On the motivation of collective farmers in the last years of Stalinism (1946—1956)
- Pages
- 72-82
Abstract
Having analyzed the unpublished archival materials (minutes of general collective farm meetings, meetings of the collective farm board, meetings of members of the Communist Party), the article examines the reasons for the lack of motivation and low productivity of peasant labor in the collective farms. The study of rural everyday life is carried out within the framework of a micro-historical approach on the example of the collective farm "Bolshevik" of the Pravdinsky district of the Kaliningrad region in 1946—1956. The issues of management, accounting and promotion of collective farm labor, the relationship between the board, foremen and ordinary collective farmers, the problem of compliance with labor regulations and discipline, the reasons and ways of avoiding farmers from working in agricultural artel are in the focus of the research. The collective farm system is concluded to be inefficient as it forced the peasants to resort to such survival strategies, which provided for the search for additional earnings and obtaining means of subsistence outside the collective farm.