Model Kolkhoz Regulations

(Model Kolkhoz Charter), in the USSR, a normative document regulating basic aspects of the activity of kolkhozes, such as goals and tasks, use of land, legal status of kolkhoz property, rights and duties of kolkhozniks, distribution of income, planning and organization of production work, payment for labor, and provision of social security to kolkhozniks. The regulations were adopted by the Third All-Union Congress of Kolkhoz Workers and confirmed by a Nov. 28, 1969, decree of the CPSU Central Committee and Council of Ministers of the USSR (Collected Decrees of the USSR, 1969, no. 26, art. 150). The regulations consist of 12 sections (61 paragraphs).

At the time of their adoption, the Model Kolkhoz Regulations reflected the socioeconomic transformations that had occurred in the Soviet village since the adoption of the Model Regulations of the Agricultural Artel (1935). They filled in existing gaps in the legal regulation of certain kolkhoz relations, gave a detailed definition of the legal status of the kolkhoz, and updated kolkhoz law to meet requirements of the contemporary kolkhoz system. The last included matters of kolkhoz membership and kolkhoz property; the legal regulation of production, administration, and financial activity; organization and payment of labor; and management of kolkhoz affairs. Thus, the new regulations provided broad opportunities for kolkhozes to participate on a voluntary basis in the work of interkolkhoz and state kolkhoz enterprises and organizations and to join associations and unions. They fixed the principle of guaranteed remuneration of labor for kolkhozniks and established supplementary payments to the basic wages, as well as other types of material incentives. In addition, they introduced such new features as social insurance for kolkhozniks and the concept of kolkhozniks’ material responsibility.

The regulations indicate the main trends of the future development of the kolkhoz system: the strengthening and development of kolkhoz property and, on that basis, of the economic autonomy of the kolkhozes; the expansion of the social rights of kolkhozniks and the strengthening of the legal guarantees of those rights; and the extension of kolkhoz democracy.

On the basis of the Model Kolkhoz Regulations, kolkhozes draw up and adopt their own regulations, each kolkhoz modifying the model regulations to its own specific conditions.