in the genres of science fiction, crime fiction, popular history and non-fiction. In his belletristic, published in literary and popular journals, Bushkov has been critical of conventional academic approaches...
, to accelerate industrial development). These policies were implemented by the government of the Soviet Union, of which Ukraine was then a part. Some believe that, due to unreasonably high government quotas
Quota share
A quota share is a specified number or percentage of the allotment as a whole , that is prescribed to each individual entity ....
, farmers often received far less for their labor than they did before collectivization, and some refused to work; others retaliated by destroying their crops. It was not until 1940 that agricultural production finally surpassed its pre-collectivization levels.
It has generally been agreed that Soviet agricultural policies failed. However, one Western observer - Joseph. E. Medley, denies the failure of collectivized agriculture which was acknowledged not only by Western critics but even by Soviet leadership.
He argues that "failure" is a term which indicates nothing about the magnitude of goals set and results achieved. For instance, the meat target set in the 1982-1990 Soviet Food Program was an average annual output of 20.25 million tons. The Food Program target was not met, though production in 1990 hit 20 million tons. Hence, the plan failed. However, focusing exclusively on the failure of the meat target overlooks the important facts that in 1990 meat output was up some 30% over that in 1981 (20 million vs. 15.2 million tons) and that 1990s per capita meat consumption (67 kg) was up some 18% over that of 1981. Thus, he argues that important progress with respect to the goal of increasing meat production and consumption was obtained through the socialist agricultural system even if the plan officially "failed".
Though between 1956 and 1970 the Soviet Union was a net exporter of grain
GRAIN
GRAIN is a small international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems. Our support takes the form of independent research and analysis, networking at local, regional and...
, exporting (net) circa 3.5 million tons per year, from 1970 onward it became an importer. Import of net grain increased from circa 9.88 million tons per year between 1970 and 1974 to 20.52 million in the 1975-1979 period, to 30.88 in 1980-1984 and to 32.1 million tons in the four-year period 1985 1988 (USDA 1989:49). Before 1970, net meat imports of the USSR were small but by 1990 they were approaching the levels of the United States. These increases in imports of grain and meat were actually not triggered from declining production. Grain output increased from circa 181.6 million tons between 1971 and 1975 to an average 206.9 million in the period 1986-89. Moreover, meat production rose from 14.0 million tons in 1971-75 to 19.2 million tons in 1986-89, id est, a 37% increase. The imports were triggered by the increasing demand for meat which accompanied rather sharp increases in income. In fact, In the inception of 1965, when the average wage was 96.5 rubles per month, meat was an expensive item for the family. In the setting of the late 1980s when the average wage had risen to 257 rubles per month, it was relatively much cheaper and therefore people have purchased much more meat. Increased shortages have grown hand in hand with increased consumption because meat is so cheap.
Romania
In RomaniaRomania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, land collectivization began in 1948 and continued over more than a decade until its virtual completion in 1962.
Moldova
Collectivization throughout MoldovaMoldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
was not aggressively pursued until the early 1960s because of the Soviet leadership's focus on a policy of Russification
Russification
Russification is an adoption of the Russian language or some other Russian attributes by non-Russian communities...
of Moldavians
Moldovans
Moldovans or Moldavians are the largest population group of Moldova...
into the Russian way of life. Much of the collectivization in Moldova had undergone in Transnistria
Transnistria
Transnistria is a breakaway territory located mostly on a strip of land between the Dniester River and the eastern Moldovan border to Ukraine...
, in Chişinău
Chisinau
Chișinău is the capital and largest municipality of Moldova. It is also its main industrial and commercial centre and is located in the middle of the country, on the river Bîc...
, the present-day capital city of Moldova. Most of the directors who regulated and conducted the process of collectivization were placed by officials from Moscow.
Hungary
In Hungary, agricultural collectivization was attempted a number of times between 1948 and 1956 (with disastrous results), until it was finally successful in the early 1960s under János KádárJános Kádár
János Kádár was a Hungarian communist leader and the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, presiding over the country from 1956 until his forced retirement in 1988. His thirty-two year term as General Secretary makes Kádár the longest ruler of the People's Republic of Hungary...
. The first serious attempt at collectivization based on Stalinist agricultural policy was undertaken in July 1948. Both economic and direct police pressure were used to coerce peasants to join cooperative
Cooperative
A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...
s, but large numbers opted instead to leave their villages. In the early 1950s, only one-quarter of peasants had agreed to join cooperatives.
