Private Plots Research Articles

Private Plots — One Dimension of the Soviet Second Economy

Private Plots — One Dimension of the Soviet Second Economy

CONSUMPTION OF FOOD AND NON-FOOD GOODS BY RURAL HOUSEHOLDS IN THE TURKMEN SSR

The paper surveys family consumption patterns for food and non-food goods (for a sample of 72 families in six rural rayons of the Turkmen SSR) in relation to family size and income, private plot use, the adequacy of retail outlets at different levels of the settlement hierarchy, and involuntary commuting generated by poor goods availability. Large families rely much more on private plots for food and patronize higher-level retail outlets less frequently. Comparisons with all-Union per capita consumption norms indicate substandard levels of consumption in rural Turkmenia for the majority of food and non-food items surveyed (translated by Elliott B. Urdang, Providence, RI 02906).

Public health and private sentiment: The development of cemetery architecture and funerary monuments from the eighteenth century onwards

Abstract With the rapid increase of city populations, the traditional forms of body disposal within European towns became a threat to public health during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Once initial conservatism and vested interests were overcome, a new form of mortuary behaviour developed. This involved large cemeteries with private plots and their attendant memorials, following on models already applied in the colonies. These changes certainly led to a reduction in the risks to public health, but shifts in the attitudes to death also hastened the abandonment of crowded city centre graveyards. The cemeteries offered much more scope for exhibition of material success and remembrance of the dead.

The Household Responsibility System in China's Agricultural Reform: A Theoretical and Empirical Study

The emergence and eventual prevalence of the household responsibility system, which replaces the production team system as the unit of production and income distribution, has brought about dramatic changes in China's rural areas since 1979. This institutional change has resulted in remarkable growth in agricultural productivity.' However, in the literature on collective farms, a theory that is capable of explaining the causes and effects of this change is yet to be developed. The formal theory about collective economies developed so far by Ward, Domar, Sen, Oi and Clayton, Bradley, Maurice and Ferguson, Cameron, Bonin, Chinn, Israelsen, Putterman, and others suggests that the allocation of resources in a collective farm is efficient at least in

THE REVIVAL OF SMALL BUSINESS AND SOCIALIST ENTREPRENEURS IN CHINA

ABSTRACT As a result of the newly introduced economic reforms, there has been a revival of small business in the People's Republic of China. Entrepreneurs have been encouraged to develop the “individual economy” to supplement the socialist economy. In agriculture, enterprising peasants now plough private plots or become specialized households. In commerce and industry, individuals may become licensed businessmen. Large state-owned factories may lease small plants to individual managers who will operate them with full responsibility. This paper discusses the measures that encourage all these entrepreneurial activities.

Varieties of population mobility in relation to development in China.

China in its efforts to effect economic modernization has come to recognize the need for labor mobility to promote the development of small towns to develop frontier agriculture and to provide a tertiary sector in the cities and towns. Of Chinas 1 billion people (3rd census 1982) 206 million or 20% of the population lived in 236 cities and 2664 towns. 50% of the urban dwellers were concentrated in the 3 metropolises of Shanghai Beijing and Tianjin. On the other hand 30% lived in the 2664 towns which China wishes to develop. In the past large numbers of people have migrated to the large cities because there they were assured the life-long security of employment in state-owned industries -- the "iron rice bowl." However Chinas present policy is to limit the size of big cities develop medium-sized cities (between 200000 and 500000 people) and encourage the growth of small cities. Chinas 7th Five-Year Plan (1986-1990) calls for a massive movement of the agricultural labor force not to the cities but to the towns. To control population movement China instituted the Household Registration System in accordance with which a household must obtain permission to move permanently beyond the local area. Migration from the populous East Coast areas to the underdeveloped Northwest and to the rural impoverished areas of Gansu Ningxia and Qinghai is encouraged. But controlled migration has become more difficult since the decentralization which has accompanied the new economic policies and the urban population has grown except for the 3 major cities. Moreover as a result of the new "economic responsibility system" introduced in 1979 many surplus agricultural workers have been absorbed into nonagricultural activities in villages and townships. By the end of 1985 67 million workers had moved from agriculture to industries and peasants may now be granted temporary residence permits in towns. The total number of towns increased to 7280 by 1985; however the new towns are concentrated in the more productive agricultural areas which can support them. In addition to these more or less permanent migrants large numbers of temporary migrants have come to the cities as representatives of local businesses as construction workers to operate urban outlets for agricultural and industrial products to provide various services including domestic service and as itinerant workers. 1986 statistics indicated that 3.21 million people were living as temporary residents of Chinas top 10 cities. The new economic policy has encouraged the resurgence of private plots and free markets and hence has stimulated the increased movement of peasants to rural markets and to free markets in cities.

