ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors discuss the stage for their analysis of the present situation in Soviet agriculture. A modern collective farm should thus be seen more as an integral part of the overall Soviet apparatus than as an independently run collective organisation. The status of the zveno is probably one of the most interesting issues in Soviet agriculture at the beginning of the 1980s. During the 1970s little was heard about it, but there has been an increasing flow of articles regarding the zveno and in the ‘Food Programme’ it is explicitly stated that it should be widely introduced. The situation of the individual household in the kolkhoz is probably the most peculiar feature of all in Soviet agriculture, given the dichotomy of work on the private plot versus work on the communal fields.
