State Pensions for the Peasant

State Pensions and Other Benefits for the Peasant. July 15, 1964

This text presented the Supreme Soviet’s new law on state pensions and benefits for collective farmers, a long-delayed step toward bringing the kolkhoz countryside into a state-backed social security framework. It established pensions for old age, disability, and loss of a breadwinner, along with maternity allowances, with benefits exempt from taxation and financed by collective farms and the state. It also reflected Soviet incentive logic by rejecting “leveling” and tying benefit levels to work records and farm performance, while promising gradual movement toward parity with urban workers. The excerpt later appeared in a 1966 Party worker’s handbook edited by K. U. Chernenko, later CPSU general secretary.

Original Source: K. U. Chernenko, et al., Spravochnik partiinogo rabotnika, vypusk 6 (Moscow, 1966).

Under the guidance of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Soviet people have achieved, particularly in the past ten years, enormous successes in communist construction and in the development of the country's productive forces and have created a mighty, comprehensively developed economy. This enables the Soviet state systematically to raise the living standards of the people and to satisfy their growing needs more fully.

The possibility now exists of introducing a more stable system of social security on the collective farms through the establishment of pensions for old age, disability and loss of breadwinner and maternity allowances for women collective-farm members.

The pension insurance for collective farmers must not have a leveling approach. The higher the labor productivity of the collective farmers, the more products per hectare of plough land the collective farm produces and sells to the state and the higher its income and the level of its contributions to the pension fund, the bigger should the pensions to its collective farmers be. Those collective farmers who work well and make a larger contribution to public production should be better provided for.

The establishment of a state system of social security for collective farmers will be an important new stimulus for a further upsurge in the labor activity of the collective-farm peasantry and for an increase in the output of farm products.

With the growth of the national income, in particular the incomes of the collective farms, the sizes of the pensions envisaged by the present law will gradually be raised to the level of the state pensions granted to workers and employees.

The Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics resolves:

I. General Provisions

ARTICLE I. Collective-farm members are entitled to pensions for old age and disability.

Unemployable members of the families of deceased collective farmers, if they were dependants, are entitled to pensions for loss of breadwinner.

ARTICLE 2. Women collective-farm members are entitled to maternity allowances.

ARTICLE 3. Collective farmers and members of their families who are simultaneously entitled to different pensions will be granted the pension of their choice.

ARTICLE 4. The payment of pensions and allowances in conformity with the present law is ensured at the expense of the collective farms and the state without any deductions from the incomes of the collective-farm members.

ARTICLE 5. Pensions are not subject to taxation.

II. Pensions

ARTICLE 6. The following collective-farm members are entitled to old-age pensions: men who have reached the age of 65 and have worked at least 25 years; women who have reached the age of 60 and have worked at least 20 years.

ARTICLE 7. Women collective-farm members who have given birth to five or more children and reared them to the age of eight are entitled to old-age pensions when they reach the age of 55 and have worked at least 15 years.

ARTICLE 8. Old-age pensions for collective-farm members will be granted in the amount of 50 per cent of earnings up to 50rubles a month Plus 25 per cent of the remainder of their earnings.

The minimum old-age pension is fixed at 12 rubles a month.

The maximum old-age pension is fixed at 102 rubles a month, that is, at the level of the maximum old-age pension stipulated in the Law on State Pensions for workers and employees who live permanently in rural localities and who are engaged in agriculture.

ARTICLE 9. Collective-farm members with a Group I or Group II disability are entitled to a disability pension.

ARTICLE 10. Pensions for disability as a result of occupational injury or disease are granted to collective-farm members regardless of how long they have worked.

Pensions for disability as a result of non-occupational disease or injury are granted to collective-farm members if they have worked the following periods when they apply for a pension:

ARTICLE 11. Disability pensions for collective-farm members are granted in the following amounts: for disabled persons in Group 1-50 per cent of earnings up to 50rubles a month Plus 25 per cent of additional earnings; for disabled persons in Group II-40 per cent of earnings up to 50rubles a month plus 25 per cent of additional earnings.

The minimum pension is fixed at 15 rubles a month for disabled persons in Group I and 12rubles for disabled persons in Group II.

