Silskyi Hospodar (Ukrainian SSR)

Silskyi Hospodar (Ukrainian SSR) (Сільський Господар; Farmer). The central organization of agricultural co-operatives in the Ukrainian SSR, founded by the government at the beginning of the New Economic Policy in 1922 in place of the Tsentral union of agricultural co-operatives. By 1928 it represented over 22,000 co-operatives and had over 2.9 million members. Its turnover that year was 169 million rubles; the turnover of its member co-operatives was 448 million rubles. In 1927 3,594 general and 8,606 specialized agricultural co-operatives belonged to the organization. Of the specialized co-operatives, 582 specialized in dairy and livestock, 615 in sugar beets, 209 in fruit farming and vegetable farming, and 189 in beekeeping. There were also 3,119 machine and tractor co-operatives. The primary co-operatives were organized into 24 general, 46 specialized, and 18 credit associations. They included Dobrobut, a livestock and dairy co-operative that marketed over 16 million kg of meat and 1.6 million kg of dairy products in 1925–6; Plodospilka, an association of orcharding, gardening, grape-growing, and beekeeping co-operatives established in 1925; Buriakspilka, an association of sugar-beet producers; and Ukrkooptakh, an association of poultry farmers. All of these associations ran their own processing and distribution facilities, and many published books and brochures on the co-operative movement. Silskyi Hospodar also published Sil’s’kyi hospodar (Kharkiv) (1923–7), which later became Kooperovane selo (1927–8) and then Kooperovana hromada (1928–30). The organization and almost the entire co-operative movement were dissolved in the early 1930s with the introduction of collectivization.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]