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election is usually in effect controlled by the Communistparty. What is produced is subject first to state taxation,mainly in the form of compulsory deliveries of produceat a specially low price. These deliveries are fixed at anabsolute figure, not as a percentage for instance of thecrop harvested, and are now calculated, for the main cropsand most animal produce, according to the cultivableamount of land and not as previously according to thearea planned to be sown and the actual number oflivestock. What is produced is subject, secondly, topayment to the machine-tractor stations and to seed,insurance, and various social and other funds.The remaining produce is a dividend available for .consumption and sale, either by contract to the state oron co-operative or other 'open' markets at much higherprices than those paid for the compulsory deliveries.This dividend is divided among the members of theartel according to the amount of labour-days worked,i.e. on a piece-work basis, with every inducement latterlyto apply Stakhanovite methods, in the shape of bonusesto workers who get through more work than planned,with the aim both of increasing national production andof realizing the officially avowed object of a collectivefarm, namely to make it " a Bolshevik one and all members. . . well-to-do people."Collective farms of various types had been startedsince the early days of the Revolution, but they did notmake much headway; and the state farms, on whichoriginally special emphasis was laid as combining thepanaceas of large-scale management, socialization of themeans of production, and organization of farm workerson the lines of a factory, proved in most cases a failureowing to their colossal size and their refusal to allow forthe needs of human individuals and the psychology ofthe peasant. Their subsequent transformation substantiallyinto research, experimental and training farms,or into stud farms, has, in contrast, proved generallysuccessful.The policy of wholesale collectivization was notadopted until 1928, but it was then pushed through inthe course of the next six years, untiringly and merci-126