Zveno (Soviet Collective Farming) - After World War 2

After World War 2

Many kolkhozy had to be reconstructed after the War. In the later 1940s zvenya independent of brigades began to be set up in some areas. Kursk oblast was at the forefront of this movement. In 1947, 96% of the grain area in the province (excluding maize) was assigned to such zvenya. The zvenya were responsible for the whole work-cycle, including threshing and delivery to the State grain-collecting centre. These developments ultimately proved too much for the regime to tolerate. In February 1950 Pravda published a blanket condemnation of general-purpose zvenya. The main reason given was that the small-scale plots of the `independent' zvenya inhibited the use of machinery. (For the same reason row- and industrial-crop zvenya were acceptable in as far as mechanization was not yet sufficiently developed in these areas.) But a still more important reason would seem to have been that zvenya independent of brigades thus fell outside the State's imposed structure for the economic exploitation of the peasantry. Kursk oblast was seriously behindhand in its delivery obligations as a result of the system it had practised.