Agricultural reforms in Russia from 1856 to the present: successes and failures in the international comparative perspective

In 1958, Khrushchev made the collective farms buy the old broken machinery from the MTS at the prices of new equipment for he история needed money for his space program. In 1959, due to the lack of liquid money reserves, the collective farms cut the orders of new machinery, which Khrushchev declared a proof of their having enough machinery and ordered to reduce the production of agricultural machinery (Merl, 2002a). The MTS liquidation could have ended the collective farms control by “two masters” and provided them with the machinery. However, the state agencies did not stop to interfere with the production decisions (Miller, 1970: 90-93, 165, 321-323). Although (unlike under Stalin) most chairmen of collective farms and directors of state farms were highly qualified agricultural specialists, they still (unlike heads of industrial enterprises) (Merl, 2017a) had to follow all orders “from above”. The final attempt to make the heads of the state and collective farms masters of their enterprises was made at the end of Khrushchev's rule: in Kazakhstan, as an experiment, the director of the state farm Khudenko was given the full control of the farm's machinery and workforce to organize production and remuneration. The experiment was successful but was stopped as questioning the need of the state apparatus. Khudenko was arrested for corruption and died in prison (Merl, 2019; RGAE: f. 7486, o.1).

By the MTS liquidation and attempts to build communism Khrushchev caused the out-migration of those needed for implementing a real reform based on technological innovations. In 1958, many tractor operators left the countryside for they feared to be returned to the miserable status of the collective farm member. Then those who dreamt of returning to private farming left. Thus, by the ideas of the communist agriculture Khrushchev destroyed the “peasant” consciousness in the Soviet countryside. Finally, many qualified heads of the collective farms resigned, who wanted no longer to fulfill the crazy orders “from above” (Merl, 2002a: 212-225). Under Khrushchev, the local party organizations started to successfully get rid of their unpopular responsibility for weak collective farms. After turning such collective farms into large state farms, as if a “higher” form of property, they could not be blamed for their economic failures. The new state farms rarely managed to be economically successful, but the direct control of the ministry made the state cover their losses (Wadekin, 1969; RGAE: f. 7486, o.1).

After Brezhnev became the General Secretary of the Party, there were radical changes in investments. The 1965 Plenum of the Central Committee gave priority to the investments in agriculture. Its share in total investment rose from 11 to 12 percent under Stalin, to 14 percent under Khrushchev, and to about 20 percent in the 1970s (Narodnoe..., 1987: 318). Under the outmigration caused by Khrushchev, just those better qualified and more competitive workers left agriculture, who were urgently needed for mechanization and automatization of the production processes, which partly determined the outcomes of Brezhnev's policy of capital investment. In general, the remaining rural workforce lacked the necessary qualification and knowledge, the majority was only capable of manual labor (Wadekin, 1976: 212-215). Brezhnev's failure is even more evident in the perspective of the agricultural labor productivity. While mechanization in the capitalist countries led to the fast growth of productivity, it hardly had any effect in the Soviet Union (Wadekin, 1976: 212). Despite the capital input, the labor input in agriculture did not decrease. Although the number of those employed in agriculture decreased by 35 percent from 1959 to 1970 (from 33.2 to 21.8 million people), the number of labor days was reduced just by 2 percent (Wadekin, 1976: 202-203). Thus, the only effect was the reduction of the rural underemployment to zero.

Despite the large-scale agricultural structure, the share of the employed in the primary sector (agriculture and forest) reduced from 1950 to 1980 only from 48 to 20 percent, while in West Germany with its small-scale agriculture the corresponding numbers were 16 percent in 1950 and 5 percent in 1980. The Soviet numbers were extremely high in the international perspective. However, ever-growing numbers of students and workers were sent for the “harvest help” to the countryside. The share of this additional labor in the total labor input in agriculture increased from 0.6 percent in 1960 to 3 percent in 1974, and these numbers do not include soldiers and transport operators sent every year from the army to the state harvest campaigns (Wadekin, 1976: 200-201).

