Phenomenon of the Hero of Socialist Labor in Collective Farm Production in the First Post-War Years: A Microhistorical Study Using the Example of the Valuiki District of the Kursk Region

Abstract

Most modern researchers approach problems of agrarian history through the prism of traditional historical methods and a fairly typical set of historical sources, including record management, accounting, and statistical documentation of a general nature. In this article, we introduce into scholarly discourse annual reports of collective farms as a previously virtually unused set of historical sources. Thus we attempt to examine the operation of the collective farm system in the postwar years. Using annual reports of collective farms in the Valuiki District of the Kursk Region for 1945–1948 as our source material, we have reached the following conclusions. The economic performance of an agricultural cooperative was not the main criterion for conferring the highest state awards to any of its members. In our opinion, the fulfillment of mandatory state deliveries and payment in kind to the Machine-Tractor Stations was a far more important factor, and the award decision was probably based on it. In this regard, the title of Hero of Socialist Labor for workers of agricultural cooperatives should be viewed not so much as a statement of labor feat (we do not dispute this fact) and a way to record it in history, but as the creation of a certain guideline in the construction of a very specific model of management, which indicates the presence of a certain autonomy of collective farms in the country’s economic system.