Khutor Farming

a form of agricultural production in which the land is organized so that the entire farm and all or many of the owner’s main buildings and implements necessary to work the land are located on a distinct plot of land. This type of agricultural production exists in many countries and under different forms of production relations based on private property. It has developed most highly in the period of capitalism.

Khutor farming appeared in Russia in the first half of the 18th century in the territory of the Don Army; the khutory were owned by rich cossacks, who had seized large areas of land. In the first half of the 19th century khutory spread to the former kingdom of Poland (from the 1830’s) and the Baltic region. In the late 19th century they became common in the western provinces of Russia, for example, in Volyn’, Smolensk, Vitebsk, and Pskov.

Khutor farming was enthusiastically promoted during the Stolypin agrarian reform, which began in late 1906, with the purpose of strengthening the kulaks in the countryside. By 1910 otruba and khutory constituted 10.5 percent of the total number of peasant farms in European Russia (seeOTRUB). Khutory were most characteristic of the western and northwestern provinces. They developed primarily by expropriation and exploitation of the peasants by the kulaks, which worsened class contradictions in the countryside. After the October Revolution of 1917 the khutor farming system was significantly weakened (1918–20). However, khutory were still being established in the northwestern regions of the RSFSR, in Byelorussia, and the Ukraine between 1921 and 1926. Khutor farming inhibited the collectivization of agriculture. Thus, with the transition to overall collectivization, the elimination of khutory began. Khutor farming was almost nonexistent by the start of the Great Patriotic War (1941—45). The khutor was the prevailing or only form of agriculture in the Soviet Baltic republics and the western oblasts of Byelorussia and the Ukraine, but during the process of collectivization the peasants were moved from khutory to kolkhoz settlements.

Similar farms appeared in England and certain regions of Germany in the 16th century. In the 18th and 19th centuries they developed rapidly in the Scandinavian countries and in the Netherlands. Such farms later appeared in other developed capitalist countries of Western Europe. Under contemporary conditions in these countries, the concept of the khutor is the same as the privately owned farm. Such farms were set up in the United States and Canada over significant land areas during the period of colonization.