In the spring of 1955 the drive for collectivization was renewed, again using physical force to encourage membership, but this second wave also ended in dismal failure. After the events of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
1956 Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution or Uprising of 1956 was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of the People's Republic of Hungary and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956....
, the Hungarian regime opted for a more gradual collectivization drive. The main wave of collectivization occurred between 1959 and 1961, and at the end of this period more than 95% of agricultural land in Hungary had become the property of collective farms. In February 1961, the Central Committee declared that collectivization had been completed.
This quick success should not be confused with enthusiastic adoption of collective idealism on the part of the peasants. Still, demoralized after two successive (and harsh) collectivization campaigns and the events of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution
1956 Hungarian Revolution
The Hungarian Revolution or Uprising of 1956 was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of the People's Republic of Hungary and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956....
, the peasants were less keen to resist. As membership levels increased, those who remained outside likely grew worried about being permanently left out.
Czechoslovakia (1948-90)
In CzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
, land reforms after World War I distributed most of the land to peasants and created large groups of relatively well-to-do farmers (though village poor still existed). These groups showed no support for communist ideals. In 1945, immediately after World War II, new land reform started. The first phase involved a confiscation of properties of Germans, Hungarians, and collaborators of the Nazi regime in accordance with the so-called Beneš decrees
Beneš decrees
Decrees of the President of the Republic , more commonly known as the Beneš decrees, were a series of laws that were drafted by the Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile in the absence of the Czechoslovak parliament during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in World War II and issued by President...
. The second phase, promulgated by so-called Ďuriš's laws (after the Communist Minister of Agriculture), in fact meant a complete revision of the pre-war land reform and tried to reduce maximal private property to 150 hectares (ha) of agricultural land and 250 ha of any land (forests, etc...).
The third and final phase forbade possession of land above 50 ha for one family. This phase was carried out in April 1948, two months after Communists took power by force. Farms started to be collectivized, mostly under the threat of sanctions. The most obstinate farmers were persecuted and imprisoned. The most common form of collectivization was agricultural cooperative (in Czech Jednotné zemědělské družstvo, JZD; in Slovak Jednotné roľnícke družstvo, JRD). The collectivization was implemented in three stages (1949–1952, 1953–1956, 1956–1969) and officially ended with implementation of the constitution establishing the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was the official name of Czechoslovakia from 1960 until end of 1989 , a Soviet satellite state of the Eastern Bloc....
, which made private ownership illegal.
Many early cooperatives collapsed and were recreated again. Their productivity was low since they provided tiny salaries and no pensions, and they failed to create a sense of collective ownership; small-scale pilfering was common, and food became scarce. Seeing the massive outflow of people from agriculture into cities, the government started to massively subsidize the cooperatives in order to make the standard of living of farmers equal to that of city inhabitants; this was the long-term official policy of the government. Funds, machinery, and fertilizers were provided; young people from villages were forced to study agriculture; and students were regularly sent (involuntarily) to help in cooperatives.
Subsidies and constant pressure destroyed the remaining private farmers; only a handful of them remained after the 1960s. The lifestyle of villagers had eventually reached the level of cities, and village poverty was eliminated. Czechoslovakia was again able to produce enough food for its citizens. The price of this success was a huge waste of resources because the cooperatives had no incentive to improve efficiency. Every piece of land was cultivated regardless of the expense involved, and the soil became heavily polluted with chemicals. Also, the intensive use of heavy machinery damaged topsoil. Furthermore, the cooperatives were infamous for over-employment.
In the late 1980s, the economy of Czechoslovakia stagnated, and the state-owned companies were unable to deal with advent of modern technologies. A few agricultural companies (where the rules were less strict than in state companies) used this situation to start providing high-tech products. For example, the only way to buy a PC-compatible computer in the late 1980s was to get it (for an extremely high price) from one agricultural company acting as a reseller.
After the fall of Communism
Velvet Revolution
The Velvet Revolution or Gentle Revolution was a non-violent revolution in Czechoslovakia that took place from November 17 – December 29, 1989...
in Czechoslovakia (1989) subsidies to agriculture were halted with devastating effect. Most of the cooperatives had problems competing with technologically advanced foreign competition and were unable to obtain investment to improve their situation. Quite a large percentage of them collapsed. The others that remained were typically insufficiently funded, lacking competent management, without new machinery and living from day to day. Employment in the agricultural sector dropped significantly (from approximately 25% of the population to approximately 1%).