Recent Chinese Agriculture

Recent Chinese Agriculture

Indicators for interrelated study of living standard and life style

The growth of the Soviet citizens9 well-being presents the principal objective in the development of our society. This is, however, not the end in itself; ultimately it is aimed at perfecting the socialist life style, at creating condi tions for the realization of the people's versatile capabilities. Many of the living standard indicators are directly or indirectly planned, e.g. wages, volume of commodity circulation, consumer services, provision of pre-school institutions, hospitals, schools. These indicators purport to perform a "testing99 function and show to what changes in people's life activity, needs, and values this enhanced well-being leads. The main concern of this paper is to present indicators reflecting the inter related change in living standards and life styles. By living standard is meant a composite of the consumption of goods and services, and the extent to which the citizens9 needs are satisfied if measured against the existing standard of reference. Personal well-being in our society is based on monetary incomes received as pay for work in the public sector of the economy, grants from public expenditure funds and receipts from private plots. Some benefits (dwelling, education, children's institutions, etc.) are given reduced-rate and free of charge. The material basis of well-being is thus much more than merely the sum of money in the possession of a particular individual. The growth in well-being depends, firstly, on the size of national product; secondly, on the proportion of it going to consumption vs. accumulation; thirdly, on its distribution among the society members. According to this, the general well being of citizens is determined by the national income, the well-being of different social groups, types of families, and the relations of distribution existing in society. This is reflected to a certain extent by the indicators of mobile and immobile incomes. For the last two decades, the consumption share in the national income of the U.S.S.R. has been increasing, and this has helped to create a solid basis for the growth of citizens' well-being. The pay in the social sector of the economy has been steadily increasing. The changes in the content and nature

New Policies in the Communes: Notes on Rural Societal Structures in China, 1976–1981

Since 1978 dramatic changes have occurred in Chinese rural societal policies with respect to the three levels of collective agricultural production; the parameters for family sideline occupations and village markets; and the extension and allocation of private plots. In general, these changes reflected a distinct retreat from the former emphasis on collective production. The author describes the changes that have taken place in rural societal policies and discusses the difficulties that have arisen in implementing the new policies. He also comments on statements by the current leadership used to support and justify new policies.

Dynamic adjustment of labor allocation between collective, state, or cooperative farming and private farming in a planned economy

How collective and state farm workers dynamically adjust their labor allocations between farm and private plot is analyzed by adopting a behavioralist (as opposed to a marginalist) approach. Farm workers shift their labor allocations for a given season toward that operation which rewarded them with a better rate of return during the preceding season. This approach is then applied to a hypothetical case where the farm is a cooperative venture between state and farm workers, and farm workers can decide to work exclusively on private plots, or on the farm, or divide their labor in some way between these two operations.

The History of the Confederate States Marine Corps , and: Biographical Sketches of the Commissioned Officers of the Confederate States Marine Corps , and: Service Records of Confederate Enlisted Marines (review)

