Word: kolkhozes
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...national situation saw the difficult situation in agriculture, but Stalin never even noted it. Did we tell Stalin about this? Yes, we told him, but he did not support us. Why? Because Stalin never traveled anywhere. He knew the country and agriculture only from films. Many films so pictured kolkhoz [collective] life that the tables were bending from the weight of turkeys and geese. Evidently Stalin thought that it was actually so. The last time he visited a village was in January 1928. How then could he have known the situation in the provinces...
...peasants' complaints, the government introduced a New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921 which was a concession to the peasants. This policy lasted until 1928, when Stalin began an intensive drive for collectivization of agriculture. Under this plan, two types of farms were set up, a collective farm called the kolkhoz, and a state farm of "grain factory," called the sovhas. The former is by far the more prevalent in Russia today, with about 98 percent of the farmers included...
Under the kolkhoz system, each peasant is part of a vast cooperative and participates in the output of the whole farm. In addition to working for the cooperative and receiving a salary based upon the amount of work he does for it, the peasant on the kolkhoz is allowed to have a small plot of land upon which he can grow his own products and raise livestock. He can sell this produce on the open market to supplement his income. The peasant, as might be expected, generally prefers to till his own plot rather than the cooperative...
This puts the government in a dilemma. If it tries to coerce the peasant to work more faithfully for the kolkhoz, the peasant may slow down his production. And if the government allows him complete freedom, the peasant will almost always work harder on his own plot...
These slight changes had at least three motivations. They provided the peasant with added incentives to work harder on the kolkhoz; they provided Russia with a propaganda vehicle with which to shower the world; and they served to improve the morale of the peasantry. But, unfortunately for Malenkov, the actual production of consumer goods was far short of what the leaders had predicted, producing an economy in Russia which is almost inflationary...