Village councils

A collective farm ("kolhoz") in the USSR was a type of agricultural enterprise designed for collective farming. Before the revolution, there were agricultural artels in the Russian Empire. In the early years of Soviet power, the first collective farms appeared — partnerships for joint cultivation of land (TOZ), agricultural cartels and communes.

Upon joining the collective farm, collective farmers transferred their means of production (livestock, agricultural machinery, inventory, seeds, buildings, etc.) to the collective farm. Land plots were withdrawn from sole use, merged and transferred to collective farms for indefinite gratuitous use, remaining in state ownership. The family’s personal property remained an apartment building with a small (on average 0.5 ha) plot of land, one cow, up to a dozen small animals and a bird could remain. Work on collective farms was estimated not in money, but in workdays — the cost of working time. The workdays were summed up and the share that was due to the collective farmer from the harvest was formed from them. By 1966, workday accounting and in-kind payments were universally replaced by monetary forms.

After Stalin’s death, many collective farms were transformed into state farms by consolidation. With the collapse of the USSR, both collective farms and state farms were reorganized as a result of privatization into other forms of ownership. Nevertheless, the word "collective farm" has remained in the lexicon and from time to time is used to refer to any agricultural producers — legal entities, regardless of their organizational and legal form.

In everyday speech, the word "collective farm" ("kolhoz") is used as a synonym for chaos, disorganization and disorder, as well as to refer to rural areas in general, and the adjective "collective farm" means a sloppy, low-quality, unaesthetic product or commodity.

It was customary to call an agricultural enterprise in the USSR a Soviet farm or simply a state farm. Unlike collective farms, which were presented as voluntary cooperative associations of peasants, state farms were state enterprises. State farm workers received fixed wages when, as collective farmers, they worked for workdays until the mid-1960s.

The first state farms (originally called "people's estates", "Soviet savings", "Soviet estates", since 1919 — state farms) were formed in the RSFSR in November — December 1917 on the basis of part of the landowner estates confiscated by Decree on land. In 1918−1924, the so-called "attached state farms" also operated — subsidiary farms of any institutions and enterprises under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the RSFSR. The Soviet government highly appreciated the importance of state farms for the economy. In the late 1920s grain farms and livestock farms were established, followed by animal husbandry, seed, cotton, flax, hemp, mulberry, vegetable, poultry farms and stud farms.

During the Great Patriotic War, state farms lost a significant part of the equipment mobilized for the needs of the front (or lost in the occupied areas). In the post-war period, state farms not only recovered, but also strengthened their base. At the same time, the unification of weak farms was underway. During the development of virgin lands, many grain farms were established in Siberia, the Volga region, the Urals and Kazakhstan.

In 1990, there were more than 23.5 thousand state farms in the USSR. Historians and economists evaluate their work differently, seeing both positive and negative sides in it (some state farms were millionaires, others were completely dependent on the state). In the 1990s, due to the transition to a market economy, during privatization, the vast majority of state farms were transformed into open joint-stock companies.