The Machine-Tractor Stations

Abstract

In the spring of 1929, new forms of organisation of the tractor economy were distinguished more by their potential than by their achievement. A couple of state-owned Machine-Tractor Stations attached to sovkhozy, with about a hundred tractors,¹ and some fifty ‘tractor columns’ of the grain cooperatives with over 1,000 tractors ploughed between them a mere 90,000 hectares or so of the 4 million hectares sown by the kolkhozy in the spring of 1929 (see Table 2(b)). In addition, several thousand tractors belonging to agricultural cooperatives were available for loan to kolkhozy through hiring points. A further 800 tractors were owned by 147 large kolkhozy (see vol. 1, p. 122, n. 60). But the vast majority of the 20,000 tractors serving the kolkhozy in the spring of 1929 were scattered among 57,000 small kolkhozy. Almost all tractors had been removed from individual owners; according to official statistics, none remained in their possession by October 1, 1929 (see Table 1).