Since the mid-1950s, the main goal was to increase efficiency and to reduce the agricultural production costs. On January 3, 1968, the minister of agriculture Matskevits informed the Politburo to what extent this aim was not achieved. Together with the Soyuzselkhoztech- nik, he proposed a plan of the whole mechanization of the agricultural production for Kosygin and Brezhnev. Matskevits considered the efforts of his ministry for twelve years to compare Western and Soviet agricultural technologies and to put new machinery constructions into mass production, and identified the deficiencies of inputs produced in the Soviet Union as compared to the technologies of the leading capitalist countries. He complained that the final construction proposals of the urgently needed machinery were never put into mass production due to the lack of raw materials or other priorities of the Gosplan. Moreover, it was not possible to stop the production of outdated machinery for the industry had to “fulfill the plan”. The increasing use of harvesting combines often affected the yields negatively for the misconstruction of combines led to significant crop losses in the fields. Industry was not interested in the changes required by the Ministry of Agriculture (RGAE: f. 7486, o.1).

Brezhnev's investments determined the steadily increasing costs of the agricultural production, while its results were extremely poor regarding the increasing efficiency. Tikhonov calculated that the huge investment in irrigation annually increased the yields just by 1 percent. The comparison with the European Union's (EU) agricultur- mctopma al policy ensuring the growth of agriculture's efficiency reveals the causes of such failures. Unlike the Soviet Union, in which per unit costs of agricultural production increased significantly in the 1960s and 1970s, the EU kept the production costs stable therefore, to make profit, the producers had no alternative than to increase productivity and reduce per unit costs. The EU producers achieved this goal successfully and replaced the expensive labor by capital input. Large subsidies of the EU served to increase not only productivity but also agricultural production. In the Soviet Union, the subsidies primarily kept the consumer prices at the fixed level below the costs of production, which required increasingly more money for there were no limits for the production costs. The state guarantee of the minimum wages for agricultural workers also did not stimulate the growth of efficiency. Most large-scale enterprises worked with losses but received state credits, which were written off from time to time. As the state decided on all inputs, enterprises had no chance to choose anything that would have the best effect for their efficiency. Thus, the state command in agriculture prevented any effective pressure to reduce production costs.

Although the increase of the Soviet agricultural producer prices from 1953 to 1955 aimed only at paying some money to the previously unpaid workforce of the collective farms, state officials were concerned about the increase in costs and looked for compensations. As the possibilities to reduce the net payment for agricultural products were limited, they decided to set higher prices for the “improved” inputs. The industry replaced the previous tractors and machinery by new models that were in general much more expensive but often of the same bad quality as the old models, which increased only the costs of production but not the efficiency (Jaehne, 1981: 59-61). For instance, from 1965 and 1975, the prices of tractors increased by 25 percent, of agricultural machinery and other inputs -- by 50 percent. By the higher prices of new models, the industry compensated its losses from producing the price-fix old models and followed the myth of no inflation in the Soviet Union. Thus, the state command was responsible for the steady increase in input prices and its consequences for the agricultural production. The price policy for inputs followed some strange guidelines and did not reflect the real production costs. For example, unlike the western countries, the prices of wheeled tractors were higher than the prices of caterpillar tractors (Schinke, 1967: 18-20, 84-85; RGAE: f. 7486, o.1). The high share of caterpillar tractors contributed to the losses of the collective and state farms for these tractors could not make up for the general lack of transport and deprived the enterprises of the possibility to use tractors throughout the year.

The poor quality of the agricultural machinery produced in the Soviet Union explains the failure of mechanization. The agricultural enterprises had to buy what the industrial enterprises produced and what the state apparatus ordered. Many tractors did not manage to work until the end of the producer's guarantee (RGAE: f. 7486, o.i). For special agricultural activities such as harvesting of potatoes or fodder production hardly any machinery was produced in the Soviet Union -- it was imported from the GDR and other block members (Schinke, 1967: 66-68; RGAE: f. 7486, o.i). No machinery was provided for the production needs of small plots (RGANI: f. 5, o. 88 (1982). Heavy tractors damaged the soil; agricultural equipment often could not be used to the chronic shortage of spare parts. Soviet machinery not only broke down more often than the “capitalist” ones, but also needed days if not weeks to be repaired during peak times of sowing and harvesting. Spare parts including tires were always in short supply; quite often there was no fuel to use tractors; fertilizers managed to get only to the railway stations and, being unpacked, were spoilt in the open air (GAYO: f. 272, o. 249).