SFR Yugoslavia
Collective farming was introduced in Yugoslavia in the first years after World War II, by taking away land from wealthy pre-war owners and limiting possessions in private ownership first to 25, and later to 10 hectares. The large, state-owned farms were known as "Agricultural cooperatives" ("Zemljoradničke zadruge" in Serbo-Croatian) and farmers working on them had to meet production quotas in order to satisfy the needs of the populace. See: Law of 23rd of August 1945 with amendments until 1st of December 1948.People's Republic of China
North Korea
While Hungary arguably provides the best positive example of collective farming in a communist state, North KoreaNorth Korea
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea , , is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea...
provides its negative counterpart. In the late 1990s, the collective farming system collapsed under the strain of droughts. Estimates of deaths due to starvation ranged into the millions, although the government did not allow outside observers to survey the extent of the famine. Aggravating the severity of the famine, the government was accused of diverting international relief supplies to its armed forces.
Socialist Republic of Vietnam
Following the Fall of SaigonFall of Saigon
The Fall of Saigon was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People's Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front on April 30, 1975...
on April 30, 1975, South Vietnam
South Vietnam
South Vietnam was a state which governed southern Vietnam until 1975. It received international recognition in 1950 as the "State of Vietnam" and later as the "Republic of Vietnam" . Its capital was Saigon...
briefly came under the authority of a Provisional Revolutionary Government, a puppet state under military occupation by North Vietnam
North Vietnam
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam , was a communist state that ruled the northern half of Vietnam from 1954 until 1976 following the Geneva Conference and laid claim to all of Vietnam from 1945 to 1954 during the First Indochina War, during which they controlled pockets of territory throughout...
, before being officially reunified with the North under Communist rule as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on July 2, 1976. Upon taking control, the Vietnamese communists banned other political parties, arrested suspects believed to have collaborated with the United States and embarked on a mass campaign of collectivization of farms and factories. Reconstruction of the war-ravaged country was slow and serious humanitarian and economic problems confronted the communist regime.
In a historic shift in 1986, the Communist Party of Vietnam implemented free-market reforms known as (Renovation). With the authority of the state remaining unchallenged, private ownership of farms and companies, deregulation and foreign investment were encouraged. The economy of Vietnam
Economy of Vietnam
The economy of Vietnam is a developing planned-market economy. Since the mid-1980s, through the "Đổi Mới" reform period, Vietnam has made a shift from a highly-centralized planned economy to a socialist-oriented market economy which use both directive and indicative planning . Over that period, the...
has achieved rapid growth in agricultural and industrial production, construction and housing, exports and foreign investment. However, the power of the Communist Party of Vietnam
Communist Party of Vietnam
The Communist Party of Vietnam , formally established in 1930, is the governing party of the nation of Vietnam. It is today the only legal political party in that country. Describing itself as Marxist-Leninist, the CPV is the directing component of a broader group of organizations known as the...
over all organs of government remains firm.
Cuba
In the first few years following the Cuban RevolutionCuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...
of the 1950s, the new Cuban authorities experimented with agricultural production cooperatives. Between 1977 and 1983, farmers began to collectivize into CPA
CPA (agriculture)
A CPA , or Agricultural Production Cooperative, is a type of agricultural cooperative that exists in Cuba today.- History of CPAs :...
s — (agricultural production cooperatives). Farmers were encouraged to sell their land to the state for the establishment of a cooperative farm, receiving payments for a period of 20 years while also sharing in the fruits of the CPA. Joining a CPA allowed individuals who were previously dispersed throughout the countryside to move to a centralized location with increased access to electricity, medical care, housing, and schools. Democractic practice tends to be limited to business decisions and is constrained by the centralized economic planning of the Cuban system.
Another type of agricultural production cooperative in Cuba is UBPC
UBPC
A UBPC , or Basic Unit of Cooperative Production, is a type of agricultural cooperative that exists in Cuba.- History of the UBPCs :...
