Конец колхозной жизни (на примере колхоза «Новая жизнь» Правдинского района Калининградской области)

Abstract

Based on unpublished materials from the State Archive of the Kaliningrad region and the Archival department of the administration of the municipal entity “Pravdinsky Urban Dis­trict”, including minutes of general meetings and board sessions of the collective farm, mate­rials from the primary party organization, etc., this microhistorical study explores the final years of the “Novaya Znizn (New Life)” collective farm in the Pravdinsky district of the Ka­liningrad region. The research goal is to reconstruct the views of collective farm members on the processes occurring in the country in the late 1980s to early 1990s. The analysis presents the main challenges faced by the farm during the period of Perestroika. Despite numerous transformations initiated by M. S. Gorbachev in the agricultural sector, they did not lead to the expected qualitative changes. Phenomena such as rising prices and shortages of goods caused disillusionment with the ideas of Perestroika. The author examines the process of reor­ganizing the collective farm into a closed joint-stock company. The general conclusion is that, despite the possibility of organizing individual farming enterprises, the majority of peasants chose to preserve the established collective way of life. They saw it as a guarantee of support in the face of the critical economic situation in the Russian countryside in the early 1990s.