ABSTRACT
The widespread use of contract brigades and normless teams is analogous to group piecework in a factory. The campaign for the contract brigade and the normless team dates from the March 1983 Politburo decision and the March 1983 Central Committee conference in Belgorod. Belgorod was chosen as the site for the conference because it already had a long and successful experience with contract brigades. The introduction of contract brigades and normless teams is an attempt to obtain a major increase in efficiency by means of a partial change within a complex interrelated economic mechanism. The ultimate aim of the introduction of contract brigades and normless teams is to overcome the shortages of food products that plague the USSR. Since the apathetic attitude of the labor force is a notorious cause of the difficulties of Soviet agriculture, this potentially radical innovation in labor organization and incentives might lead to a significant improvement in the performance of Soviet agriculture.