The state-run campaigns additionally reduced the agricultural production efficiency. After Stalin started such campaigns in 1928, they never stopped. The seasonal campaigns were widely covered by the mass media: preparations of spring sowing and repairs of agricultural machinery, preparations of harvesting and state procurement, after the World War II, there were also campaigns to provide transport, fuel, spare parts and people as the “harvest help”; preparations to feed the cattle over the winter and other activities within the “socialist competition”, after which thousands of the best workers were awarded with prizes and their names appeared in the media. The prizes were given for the production results hardly changing under the Soviet rule and quite poor compared to the western agriculture. Crop and milk yields in the Soviet “industrialized” agriculture were at the level typical for the pre-industrialized countries (about 2000 kg of milk per cow in the 1970s, while in the West -- 4000-5000 kg). The “socialist competition” implied that the increase in production would be determined mainly by the labor input, which contradicted the very idea of the automatic production and complex mechanization.

The campaigns revealed the scale of mistrust to both local administrations and heads of the large-scale agricultural enterprises considering their independent activities. Moreover, the campaigns showed weaknesses of the command economy: the catastrophic scarcity of necessary inputs in agriculture and dysfunctions of the official system of agricultural supplies. Without the campaigns, the industry would have provided even less inputs and would not have taken into account the changing requirements of the agricultural year.

One of the main challenges was the lack of the qualified personnel in the countryside: people kept leaving it, which meant the waste of money for training together with the waste of money for producing machinery of poor quality. The MTS problems of personnel outflow and insufficient salaries were described already in 1938

(Merl, 2016). Despite never-ending complaints, these problems were история never solved in the Soviet period (RGAE: f. 7486, o.i). Most people trained and sent to the agricultural enterprises soon quit their jobs. From those trained from 1950 to 1965 only 25 percent were still engaged in agriculture in 1967 (Schinke, 1967: 26-28). The satisfaction with jobs in agriculture was very low. Starting from Stalin, the regime never stopped to make the specialist a scapegoat for all deficiencies of the state-run agriculture. For a long time, salaries of specialists in the countryside were extremely low and living conditions were unbearable. Tractor and combine operators suffered from the lack of work during long winters: they made good money in the agricultural season, but in the rest of the year their incomes were too low. As trained workers they could easily find better jobs in the cities (Merl, 1990b; 2016). Brezhnev's measures to improve their living did not change the situation much, and the specialists' outflow was still high. As a result, the number of tractor and combine operators in agriculture increased less than the number of tractors and combines (Jaehne, 1981).

There is no reliable data on the complex mechanization that started only in the 1970s. The official statistics considered only large-scale enterprises, although a large share of livestock, vegetables and potatoes were produced by personal subsidiary plots. The statistical data showed successes: the complex mechanization of the cattle production in the large-scale enterprises increased from 9 percent in 1970 to 42 percent in 1980 and 68 in 1990. Mechanization of harvesting grain, sugar beet and flax finally reached 90 percent, while of potatoes -- just 36 (Selskoe..., 1988: 413; 1995: 41]. Mechanization of the fodder harvesting was so low that no data were provided (Schinke, 1967: 66-68). However, the available data does not describe the quality and scale of mechanization. It was quite typical that the registered mechanized equipment was not used for a long time due to repairs and lack of spare parts (Schinke, 1967: 35-37). Moreover, the “complex” mechanization in general affected only a part of production due to many limitations such as transport, qualified workforce, quality of the needed inputs, missed optimal timing, great losses caused by the harvest machinery. Anyway, even with the part of work being mechanized, a lot of manual labor was still necessary, which explains a very slow economic progress from 1975 to 1985. While in the industry 51 percent of workers used machinery or automatic processes in 1985, only 24 to 29 percent workers did the same at the collective and state farms (11 percent in 1965 and 20 percent in 1979). In agriculture, even in 1985 still 69 to 73 percent of workers were engaged in manual labor, sometimes related to machinery (Jaehne, 1981: 57-58; Narodnoe..., 1987: 109]. The data proves to what extent the statistical successes of the complex mechanization were just new “Potemkin's villages”.

