Russian kolkhoz.
In the former Soviet Union, a cooperative agricultural enterprise operated on state-owned land.
Under the policy of collectivization, which was pursued most intensively by Joseph Stalin in 1929–33, peasants were forced to give up their individual farms and join large collective farms. They objected violently and in many cases slaughtered their livestock and destroyed their equipment before joining. By 1936 almost all the peasantry had been collectivized, though millions had also been deported to prison camps. With the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1990–91, the collective farms began to be privatized.