Was the 1958 Reform Ruinous for Collective Farms?

ISSN 1019-3316, Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 2022, Vol. 92, Suppl. 8, pp. S787–S799. © The Author(s), 2022. This article is an open access publication. Russian Text © The Author(s), 2022, published in Rossiiskaya Istoriya, 2022, No. 4. Was the 1958 Reform Ruinous for Collective Farms? V. N. Tomilin Semenov–Tyan-Shanskii Lipetsk State Pedagogical University, Lipetsk, Russia e-mail: Received August 14, 2022; revised October 19, 2022; accepted October 19, 2022 Abstract—The state of collective farms after the 1958 Reform is considered. Radical reconstruction occurred in the agricultural sector of the Soviet economy. The collective farms turned out to be the owners of machines and agricultural tools, but without the necessary infrastructure for their work and without any experience in the organization of tractor operations. The equipment procurement turned many collective farms into debtors of the State, and in the future their expenses for production needs only grew. The Government tried to solve the problem of economically weak collective farms by combining them with the strong farms and converting them into state farms. In the new economic conditions, collective farm production did not have sufficient resources for development. The first years of the work of collective farms in the new conditions showed the need for a serious adjustment of the State agricultural policy. Keywords: agricultural policy of the Soviet State, Soviet village, agriculture of the Soviet Union, collective farms, machine–tractor service stations, repair and technical stations DOI: 10.1134/S1019331622140118 The most important factor in the preservation and development of national statehood has always been the ability to respond to the challenges of the country’s internal and international security. The inability of the leadership to ensure the political stability of society at the turn of the 1980s–1990s led to the destruction of the Soviet state. Among the unresolved socioeconomic problems, the provision of food for the population occupied a central place. Maintaining food security requires not only the political will of the government and administrative support for the agroindustrial complex, but also significant material, technical, and financial resources. However, the Soviet leadership always did not allocate enough of these, and those allocated were spent inefficiently and poorly stimulated the rural worker. The scientific novelty of this article lies in the rethinking of the 1958 Reform on the reorganization of machine–tractor service stations (MTS), identifying its main contradictions and consequences. The source base of this study consists of both published and archival materials. Among the first, it is necessary to highlight the basic documents that determined the content of the reform: the Law of the USSR of March 31, 1958 “On the further development of the collective farm system and the reorganization of machine and tractor stations,”1 as well as the joint resolution of the CPSU Central Committee and the Council of Ministers of the USSR of April 18, 1958,2 developed on its basis. They contain the formulation 1 Sbornik zakonov SSSR i ukazov Prezidiuma Verkhovnogo Soveta SSSR. 1938–1958 gg. [Collection of laws of the USSR and decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. 1938–1958], Moscow: Gosyurizdat, 1959, pp. 138–140. 2 Izvestiya, Apr. 20 (1958). of the goals and objectives of the Reform, the directions and mechanisms for its implementation, the social component of the project, etc. Of great interest are the notes, speeches, and articles of N.S. Khrushchev, published in a multi-volume edition.3 This source is underestimated by researchers; meanwhile, it reflects the era of the “thaw” and its contradictions. The leader of the country tried to solve agrarian problems by directive methods, criticizing party and state workers in the center and in the localities for mistakes, while glossing over the truth, and assessing the state of affairs. The memoirs of one of the most authoritative party and state leaders of agriculture of the post-war period, I.A. Benediktov,4 were also used in this article. His characteristics given of Khrushchev, the level of his knowledge in the field of agriculture, and the assessment of the results of the reorganization of MTS are very interesting. The development of agrarian historical science at the present stage is impossible without the involvement of previously inaccessible documents of the CPSU Central Committee, stored in the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI). These are the funds of the agricultural departments of the Central Committee for the Union Republics and for the RSFSR. This study is largely based on the materials of these funds, which include analytical notes of party and government officials at all levels, reports from the field, certificates of economic performance, 3 Khrushchev, N.S. (1963) Stroitel’stvo kommunizma v SSSR i raz- vitie sel’skogo khozyaystva, vol. 5: Fevral’ 1961 g.–oktyabr’ 1961 g. [The construction of communism in the USSR and the development of agriculture, Vol. 5: February 1961–October 1961], Moscow: Gospolitizdat. 4 Benediktov, I.A. (1989) “O Staline i Khrushcheve” [About Stalin and Khrushchev], Molodaya gvardiya, no. 4, pp. 12–67. S787 S788 TOMILIN and various kinds of statistical materials. The implementation of the 1958 Reform on the ground gives an idea of the documents of regional archives: the State Archive of Lipetsk Oblast (GA LO) and the State Archive of Recent History of Lipetsk Oblast (GANI LO). They contain information about the situation in the region, district, MTS, RTS, and collective farms. In “agrarian” historiography, the question of the cost of the Reform and its impact on the collective farm economy is still relevant. In the Soviet period, the assertion dominated that MTS had fulfilled its historical mission and the Reform had a positive impact on the development of the collective farm system.5 Modern “agrarian” historians consider its consequences more critically, pointing out that, as a result, many collective farms were on the verge of bankruptcy.6 However, some economists believe that the negative consequences of the reorganization of MTS are greatly exaggerated. In particular, D.B. Epshtein writes that the cost of buying 5 See Arutyunyan, Yu.V. and Vyltsan, M.A. (1958) Istoricheskaya rol’ MTS i ikh reorganizatsiya [The Historical Role of MTS and Their Reorganization], Moscow: Sotsesgiz; Losev, A.V. (1965) Partiinye organizatsii Tsentral’nogo Chernozem’ya v bor’be za razvitie sel’skogo khozyaistva (1945–1964 gg.) [Party Organizations of the Central Chernozem Region in the Struggle for the Development of Agriculture (1945–1964)], Voronezh: Izdatel’stvo Voronezhskoho universiteta; Istoriya SSSR s drevneishikh vremen do nashikh dnei, vol. 11: Sovetskii Soyuz na puti k razvitomu sotsializmu, 1945–1961 gg. [History of the USSR from Ancient Times (...truncated)