Any Good Books on the Private Plots/Collective Farms in the Soviet Union?

[Dayton3]

I'm starting a research project on the modern economic lessons we can learn from the private plots on collective farms in the old Soviet Union. Despite google searches and searches on Amazon I'm finding a distressing lack of information regarding the collective farm system and the use of private plots on them. Can anyone recommend any good books regarding the subjects?

 

[swing_voter]

Stalin collectivized the farms and started a famine that killed 10 million people.

Also, the farms were operated with unpaid labor, e.g., slaves.

 

[Dayton3]

Stalin collectivized the farms and started a famine that killed 10 million people.

Also, the farms were) operated with unpaid labor, e.g., slaves.

Noted by me. Known by me.

But beyond that my real interest is the private plots on the collective farms (average of about one hectare each). It was reported for years that these private plots produced a staggering percentage of Soviet foods way out of proportion to the space and resources they took up. I'm fascinated by examples of extremely high productivity so I'm interested in them and what can be learned from them.

 

[beerftw]

I'm starting a research project on the modern economic lessons we can learn from the private plots on collective farms in the old Soviet Union. Despite google searches and searches on Amazon I'm finding a distressing lack of information regarding the collective farm system and the use of private plots on them. Can anyone recommend any good books regarding the subjects?

Collective farms failed, but you are correct they have little information available, as at the time the soviet union was trying to cover up failures, and the western world at the time was a big fan of socialism, all the way up until ww2 ended and the cold war started. It was not uncommon to fire journalists in the 1930's who even mentioned starvation in the soviet union, and some were recieving death threats or other threats over mentioning such, as the media then as well as much of the wealthy class who ran the nation thought socialism was the answer to everything and that they had to silence anyone saying otherwise, of course post ww2 mentality changed and the west grew opposed to socialism due to the cold war of ideologies.

But to be fair fascism was also extremely popular in the west until ww2, and people did everything they could to keep anything bad about it from being public, until nazi germany left an image so bad no one could cover it up.

But on to how it worked, the collective farms suffered as without a profit incentive, farm workers got lazy, and govt centralized planning took a long time(decades) to regulate the system to function well enough to feed the population. The only thing that saved much of the soviet union was personal plots in their yards, as both lenin and stalin allowed them, and free of centralized planning they were effective in keeping much of the population alove.

Also the soviet union outsold wheat compared to even america during the depression, this was due to tarrif wars in the west, however this also shows a centralized farming failure as the soviet union gained top exporter of wheat in the world while at the same time it's people were starving to death, meaning their own govt put export profits as top priority as a means to buy industrial equipment to industrialize farming, in turn causing more issues than had they not tried collectivized farming at all.

 

[Jredbaron96]

I'm starting a research project on the modern economic lessons we can learn from the private plots on collective farms in the old Soviet Union. Despite google searches and searches on Amazon I'm finding a distressing lack of information regarding the collective farm system and the use of private plots on them. Can anyone recommend any good books regarding the subjects?

Sorry to say, but you're going to have a hard time finding English language books on Soviet collective farms; most of them are old and out of print or academic reference style works that aren't cheap or common.

Your best bet is probably to find a book that covers Soviet agriculture in general and see if it covers the private plots.