The Sovkhozy

Abstract

In July 1928, after much controversy, the plenum of the party central committee decided that large, mechanised sovkhozy must form a major element in the transformation of agriculture. Specialised grain sovkhozy, managed by the grain trust Zernotrest, were given top priority.¹ In 1930, spring sowing by the grain sovkhozy was reasonably successful. After the harvest they provided a useful 475,000 tons to the state. The xvi party congress, which convened in June–July 1930, envisaged a major expansion of the sovkhoz programme. In his report to the congress, Stalin proclaimed that, by 1931, all the sovkhozy taken together would produce over 7 million tons of grain. The new sovkhozy alone would provide the state with 200 million puds (3.3 million tons). By the end of the first five-year plan (then assumed to be 1932/33) the sovkhoz area sown to grain would be as much as 20–25 million hectares, ‘more than in the whole of Canada’.³ This was a very substantial figure: the total area sown to grain in the USSR in 1930 was some 95 million hectares.