Making the producer a “master” of his fields again: from ±987 to the present

After the obvious failure of Brezhnev's approach to the increase of efficiency and yields of the agricultural production by huge investments in machinery and social sphere, under the perestroika, the need to finally solve agricultural problems by the radical policy changes was admitted. The idea was to return more responsibility to the agricultural producer so that he would decide on how to fulfil the state production requirements. In the Stavropol Region, Gorbachev promoted a “new” form of labor organization -- the contract team or brigade that takes on the production commitments and gets the necessary means of production to organize the production on its own responsibility. Stalin already in 1935 successfully introduced a similar form for producing industrial crops such as sugar beet: the zveno was a small group of mainly women-workers responsible for all steps of production (Merl, 1990b: 207-233).

In 1987, the campaign propagating the contract labor organization nationwide (GAYO: f. 272, o. 269, d. 1) started the new radical changes in the system of agricultural labor. At the beginning, the campaign brought little changes for local administrations, agro-industrial complexes (APK) and most heads of agricultural enterprises feared to lose control of the workforce and means of production. Their resistance became a driving force of the more radical reform.

When in 1988 meat and dairy products disappeared from the state shops, the need for the political action became evident and the ideas of the “radical reformers” got support. There was also some pressure “from below”: some managers really wanted to become masters of production. In 1989, first land-leasing and creating “fermer” farms were promoted (GAYO: f. 272, o. 269, d. 247, 255). The US-term for peasants (fermers) was chosen to clearly separate from the state-command agriculture. The reformers were convinced that agriculture could not feed the Soviet people because collectivization had turned peasants into wage-workers without peasant consciousness or understanding of all production processes. The reformers believed that “free labor” would be superior to “wage labor” as incapable to ensure the necessary connection to the land. Thus, only making the agricultural producers masters of the land was believed to overcome the food crisis.

The APK and the vast majority of the state-farm directors and collective-farm chairmen (the new “land-owners”) continued to sabotage the reform by providing the fermers with the land not suitable for production. In the early 1990s, the reformers believed that the large-scale enterprises had to be divided and their land distributed among the agricultural workers. Some republics adopted laws on private farming. When Eltsin came to power, he issued a decree on the reorganization of farms and bankruptcy for those working without profit.

The idea to provide every worker of the state and collective farms with about 4 hectares of land under privatization was not thought-out well but was supported by many Western advisors (Sikor, 2017).

In 1992, the strong movement to become fermers started, but the average size of the land they got was only 40 hectares. There were little chances to get more arable land in the 1990s, for the State Duma did not adopt the article of the Constitution on the private land. 40 hectares were too small to start a viable peasant farm taking into account the farming technology in the early 1990s. Small private farming would have been a feasible concept only after Stalin's death, when the countryside was still extremely poor.] Agricultural machinery and scientific knowledge proved that only the capital-intensive farms could withstand the international competition. In the former GDR with the more intensive production, the average size of new private family farms was 130 hectares (Merl, 2017c). According to the more extensive production in most parts of Russia, the required average size of the private farm had to be from 500 to 1000 hectares (except for the farms producing special crops or organic production). Such a private farm required special qualifications and readiness to take risks. Even in East Germany, only a few households that got their land back wanted to start private farming. Thus, the majority of the large-scale enterprises survived after fundamental changes in their formal status and adapted to the new conditions (Merl, 2017c).

Most contemporary researchers believe that Russia did not produce enough food for its population. To what extent this was a misconception became clear after the Gaidar reform in 1992. The end of the command economy and state consumer prices strongly affected the consumer market. When the desired industrial consumer goods suddenly became available, many people preferred to buy cars, furniture, electronic devices and computers instead of meat, which determined a decline in the food demand, especially expensive meat products. Thus, it became evident that until 1991 there was an artificial overconsumption of meat products.