BOOK REVIEWSOV destiny "to overspread and possess" adjacent weak nations. The agents of Manifest Destiny were zealots proclaiming die highest patriotic objectives . Although, says Brown, "the leaders might profess goals of freeing the people of neighboring lands from tyrannical or inept rulers, . . . one and all they sought glory for themselves" (p. 459). Their followers were young adventurers, waterfront rabble, businessmen willing to wager a few dollars for huge stakes, and Southern extremists eager for new slave territory. The story covers the entire nineteendi century, beginning widi a few introductory chapters dealing with private plots from Aaron Burr to the end of die Mexican W7ar, and concluding with a chapter on dwindling dreams of expansion from 1861 to 1900. The heart of the book deals with the efforts of Narciso Lopez to seize power in Spanish Cuba, and William W7alker's various campaigns to conquer Baja California and Sonora from Mexico and later to seize and "liberate" Nicaragua. Brown narrates these episodes in detail, giving the reader a clearer view of the day-today activities dian is available elsewhere. The incessant intrigues and the bloody skirmishes become increasingly gripping and filled with suspense as the tragedy of these two would-be dictators, Lopez and W7alker, unfolds. Considering themselves invincible Messiahs, they made spur-of-die-moment decisions about fund raising, mobilizing recruits, acquisition of ordnance and transport facilities, and about military action in die field. Especially useful are Brown's racy capsule biographies of dieir many collaborators— men like O'Sullivan, Law, Sanders, Doubleday, W7heat, Lockridge, French, Fayssoux, Henningsen, Quitman, Soulé, and many others. Brown treats die diplomatic problems raised by filibustering mainly by showing die difficulties the United States government encountered in trying to enforce neutrality laws at ports where the local populace approved of these private military excursions. The volume rests largely on the printed memoirs of die filibusters. The author gives variant versions when he cannot resolve contradictions . He also has used die major contemporary newspaper accounts, the published diplomatic correspondence, and the large body of secondary material. The bookmaking is first-class, a credit to the publisher. Although die author makes no effort to connect the marauding troops of the 1850s with diose of today, die reader will find himself making comparisons and contrasts between these early filibusters and the guerrillas operating in many parts of the globe in recent years. Philip S. Klein The Pennsylvania State Univ. The History of the Confederate States Marine Corps. By Ralph W7. Donnelly . (Published by the Author, 1976. Pp. xxi, 275.) Biographical Sketches of the Commissioned Officers of the Confeder- 90civil war history ate States Marine Corps. By Ralph W7. Donnelly. (Published by the Author, 1973. Pp. xii, 68.) Service Records of Confederate Enlisted Marines. By Ralph W7. Donnelly . (Published by the Audior, 1979. Pp. xxii, 125. Copies can be ordered from 913 Market Street, Washington, North Carolina 27889.) For nearly a century, students of the Civil W7ar were tantalized by occasional references to Confederate Marines. Now, three volumes by one author have given that obscure Corps a superbly researched, comprehensive , and well-written history. In 1957 and 1959, articles appeared in the Military Collector and Historian and Military Affairs. These articles were entitled "Uniforms and Equipment of Confederate Marines" and "Battle Honors and Service of Confederate Marines." The two articles, written by Ralph W7. Donnelly, contained the most detailed and accurate information that had then been published about Confederate Marines. Not satisfied with an auspicious beginning, Donnelly went on to author the diree-volume history of die C.S.M.C. Before retiring as a United States Marine Corps Reference Historian in 1978, Donnelly had been elected a Fellow of both the Company of Military Historians and the American Military Institute in recognition of his historical research. Most Confederate Marines served near Richmond or at the ports of Mobile and Savannah. Detachments served at Wilmington, Charleston, Pensacola and New Orleans and a few detachments saw service on the high seas. In the destruction and confusion which characterized the last months of the Confederacy, most Marine records seem to have been put to the torch. To gather needed information, Donnelly contacted state and local historical societies. Descriptions of Marine uniforms...

Private Plot Restrictions in a Collective Farm Model

Private Plot Restrictions in a Collective Farm Model

Work incentives and uncertainty on a collective farm

The collective farm household's optimal allocation of time among work on both the collective and private plots and leisure is analyzed in certain and uncertain environments. The examination of static equilibrium solutions indicates that the collective farm need not be inefficient nor provide poor work incentives. Uncertainty is shown to exert a distinctive influence on work allocations. Implications are drawn from comparative static analysis to discuss the effects of government policy, e.g., increased crop quotas, on work incentives. The Soviet development period, recent agricultural reforms in the Khrushchev-Brezhnev era, and general policy implications are considered in the light of these new analytical results.

Food Distribution as a Guarantee for Nutrition and Health: China's Experience

In China, agriculture, health, education, and welfare are intricately woven as part of the development and its relationship to health programs, the strategy of food rationing and the "private plot" to improve nutrition and health, and the balance of food and population in the Chinese society. China's nutritional experience contributes significantly to understanding the role of "energy food" in the struggle against protein malnutrition and hunger. The author has outlined the implications for the developing countries.

The ‘private plot’ in Soviet agriculture

The ‘private plot’ in Soviet agriculture

Familial dynamics in a Romanian worker village

My purpose in this essay is to analyze the relationship between domestic social process in Mindra, a Romanian village in southern Transylvania, as well as the transformation of the Romanian economy at large. I shall deal with the developmental cycle of the family, the processes which establish, maintain, or alter relations among families, and the relationship between these domestic processes and the economic changes that have taken place in the area over the past generation. The most im? portant of the economic changes has been the incorporation of all village lands, except for house plots and gardens, into a cooperative farm and a concurrent rapid increase in the demand for workers in nearby towns and cities. Prior to World War II most villagers were peasants who owned and worked their own land; today some income is still derived from small private plots, but the economic life of the community is dominated by the co? operative farm and the city factories. In spite of this transformation in what people do for a living, the lineally extended family and an elaborate web of social relations among village households remain remarkably strong. It is true that there are presently more households made up of nuclear families than in the past. It is also true that all of the offspring in some households have deserted the village for the city and that some households choose to minimize their participation in social net? works. The present economic situation in particular, the availability of salaried city jobs ? make these alternatives possible. Such trends are often seen as being concomitant with the process of modernization, or as an indication that modernization is taking place. Since Mindra lies in the heart of one of the most industrialized areas in Romania, and since so many villagers do earn their livings in the city, the trend might be expected to continue until the extended family, and the network of social relations between households, become mere relics of the past. However, this does not seem to be the case. Instead, economic strategies that give a prominent'place to the extended family and to strong ties among village house? holds are flourishing. This is so because such strategies make good sense, not because they are survivals from a traditional past. In order to understand this seeming paradox it is neces? sary to turn to the concrete setting, the history, and the socioeconomic dynamic of the com? munity in question.

