ABSTRACT
While farms in the North Atlantic countries were experiencing government support on an unprecedented scale in the years after 1930, a different sort of state intervention was being pioneered in other lands. The purpose was the creation of socialist societies. Collectivization of farms was a major innovation of the twentieth century, and at its peak in the 1970s it was applied in a large part of eastern Europe and in the socialist countries of Asia. A number of developing country governments in Africa and Latin America also set up cooperative or collective rural institutions in the post1950 period, but none endured except in Cuba. From the 1980s onward, the trend was reversed and collective institutions were dismantled in country after country. Our discussion is limited to Russia and China. In these two countries collectivization was most thoroughly applied. We write mainly about China, but first briefly introduce the Russian experience.
