Types of ownership of the USSR in the field of agriculture, or How does the collective farm differ from the state farm

The socialist system disintegrated. Today, private property is in all spheres . The collective farm and state farm system of agricultural production has gone down in history. More than 15 years have passed since that time. Modern people who did not live in the Soviet Union do not understand the difference between the state farm and the collective farm, what is the difference. We will try to answer this question.

How did the collective farm differ from the state farm? The difference is only in the name?

As for the differences, from a legal point of view the difference is enormous. If we talk modern legal terminology - it's completely different organizational and legal forms. Approximately so, what is the difference between the legal forms of LLC (limited liability company) and MUP (municipal unitary enterprise) today.

State farm (the Soviet economy) is a state enterprise, all means of production of which belonged to it. The chairman was appointed by the local district executive committee. All workers were civil servants, received a certain wage under the contract and were considered employees of the budgetary sphere.

The collective farm (collective farm) is a private enterprise, although it sounds paradoxical in a state in which there was no private property. It was formed as a joint farm of many local peasants. The future collective farmers did not, of course, want to give their property for general use. On the voluntary entry could not be a speech, except those peasants who did not have anything. They, on the contrary, happily went to the collective farms, as this was the only way for them at that time. The director of the kolkhoz was nominally nominated by the general meeting, in fact, like in the state farm, by the district executive committee.

Were there any real differences?

If we ask the worker living at that time, about how the collective farm differs from the state farm, the answer will be unequivocal: absolutely nothing. At first glance, this is difficult to disagree. Both collective farms and state farms sold their agricultural products to only one buyer-the state. Rather, officially the state farm simply gave all the products to him, and they bought the collective farm.

Was it possible not to sell goods to the state? It turned out that no. The state distributed the volume of mandatory purchases and the price of goods. After sales, which sometimes turned into a free change, the kolkhozes had practically nothing left.

State farm - budgetary enterprise

Model the situation. Let us imagine that today the state is again creating both economic and legal forms. The state farm is a state enterprise, all workers are state employees with official salaries. The collective farm is a private association of several producers. What is the difference between a collective farm and a state farm? Legal property. But there are a few nuances:

1. The state itself determines how much it will buy goods. In addition to it, it is forbidden to sell to anyone else.
2. The cost is also determined by the state, that is, it can buy products at a cost below the cost price at a loss to the collective farms.
3. The government is not obliged to pay wages to collective farmers and take care of their well-being, as they are considered owners.

Ask the question: "Who will actually live better in such conditions?" In our opinion, the workers of the state farm. At least, they are limited from the arbitrariness of the state, since they fully work for it. Of course, in the conditions of market ownership and economic pluralism, collective farmers actually turn into modern farmers - those same "kulaks" that were eliminated at the time, creating new socialist enterprises on their economic ruins. Thus, the answer to the question "how does the collective farm differ from the state farm" (or rather, differed earlier) is a formal form of ownership and sources of formation. More details about this we will tell further.

How did the collective farms and state farms

To better understand the difference between the collective farm and the state farm, it is necessary to find out how they were formed.

The first sovkhozes were formed by:

• Large former landed estates. Of course, serfdom was abolished, but large enterprises - the legacy of past times, worked by inertia.
• Due to the former kulak and middle peasant farms.
• Of the large farms that were formed after the dekulakization.

Of course, the process of dekulakization took place before collectivization, but it was then that the first communes were created. Most of them, of course, went bankrupt. It is understandable: in the places of industrious and diligent "kulaks" and middle peasants they recruited workers from the poor who did not want and could not work. But of those who still lived to see the process of collectivization, they formed the first state farms.

In addition to these, there were large farms at the time of collectivization. Some miraculously survived the process of dekulakization, others have already developed after these tragic events in our history. Both those and others came under a new process - collectivization, that is, the actual expropriation of property.

Collective farms were formed at the expense of "unification" of many small private farms into a single large farm. That is, nominally no one has canceled the property. However, in fact, people with their property became a state object. It can be concluded that the almost communist system restored serfdom in a slightly modified version.

"Collective farms" today

Thus, we answered the question of how the collective farm differs from the state farm. Since 1991, all these forms have been eliminated. However, do not think that they are not actually. Many farmers also began to unite in a single farm. And this is the same collective farm. Only, unlike the socialist predecessors, such farms are formed on a voluntary basis. And they are not obliged to sell to the state all products at low prices. But today, on the contrary, another problem is that the state does not interfere in their life, and without real help from it, many enterprises for years can not get out of debt on credit obligations.

We need to find the golden mean, when the state will help the farmers, but not rob them. And then food crises will not threaten us, and the prices in stores for food will be acceptable.