Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2014 number

The author addresses this issue in order to better understand the nature of the Soviet agrarian system, to reveal its advantages and disadvantages, which is crucial for studying the contemporary problems of development of agriculture in Russia. In the middle of the XX century kolkhozes were the basic organizational form of the Soviet agriculture. The first post-Stalin decade became the time of noticeable changes due to the measures aimed at the agrarian development acceleration. According to the Soviet political leaders who had taken charge of the country after Stalin’s death, one of the most important factors which rendered the development of agriculture was the lack of collective farmers’ motivation to work in the fields and on the farms determined by repressive retaliatory politics, bondage and low farms’ profitability. Having solved the problem of making the farmers work in kolkhozes more efficient without any repressions, the leader of the Soviet state N.S. Khrushchev tried to rely on the mutually antithetic sources of labour energy - both the material incentive and patriotic enthusiasm. The concrete historical data used in the article was taken from the archival records and library funds of Western Siberia. It allows concluding that neither material incentive nor patriotic enthusiasm could improve standards of the kolkhoz economy. Owing to the agrarian “de-Stalinization” the most important functions of the kolkhoz system - peasants’ labour mobilization for the sake of the common good along with the observance of the principle of social equity in distribution of incomes - were no longer carried out to the full. Work discipline started to decline, all symptoms of collective farm demobilization became obvious. Under these circumstances the leaders sent from the urban centers to rural areas in order to inspire the peasants to work more efficiently did not entirely perform their mission. Regional authorities often complained about inefficient expenditure of wages funds by the kolkhoz administrations.