The 1990s were not a good time for the reasonable fundamental reform. The decline of the Russian agriculture worsened by the loss of access to the urban markets due to the food imports sent to Russia as a “hunger help” and general problems of the transition from the command economy to the market (legacy of collectivization). The Russian food sector could not compete with the western imports, which proved that the key problem of the Soviet agriculture was not so much the amount of agricultural production as underinvestment in the agricultural sector: outdated and broken technical equipment in processing, lack of adequate transport, storage, refrigerating and packing facilities were the features of the Soviet rule. In the today perspective, it is obvious that the Soviet Union suffered from the agricultural overproduction.

The reformers' plan that the high demand and attractive prices would create conditions for the agricultural modernization did not correspond to reality. Moreover, the producers suffered from the loss of access to the domestic market. Many urban markets were full of the western food-help to “prevent famine”. In 1992-1993, in most regions the mafia structures emerged and earned money by offering “protection” (krysha) to those producing, transporting and selling products. Most fermers were totally excluded from the domestic market and could sell their products only at the roads next to their villages (Pallot, Nefedova, 2007). The large-scale enterprises temporarily used the barter changes of their products for machinery and other agricultural inputs.

The basic idea of the reformers was right: it was necessary to put an end to the state command in agriculture. The contract teams were the first step on the path to the revival of peasant consciousness. The agricultural producers -- either fermers promoted in the early 1990s or large-scale enterprises -- became the “masters” of all production decisions at their own risk. Not this conception but the wrong assessment of the situation at the Russian food market was the reason of the decade-long agricultural decline in the 1990s. Only in the 2000s, the new structure of agriculture developed fully to ensure in the next decade the growth of the agricultural productivity (plant and livestock production yields) higher than the Soviet level. This result was also achieved by the new state approach to agriculture in 2000, which was based on the state support and food security policy. Thus, after nearly a century, Russia finally returned to grain exports at the world market (Wegren, Nikulin, Trotsuk, 2018; Merl, 2019).

Under the general food crisis, it was reasonable to allow to use land primarily for one's food supplies. Besides few household producers who wanted to develop their farming, the majority became temporary agrarian producers of food for consumption and local markets, although their labor productivity and yields were much below the average (Pallot, Nefedova, 2007) for there were many elderly people in the remote rural areas with low pensions. However, on the 1990s, the production share of these households (except for grain and industrial crops) was significant: in 2000, they produced 58 percent of the cattle and poultry, 51 percent of milk, 81 percent of potatoes and 71 percent of vegetables (Rossissky..., 2017: 363). After 2005, their share began to decrease especially in meat production, but in 2016, with 44 percent of milk production, 78 percent of potatoes and 67 percent of vegetables they still contributed significantly to the people's food supply (Rossissky., 2017; Wegren, Nikulin, Trotsuk, 2018). Their share of production increasingly declined in the following years, and in about two or three decades they would have looked like German allotment gardens (Schrebergдrten) that played an important role under the food crises after the World War II. Today they mostly serve for leisure, growing flowers and some fruits and vegetables for the market prices for food are reasonable. Such a development is very likely for Russia, when new generations will no longer enjoy hard work история at the household plots.

Putin's stabilization is based on the revival of the domestic demand. In the 2000s, urban incomes increased significantly and, thus, the demand for food, while the share of imports decreased (Wegren, Nikulin, Trotsuk, 2018). The new state subsidies played an important role by making agriculture attractive for capital investors even not from the agricultural sector.

Today's success is based on the fundamental reorganization of agriculture by privatization in the early 1990s -- enterprises and farms decide on inputs on their own and use the internationally available highly productive inputs (machinery and cattle breeds, fertilizers and pesticides) (Merl, 2019). This led to the remarkable increase in yields surpassing any numbers of the Soviet command agriculture and finally catching up in productivity with the leading western countries. The share of agriculture and forest industry in the Russian employment decreased from 13.9 percent in 2000 to 7.5 percent in 2016 (Rossiisky..., 2017: 114). However, this share is four times larger than in Germany. The growth of yields is typical for agroholdings -- successfully reorganized state and collective farms -- and for some family farms -- the result of the fermer movement. The average yields shown in the statistical data often do not present the real increase for they show only for total production including the household sector. Only the data on milk per cow for corporate enterprises is available: in 2016, they produced 5370 kg of milk per cow (in 1985 -- 2334 kg, in 1990 -- 2731 kg), while the average yield for all producers in 2016 was only 4218 kg per cow. As the agroholdings provide about 50 percent of production, the other 50 percent is provided mainly by the household sector with about 3000 kg per cow (slightly above the Soviet level) (Merl, 2019: 52).

