# Forum About Russia Culture and History  Kolkhoz vs Sovkhoz

## mercurius

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

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## joysof

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.'

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## Scorpio

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.

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## BETEP

> Sovkhoz ("Soviet farm")

 I thought Совхоз = совместное хозяйство.  ::

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