— Unidad Básica de Producción Cooperativa (basic unit of cooperative production in Spanish). The law authorizing the creation of UBPCs was passed on September 20, 1993. It has been used to transform many state farms into UBPCs, similarly to the transformation of Russian sovkhoz
Sovkhoz
A sovkhoz , typically translated as state farm, is a state-owned farm. The term originated in the Soviet Union, hence the name. The term is still in use in some post-Soviet states, e.g., Russia and Belarus. It is usually contrasted with kolkhoz, which is a collective-owned farm...
es (state farms) into kolkhoz
Kolkhoz
A kolkhoz , plural kolkhozy, was a form of collective farming in the Soviet Union that existed along with state farms . The word is a contraction of коллекти́вное хозя́йство, or "collective farm", while sovkhoz is a contraction of советское хозяйство...
es (collective farms) after 1992. The law granted indefinite usufruct to the workers of the UBPC in line with its goal to link the workers to the land, establish material incentives for increased production by tying workers' earnings to the overall production of the UBPC, and increase managerial autonomy and workers' participation in the management of the workplace.
India
In Indian villiages a single field (normally of three to five acres) may be farmed collectively by the villagers, who each offer devotional labour, possibly for one or two days per cropping season. The resulting crop belongs to no one, and is used as an offering. The labour input is the offering of the peasant in their role as priests. The wealth generated by the sale of the produce belongs to the Gods and hence is Apaurusheya or impersonal. Shrambhakti (labour contributed as devotional offering) is the key instrument for generation of internal resources. The benefits of the harvest are redistributed in the village for common good as well as individual need - not as loan or charity, but as divine grace (prasad). The recipient is under no obligation to repay it and no interest need be paid on such gifts. Giving and receiving of these sums is done so discreetly and with such subtle grace so as to obviates any sense of inferiority on the part of the recipients.Israel
Collective farming was also implemented in kibbutzKibbutz
A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...
im in Israel, which began to be created in 1909 as a unique combination of Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
and socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
. The concept has faced occasional criticism as economically inefficient and over-reliant on subsidized credit.
A less known type of collective farm in Israel is moshav shitufi
Moshav shitufi
A Moshav shitufi is a type of cooperative village in Israel whose organizational principles place it between the kibbutz and the moshav on the scale of cooperation...
(lit. collective moshav), where production and services are managed collectively, as in a kibbutz, whereas consumption decisions are left to individual households. In terms of cooperative organization, moshav shitufi is distinct from the much more common moshav
Moshav
Moshav is a type of Israeli town or settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists during the second aliyah...
(or moshav ovdim), which is essentially a village-level service cooperative, not a collective farm.
In 2006 there were 40 moshavim shitufiim in Israel, compared with 267 kibbutzim.
Collective farming in Israel differs from collectivism in communist states in that it is voluntary.
See also
- Agriculture of CubaAgriculture of CubaAgriculture in Cuba has played an important part in the economy for several hundred years. Agriculture contributes less than 10 percent to the gross domestic product , but it employs roughly one fifth of the working population...
- Camphill MovementCamphill MovementThe Camphill Movement is an initiative for social change inspired by anthroposophy. Camphill communities are residential "life-sharing" communities and schools for adults and children with learning disabilities, mental health problems and other special needs, which provide services and support for...
- Collectivization in the USSR
- Cooperative farmingCooperative farmingAn agricultural cooperative, also known as a farmers' co-op, is a cooperative where farmers pool their resources in certain areas of activity....
- CPA (Agriculture)CPA (agriculture)A CPA , or Agricultural Production Cooperative, is a type of agricultural cooperative that exists in Cuba today.- History of CPAs :...
(Cuban Cooperative Farm) - UBPCUBPCA UBPC , or Basic Unit of Cooperative Production, is a type of agricultural cooperative that exists in Cuba.- History of the UBPCs :...
(Cuban Cooperative Farm) - DekulakizationDekulakizationDekulakization was the Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, and executions of millions of the better-off peasants and their families in 1929-1932. The richer peasants were labeled kulaks and considered class enemies...
- Family farmFamily farmA family farm is a farm owned and operated by a family, and often passed down from generation to generation. It is the basic unit of the mostly agricultural economy of much of human history and continues to be so in developing nations...
- NationalizationNationalizationNationalisation, also spelled nationalization, is the process of taking an industry or assets into government ownership by a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to private assets, but may also mean assets owned by lower levels of government, such as municipalities, being...
Non-rural collectivization:
- Work unitWork unitA work unit or danwei is the name given to a place of employment in the People's Republic of China. While the term danwei remains in use today it is more properly used to refer to a place of employment during the period when the Chinese economy was still more heavily socialist or when used in the...