Commune

Commune. One of the forms of collective farming in which, in contrast to agricultural artels, all means of production, including domestic work, are socialized, all labor is collective, and all income is distributed according to need. The Communist and early Bolshevik ideology and program stressed such forms of communal life as common meals in refectories, residence in dormitories, collective services (laundries, etc), collective upbringing of children in kindergartens, and so on.

The program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from the very beginning provided for the formation of communes. In the Ukrainian SSR the first communes were established in 1919 on the estates of former landowners and monasteries. Their membership consisted of Red partisans, urban workers who had fled the cities to escape famine, and some hired laborers. There were 404 communes in Ukraine in 1919, 316 in 1925, and 412 in 1929 (2.9 percent of all collective farms). The size of these communal farms was small—49 ha on the average. The state provided them with machines and did not tax them. In the 1930s the communes were given the status of agricultural artels.