Word: kolkhozes
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Working with the Soviet embassy in Washington and the Soviet Ministry for Agriculture, the Dulls set up a unique Soviet-American farm-exchange program. They would spend six months on the Ukraina kolkhoz (collective farm), while a Soviet farmer, Viktor Polormarchuk, worked on their spread back in Brookville. (From his letters home, Polormarchuk's wife Valentina reports that her husband is working hard, has lost several pounds and talks about doing some private farming of his own when he returns to the Soviet Union.) "Mikhail Gorbachev's new proposals ((for liberalizing the economy)) fit in exactly with what we think...
...some of the Soviets had other ideas. One of them was the collective's chairman, Vitali Vladimirovich Stengach. A large, ruddy-faced man with a deceptively jovial manner, Stengach wields power on the kolkhoz, answering only to the local party authorities. Sitting in his huge office and guzzling a glass of the natural mineral water famous in the area, Stengach pours out his complaints. Says he: "We thought we would give him land to grow whatever he wanted. We wanted him to bring his own grain, tractors, herbicides and combines, so he could show us what can be done...
Despite its inefficiency, the Ukraina kolkhoz is one of the Soviet Union's most profitable collective farms. It employs more than 7,000 people and earns a profit -- about $4.7 million in 1988 -- on sales of cattle, corn, sugar beets, wheat and other products. Yet mismanagement limits its progress. Dull cites as one example a "specialist system," requiring that people be trained to do only one specific task. Party officials, often without agricultural expertise, constantly monitor to make sure things are done as the party dictates. "Soviet farmers are accustomed to having Big Brother watching over their shoulder," says Dull...
...says. "If private farmers are given freedom of choice, they'll develop a productive agriculture that fits their circumstances." A few hundred feet from the Dulls' house are two privately run greenhouses, set up by a five-man rental group that recently entered into an agreement with the kolkhoz to grow cucumbers and tomatoes. Ralph is so proud of the renters that he has practically adopted all of them...
...began when the citizens of Starving Alive protested that they weren't. "Why should a thriving kolkhoz [communal] village bear such a degrading name," demanded the local paper, "especially on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution? Such names are references to a past that has been overcome. And there are far too many of them...