ABSTRACT
Farm collectivisation is conversion of tenurial rules so farmland is transferred from individuals to groups representing the collectivity. In collective and co-operative farms, the group shares incomes and costs, and (normally)1 runs the farm. In State farms, the State runs the farm, pays group members, and keeps remaining farm profits (or losses). In co-operative farming, the group is voluntary.2 Entry to collective and State farming is mandatory, or induced by strong government pressure; exit is usually stopped, restricted or discouraged. Collective and State farms shade into each other. State farms can be made partly collective by devolving management to workers. More often, the State turns collective farms into semi-State farms3 by taking over key decisions. The USSR in the 1930s and 1940s and China in the 1950s and 1960s forced collectives to plant and deliver crop quotas at below-market prices, partly to get more food to the cities and reduce urban unrest. Later, Communist States often sought to reduce rural unrest and the drift to the cities by requiring (and subsidising) employment on State and collective farms. That typified the USSR in 1970-90, and afterwards those CIS states where decollectivisation was largely nominal (pp. 205-7).4