However, large-scale enterprises and households providing each a half of the milk production is a somewhat misguiding picture. Market production comes primarily from corporate enterprises and family farms with more than 100 hectares of land. Today only these producers modernize their production, which extremely increases their yields. The rest of the producers -- households, small family farms and some of the still existing state and collective farms -- hardly take part in the market production, although they benefitted from using better seeds, leasing machinery, etc. Thus, today the agricultural sector is divided: some producers modernize their production and some do not; only the former will stay crucial for the future.

Since the early 2000s, there is a new trend: many large enterprises that emerged from the collective and state farms went bankrupt and/or were bought up by investors to create vertical holdings (Leonard 2011: 111-112). While most of the registered corporate enterprises in 2000 were still the remains of former collective and state farms, in 2010, holdings got the largest share of land: for instance, in the south some of them reached hundreds of thousands of hectares. The whole-sale and retail food networks looking for large quantities of production of the standard high quality decided to create their own agricultural holdings. The former collective and state farm survived mainly on the less fertile soils in remote areas. Corporate enterprises still keep or increase their share in meat production (cattle and poultry, from 40 to 76 percent from 2000 to 2016) and milk production (from 45 to 49 percent). In grain and industrial crops production, their share is very high (though they slightly lose to private farms), but they produce only 14 percent of potatoes and 18 percent of vegetables (Rossiisky..., 2017: 363).

More than 250,000 families joined the fermer movement from 1992 to 1995, and quite many did it voluntarily. Only a small group of workers was very dissatisfied with the production processes under the state command and was ready to take the risk of becoming the new masters of the agricultural production. Many fermers were representatives of the former management of the agricultural farms or left the industry to enjoy the new freedom without the state command. In general, the situation was similar to the former GDR (Merl, 2017c). According to Pallot and Nefedova (2006), some fermers came from the former contract teams and brigades, some were forced to become fer- mers after their agricultural enterprises fell apart and stopped production. Many fermers in the early 1990s used their networks successfully to organize tractor and farm implements supplies. However, many failed in the end primarily due to the crisis of the 1990s.

It is still difficult to assess successes and failures of private farming on the basis of the statistical data for it includes many “dead souls”. The Russian peasant association ACCOR tries to prove the importance of private farms by inflating the numbers, but does not present the most important figures such as the average plant and livestock production yields at peasant farms. While in 1995 279,200 peasant farms were registered, their number felt only to 257.400 in 2006 and to 174,800 on July 1, 2016. Only a part of the registered fermers is engaged in production, some (20 percent in 2016) do not even have arable land. According to the official data, their average size in hectares was 43 in 1995, 75 -- in 2006, and 248 -- in 2016 (Rossiisky.., 2001: 404; 2006: 444; 2017: 378, 380). It is likely that more than a half of the official figure (especially farms with less than 20 hectares) produce only to satisfy their own needs.

To assess the prospects of peasant farms, it is necessary to consider their investments in the modernization of their economy and if the number of such farms grows. After 2000, peasant farms with 200 and more hectares had about 2/3 of the peasant-farm sector land. There were 13,000 farms in this group at the end of 2000, 18,100 -- at the end of 2005, and 35,600 -- in July 2016. Thus, an increasing part of the registered peasant farms develop successfully. To identify the real number of the modernizing peasant farms we have to consider also those with 20 to 200 hectares -- from 50,000 to 100,000 farms. There история is also regional differentiation: the largest peasant farms can be found in the Volga Region and West Siberia (already in 2004 the average size was 130 to 160 hectares), the smallest farms are more common on the more fertile soils of the Northern Caucasus (in 2004 -- about 30 hectares) (Pallot, Nefedova, 2007: 170-174).

