Council of Labor and Defense, Organization of the Machine Tractor Stations. June 5, 1929

Original Source: Sistematicheskoe sobranie deistvuiushchikh zakonov Soiuza sovetskikh sotsialisticheskikh respublik (Moscow, 1929), text 353. See also Izvestiia, 18 June 1929.

Noting the positive results of the work of the machine tractor station on the Sovkhoz Shevchenko, manifested in the reinforcement of the collectivization of peasant's households, raising their Output, and the -maximum utilization of tractors, the Council of Labor and Defense decrees:

1. To recognize the opportune beginning of wide-spread construction of machine tractor stations as one of the basic paths toward the reorganization of individual peasant households into large collective farms.

2. To start organizing machine tractor stations immediately so that by the end of 1929-1930, their net would encompass an area (of peasant fields) not less than one million hectares in size.

3. To recognize the necessity of providing the machine tractor stations with repair work-shops, responsible for a knowledge of up-to-date techniques and supply of their materials necessary for maintenance work.

4. To provide the machine tractor stations with motor transport means in order to realize the full mechanization of the work of the machine tractor stations and also to release fodder, now used for the maintenance of working cattle, for the extension of productive live-stock breeding.

5. To tie up closely the organization of the machine tractor stations with the plan for construction of state and collective farms and to build the machine tractor stations, in the first instance, in those regions wherein is found a significantly broad sown area and where the peasant's lack of draught animals and inventory delays the development of agriculture. In addition, machine tractor stations should be organized, in the first instance, in regions of the most developed construction of collective farms.

6. To establish that in the regions of activity of the machine tractor stations, crediting will be permitted only in those branches of peasant economy and in those agricultural operations which cannot be served by the machine tractor stations.

7. ... to organize a joint stock company under the name: All-Union Center of Machine-Tractor Stations.

The basic task of the above-named company, along with the cultivation of land of the surrounding population, is the application of all measures necessary for raising the existing level of agronomical culture in the areas of the activity of the machine tractor stations, and the wide conversion of individual households into large socialized mechanized farms.

9. To include in the constituent body of the designated stock company, the People's Commissariat of Agriculture of the union republics, the Supreme Council of National Economy of the USSR, the People's Commissariat of Foreign and Internal Trade of the USSR, the all-Union and republican centers of collective farms, All-Union Council of Agricultural Cooperatives, The Union of Agricultural Cooperative Societies...

10. To establish the absolute obligatory summoning, along with state and cooperative resources, of the means of the peasant population served by these stations for the organization and betterment of machine-tractor stations. The forms and extent of the enlistment of the populations' means should be determined at the time of the elaboration of the plan for the development of a network of stations. At the same time, the scope of participation of the various peasant groups should be determined, in accordance with their economic power.

11. To establish a bureau of 5 members...

12. To link the organized bureau... with the representatives of the Union republics attached to the government of the USSR, All-Union Council of Collective Farms, and the All-Union Council of Agricultural Cooperative Societies. Within two weeks, draft regulations of the All-Union Center of Machine-Tractor Stations should be worked out, on the basis of the present decree, and submitted to the Council of Labor and Defense for its approval.

Vice-Chairman of the Council of Labor and Defense J. Rudzutak

Source: J. Meisel and E. S. Kozera, eds., Materials for the Study of the Soviet System (Ann Arbor: G. Wahr Pub. Co., 1953), pp. 183-185.