Your grandparents, and possibly your parents, had to live in Soviet times and work on a collective farm if your relatives are from the countryside. They certainly remember this time, knowing firsthand that the collective farm is the place where they spent their youth. The history of the creation of collective farms is very interesting, it is worth getting to know it better.
First collective farms
After the First World War, around 1918, social agriculture began to emerge on a new basis in our country. The state initiated the creation of collective farms. The collective farms that appeared then were not ubiquitous, rather, they were single. Historians testify that the more prosperous peasants did not need to join the collective farms, they preferred farming within the family. But the less well-off strata of the rural population accepted the new initiative favorably, because for them, who lived from hand to mouth, the collective farm is a guarantee of a comfortable existence. In those years, joining the agricultural artels was voluntary,not enforced.
Cursing for enlargement
It took just a few years, and the government decided that the process of collectivization should be carried out at an accelerated pace. A course was taken to strengthen joint production. It was decided to reorganize all agricultural activity and give it a new form - a collective farm. This process was not easy, for the people it was more tragic. And the events of the 1920s and 1930s forever overshadowed even the greatest successes of the collective farms. Since the we althy peasants were not enthusiastic about such an innovation, they were driven there by force. Alienation of all property was carried out, ranging from livestock and buildings, and ending with poultry and small implements. Cases have become widespread when peasant families, opposing collectivization, moved to cities, abandoning all their acquired property in the countryside. This was done mainly by the most successful peasants, it was they who were the best professionals in the field of agriculture. Their move will affect the quality of work in the industry later.
Dispossession of kulaks
The saddest page in the history of how collective farms were created in the USSR was the period of mass repression against opponents of the policy of Soviet power. Terrible reprisals against we althy peasants followed, and a persistent aversion to people whose standard of living was at least a little better was promoted in society. They were called "fists". As a rule, such peasants with their whole families, together with the elderly and infants, were evicted to the distant lands of Siberia, having previously selected allproperty. In the new territories, the conditions for life and agriculture were extremely unfavorable, and a large number of the dispossessed simply did not reach the places of exile. At the same time, in order to stop the mass exodus of peasants from the villages, the passport system and what we now call propiska were introduced. Without a corresponding note in the passport, a person could not leave the village without permission. When our grandparents remember what a collective farm is, they do not forget to mention passports and difficulties with moving.
Formation and flourishing
During the Great Patriotic War, collective farms invested a considerable share in the Victory. For a very long time there was an opinion that if it were not for the rural workers, the Soviet Union would not have won the war. Be that as it may, the form of collective farming began to justify itself. Literally a few years later, people began to understand that a modern collective farm is an enterprise with millions of turnovers. Such farms-millionaires began to appear in the early fifties. It was prestigious to work at such an agricultural enterprise, the work of a machine operator and a livestock breeder was held in high esteem. Collective farmers received decent money: the earnings of a milkmaid could exceed the salary of an engineer or a doctor. They were also encouraged by state awards and orders. In the Presidiums of the Congresses of the Communist Party, a significant number of collective farmers necessarily sat. Strong prosperous farms built residential houses for workers, maintained houses of culture, brass bands, organized sightseeing tours around the USSR.
Farming, or Collective Farm in a new way
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the decline of collective agricultural enterprises began. The older generation bitterly recalls that the collective farm is stability that has left the village forever. Yes, they are right in their own way, but in the conditions of the transition to a free market, the collective farms, which focused on activities in a planned economy, were simply unable to survive. A large-scale reform and transformation into farms began. The process is complex and not always effective. Unfortunately, a number of factors, such as insufficient funding, lack of investment, the outflow of young able-bodied people from villages, have a negative impact on the activities of farms. But still, some of them manage to remain successful.