The share of private farmers is still insignificant in meat production (it increased from 2 to 3 percent from 2000 to 2016). This sector became the most important in grain production and increased its share from 8 to 28 percent, while in milk production -- from 2 to 7 percent, in the industrial crops production -- from 29 to 31 in sun flower seeds, from 10 to 12 -- in sugar beets, in vegetables -- from 10 to nearly 15 percent, in potatoes -- from 5.8 to 8.5 (Rossiisky..., 2017: 363).

To what extent did the fermers share the typical “peasant values” of giving up quick profits to ensure sustainable agricultural production, soil and environment protection? The available data does not provide answers to this question, but it is likely that private farms are more “peasant” in this sense than the majority of agroholdings. I doubt that agroholdings really care about sustainable agriculture; many capital owners are interested in agriculture just to make money. Agroholdings focus on that part of the production, in which mechanization and demand promise the biggest effect (and profits), and rarely think about sustainability. Therefore, it will be a priority for the future Russian agricultural sector not to allow agroholdings but to help peasant (family) farms to replace the household sector, which will also reduce the risks of the mono-- (large-scale) structure of agriculture. To help the family farms to develop and strengthen, the state support (like from 1906 to 1928) is desirable. It is also necessary to support large farms that need well trained personnel and consulting agencies for marketing and investment. State investments in the local infrastructure (roads, services and living conditions) will play a decisive role. Taking into account the need in viable farms using the new agricultural technologies, the number of peasant farm for replacing the household sector can be quite small (Merl, 2017c).

Conclusion

The reform period after the emancipation successfully started to overcome both main obstacles on the way to the agricultural modernization to catch up with the developed countries: underemployment of the rural workforce and lack of demand for the high-value agricultural production. As both depended on the external impulses, industrialization and state support were indispensible. The expert assessments and proposals for the final version of the first five-year plan were convinced of the viability of the peasant agriculture in the 1930s. However, the forced collectivization put an end to reforms by destroying the agricultural productive forces and, thus, aggravating the persistent rural underemployment. Under the state command, the socialist agriculture did not allow the heads of the large-scale agricultural enterprises (unlike the directors of industrial enterprises) to master their production, and, thus, failed to keep up with the western agriculture. After Stalin's death, the plan to increase efficiency (yields and agricultural labor productivity) by the complex mechanization failed. Until the very end of the Soviet period, the majority of agricultural workers used manual labor. Several popular myths about the Soviet agriculture can be debunk: that there was no chance to develop family farms in the late 1920s; that mechanization in the 1930s was necessary or contributed to modernization of agriculture; and that the “socialist industrial” agriculture managed the complex mechanization.

Starting from the reform of 1987, an important part of the Russian agriculture is still under modernization and increases yields to finally catch up with the western agriculture. The new approach partly followed the successful development of peasant farms until 1928. The end of the state command was the only way for the successful reform in 1987. The agricultural depression of the 1990s was the legacy of collectivization and the state command system, which hindered modernization of agriculture: machinery industry, transport, processing, storage and trading -- all were in very poor condition. Under the general economic stabilization and the effective market-oriented state support for agriculture, the reform showed positive results such as increasing efficiency and changing agricultural structure. Thus, the household sector increasingly loses positions in production; with a half share of the agricultural production the corporate/holding sector works increasingly effectively. However, the further growth of the latter is risky for a part of its capital is invested with speculative purposes, and huge enterprises of hundreds of thousands of hectares bear the high risk of bankruptcy and idle arable land.

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20. Merl S. (1985b) Die Anfдnge der Kollektivierung in der Sowjetunion. Der Ьbergang zur Staatlichen Reglementierung der Produktions-- und Marktbeziehungen im sowjetischen Dorf (1928-1930). Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.

21. Merl S. (1985a) Handlungsspielrдume und Sachzwдnge in der sowjetischen Wirtschafts-- und Sozialpolitik der Zwischenkriegszeit. W. Fischer (Ed.). Sachzwдnge und Handlungsspielrдume in der Wirtschafts-- und Sozialpolitik der Zwischenkriegszeit. St. Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae, pp. 175-229.

22. Merl S. (1990a) Bauern unter Stalin. Die Formierung des sowjetischen Kolchossystems, 19301941. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.

