Thread: Kolkhoz vs Sovkhoz

Can anyone explain the difference between these two forms of farm under communism?

Many thanks.

From Robert Service's History Of Twentieth Century Russia:

'[Stalin's] ideal organisation was the sovkhoz. This was a collective farm run on the same principles as a state-owned factory. Local authorities marked out the land for each sovkhoz and hired peasants for fixed wages. Such a type of farming was thought eminently suitable for the grain-growing expanses in Ukraine and southern Russia. Yet Stalin recognized that most peasants were ill-disposed to becoming wage-labourers, and he yielded to the extent of permitting most farms to be of the kolkhoz type. In a kolkhoz, the members were rewarded by results. If the quotas were not met, the farm was not paid. Furthermore, each peasant was paid a fraction of the farm wage-fund strictly in accordance with the number of 'labour days' he or she had contributed to the farming year.

And so the kolkhoz was defined as occupying a lower level of socialist attainment than the sovkhoz. In the long run the official expectation was that all kolkhozes would be turned into sovkhozes in Soviet agriculture; but still the kolkhoz, despite its traces of private self-interest, was treated as a socialist organisational form.'

As I suspect, the difference was more formal than real. But (at least, in theory), Sovkhoz ("Soviet farm") was totally state-owned enterprise; Kolkhoz ("Collective farm") was owned by its workers, although under State control.

Originally Posted by Scorpio

Sovkhoz ("Soviet farm")

I thought Совхоз = совместное хозяйство.