The Personal Income of the Collective Farmer

Abstract

If the arrangements for distributing a share of the collective income of the kolkhoz to its members were to promote the kolkhoz economy, they would need to provide powerful incentives to collective work; but if they were to be palatable to the collective farmers, they could not depart too far from peasant traditions and experience. The Soviet authorities believed that proper incentives would be provided for kolkhoz labour if, like factory labour, it were remunerated according to its length, skill and intensity. Peasant traditions, on the other hand, suggested two further criteria, which were at variance both with each other and with the needs of an incentive system. On the one hand, the egalitarian tendencies of the mir, which provided land allotments related to the number of ‘eaters’ in the household, pointed to the need to relate remuneration to the size of the peasant family. On the other hand, if kolkhozy were to be attractive to middle peasants as well as to poor peasants and batraks, it seemed desirable that the past economic success of peasant households should be acknowledged by relating their earnings to the land, implements, animals and money which they brought into the kolkhoz as their share payment.