The Private Plot and the Prototype Collective Farm Charter

In a recent paper Alec Nove expressed the view that the prototype collective farm statute adopted at the November 1969 kolkhoz congress contained little new except the procedures for electing kolkhoz councils and that it was essentially a ratification of measures already taken.' This view overlooks the important changes in respect to private plot agriculture which, if they had been implemented, might have had startling effects on agricultural labor allocation, output mix, and probably total agricultural output. As it turns out, the new private plot regulations, after being ratified in a resolution of the CPSU Central Committee over the signatures of Brezhnev and Kosygin in November 1969, appear to have been excised from the prototype charter as adopted by the lower-level Third All-Union Congress of Collective Farm Workers as reported in September 1970.2 The new regulations also did ratify some tendencies in wage reform, which were considerably weakened later. The November regulations were to permit larger livestock holdings than are currently held by the peasants. The regulations did not spell out the differences between the new norms and present reality, and unfortunately the usual statistical yearbooks do not give this data, restricting themselves rather to total private holdings, including those of both state and collective farm subsidiary plots, and others as well. The 1960 agricultural handbook does provide detailed information on livestock holdings which enables us to calculate average private plot stock holdings for collective farms. The following table compares these with the limits permitted by the new November 1969 collective farm charter. Evidently the November charter permitted large increases in all stock holdings-the increases ranging from 59 percent for cows to 625 percent for sheep and goats. The 0.50 hectare landholding permitted under the regulations is 57 percent larger than the present average subsidiary plot; when the subsidiary plot is

Some Major Persisting Problems in Soviet Agriculture

Professor Nove's panoramic review of Soviet agricultural developments since 1953 covers all points that should be included in a survey of this kind. His claim that the overall picture is not controversial is on the whole correct, though individual observers are likely to differ in assessing the importance of particular aspects or policies. Before I outline my views, brief comment is in order on two points. Thus, I do not agree with the statement that there was no slharp increase in the volume of grain procurements between the early and the late Khrushchev years. Such an impression is conveyed by annual averages for 1953-58 and 1959-64. But we should keep in mind that the early years included two bumper crops (1956 and 1958), while the later period included only one such crop (1964), which was offset to a large extent by the nearly disastrous harvest of 1963. If all these years are excluded from the comparison, typical average procurements in the early years come to about 36 million tons, while the corresponding figure for 1959-62 is 51 million tons. This is an increase in the general level of procurements of about 41 percent.1 I would also stress that the matter of the MTS reform is best viewed in the general context of other policy measures introduced at about the same time. These included changes in agriculture's terms of trade (to its disadvantage), a cutback in the production and supply of many important types of farm machinery, a slowdown in the rate of extending credits to agriculture, a low rate of increase in the production and shipments of mineral fertilizers, as well as the campaign against the private plot. I have discussed these matters at greater length elsewhere,2 and I still hold the view that all these measures taken together represented a major policy decision, made at the highest level, to reduce the supply of inputs to agriculture and to arrest (at least) the growth of agricultural incomes at a time when a very substantial increase in farm output was planned for 1959-65. The fact that this decision was taken after a period of very satisfactory growth in output in 1953-58 underlines the propen-

METHODS OF COMPILING CROP STATISTICS IN CHINA*

METHODS OF COMPILING CROP STATISTICS IN CHINA*

New Directions in Czechoslovak Agricultural Policy Under Novotny

Agriculture continues to present the regimes of the Communist world with some of their most important economic and political problems even after the trials of collectivizing are past. There are constant pressures, on the one hand, to make the collective system much more productive by improving organizational efficiency and raising the level of technology. On the other hand, the official ideology commits these regimes to eventually abolishing the collective system itself by transforming the collective farms into institutions of state property. There are indications, moreover, that this commitment may not be postponed indefinitely. The issue of how to establish a viable, permanent, and uniform organization of agriculture with completely nationalized enterprises has recurrently arisen in the Soviet Union over the last decade: in Khrushchev's “agro-town” proposal of the early 1950's, for example, with its implicit aim of eliminating the private plots of collective farmers, and in the later fairly large-scale experiments with a system of fixed wages in collective farms and with direct conversions of collective into state farms.