23. Merl S. (1990b) Sozialer Aufstieg im sowjetischen Kolchossystem der 30er Jahre? Ьber das Schicksal der bдuerlichen Parteimitglieder, Dorfsowjetvorsitzenden, Posteninhaber in Kolchosen, Mechanisatoren und Stachanowleute. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.

24. Merl S. (1991) Kollektivierung und Bauernvernichtung. D. Geyer (Ed.). Die Umwertung der sowjetischen Geschichte. Gцttingen, pp. 103-132.

25. Merl S. (Ed.) (1993) Sowjetmacht und Bauern. Dokumente zur Agrarpolitik und zur Entwicklung der Landwirtschaft wдhrend des “Kriegskommunismus” und der Neuen Цkonomischen Politik. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.

26. Merl S. (1995) Golod 1932-1933 godov -- genotside Ukraintsev dlja osushchestvleniya poli- tiki rusifikatsii? [Famine of 1932-1933 -- genocide of the Ukrainians as a part of the russification policy?]. Otechestvennaya istoriya, no 1, pp. 49-61.

27. Merl S. (1999) Einstellungen zum Privateigentum in Russland und in der Sowjetunion (19.-20. Jahrhundert). D. Sugarman, H. Siegrist (Eds.). Eigentum im internationalen Vergleich: 18-20 Jahrhundert, Gцttingen, pp. 135-160.

28. Merl S. (2002a) Entstalinisierung, Reformen und Wettlauf der Systeme 1953-1964. S. Plaggenborg et. al (Eds.). 1945-1991. Vom Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs bis zum Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion. Anton Hiersemann, pp. 175-318.

29. Merl S. (2002b) Itogi podchineniya -- socialnaya i ekonomicheskaya reorganizatsiya derevni [Results of the submission--social and economic reorganization of the village]. Yaroslavsky pedagogichesky vestnik, no 3, pp. 19-35.

30. Merl S, (2008) Bauern in Kreditgenossenschaften: “Trдume” und “Albtrдume” der Staatsbank-Inspektoren, 1905-1917. W. Sperling (Ed.). Jenseits der Zarenmacht. Dimensionen des Politischen im Russischen Reich, 1800-1917. Frankfurt/M-New York: Campus, pp. 279-311.

31. Merl S. (2011) Sowjetisierung in Wirtschaft und Landwirtschaft. Europдische Geschichte Online (EGO). Mainz: IEG.

32. Merl S. (2013) Kooperativnoe dvizhenie v tsarskoj Rossii i pervye gody sovetskoj vlasti: rol v natsionalno-gosudarstvennom stroitelstve [Cooperative movement in imperial Russia and in the first years of the Soviet power: Its role in the national-state building]: Krestyanovedenie. Teoriya, Istoriya, Sovremennost. UchenyeZapiski, no 8, pp. 51-101.

33. Merl S. (2016) Why did the attempt under Stalin to increase agricultural productivity prove to be such a fundamental failure? On blocking the implementation of progress in agrarian technology (1929-1941). Cahier du Monde Russe: Terres, sols et peuples: Expertise agricole et pouvoir (XIX-XXsiиcles), vol. 57, no 1, pp. 191-220.

34. Merl S. (2017a) Sovetskaya ekonomika; sovremennye ochenki [Soviet economy: Contemporary essays]. Ekonomicheskaya istoriya. Moscow, pp. 303-349.

35. Merl S. (2017b) The peasants and the October Revolution. Velikaya rossiiskaya revoljutsiya 1917:100 let izucheniya. Moscow, pp. 453-460.

36. Merl S. (2017c) Agrarian transformation in the former GDR in 1989-2017: A success story? Russian Peasant Studies, vol. 2, no 4, pp. 130-147.

37. Merl S. (2018) Slavery in North America and serfdom in Russia in comparison: The role of civil society in its abolishment. Britaniya: Istoriya, kultura, obrazovanie. Yaroslavl, issue 4, pp. 416-424.

38. Merl S. (2019) Reassessment of the Soviet agrarian policy in the light of today's achievements. Russian Peasant Studies, vol. 4, no 1, pp. 45-69.

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