In cases of disability as a result of occupational injury or disease, 20 per cent is added to the pensions (including minimum pensions) computed according to the above-established norms.

Maximum disability pensions are fixed at the level of the maximum disability pensions stipulated in the Law on State Pensions for workers and employees who live permanently in rural localities and who are engaged in agriculture.

ARTICLE 12. Unemployable members of the family of a deceased collective farmer who were his dependants are entitled to pensions for loss of breadwinner.

The following are considered unemployable dependants: (a) children, brothers, sisters and grandchildren under the age of 16 (18 in the case of schoolchildren) and older ones if they have suffered a Group I or Group 11 disability before reaching the age of 16 (18 in the case of schoolchildren); this includes only those brothers, sisters and grandchildren who do not have an employable parent; (b) a father, mother, wife or husband who has reached old age - 65 years in the case of men, 6o years in the case of women - or has become disabled; (c) grandfathers and grandmothers if they have reached the age of 65 or 6o, respectively, or are disabled, and if there are no persons obliged by law to maintain them.

Children and unemployable parents of the deceased who were not his dependants are entitled to a pension for loss of breadwinner if his death has deprived them of a source of sustenance.

Persons who adopt children are entitled to pensions on the same terms as parents, and adopted children on the same terms as children who are not adopted.

ARTICLE 13. The families of collective farmers who die as a result of occupational injury or disease are entitled to pensions irrespective of the length of time the breadwinner had worked.

The families of collective farmers who die as a result of non-occupational injury or disease are entitled to pensions if the breadwinner had worked the length of time necessary to qualify him for a disability pension.

ARTICLE 14. Pensions for loss of breadwinner are granted in the following amounts, according to the number of unemployable members in the family: three or more -50 per cent of the breadwinner's earnings up to 50rubles a month Plus 25 per cent of additional earnings; two-40 per cent of the breadwinner's earnings up to 50rubles a month Plus 25 per cent of additional earnings; one-30 per cent of the breadwinner's earnings up to 50rubles a month plus 10 per cent of additional earnings.

The minimum pension is fixed at 15 rubles a month for three or more unemployable family members; at 12rubles for two unemployable family members; and at 9 rubles for one unemployable family member.

In cases of loss of breadwinner as a result of occupational injury or disease, 20 per cent is added to the pensions (including minimum pensions) computed according to the above-established norms.

Maximum pensions for loss of breadwinner are fixed at the level of the maximum pensions for loss of breadwinner stipulated in the Law on State Pensions for the families of workers and employees who live permanently in rural localities and who are engaged in agriculture.

ARTICLE 15. The following will be counted in the work record in granting pensions: (a) work as a collective-farm member; (b) work as a worker or employee, service in the USSR Armed Forces and service in guerrilla detachments, as well as other periods subject to inclusion in the work record in granting pensions under the Law on State Pensions.

ARTICLE 16. Pensions are based on the actual average monthly earnings on the collective farm for any five successive years (to be chosen by the person applying for the pension) out of the fifteen years preceding the application for a pension.

In the case of collective farmers who have worked on the collective farm for less than five years and collective-farm families that have lost a breadwinner who had worked on the collective farm for less than five years, pensions are based on the actual average monthly earnings on the collective farm during the time worked.

ARTICLE 17. Collective-farm pensioners who, after receiving a pension, have worked on the collective farm for at least two years with higher earnings than those on which the pension was based will receive a new pension based on these higher earnings.

III. Maternity Allowances for Women Collective Farmers

ARTICLE 18 Women collective farmers are entitled to maternity allowances irrespective of how long they have worked.

Maternity leave is granted for 56 calendar days before delivery and 56 calendar days after delivery, and in the event of abnormal or multiple births for 7o days after delivery.

ARTICLE 19. Maternity allowances for women collective farmers are determined according to the same system and the same norms as those established for women workers and women employees.

IV. Funds for the Payment of Pensions and Allowances

ARTICLE 20. A central all-union social-security fund for collective farmers is set up through payments out of the incomes of the collective farms and annual allocations under the USSR State Budget to pay the pensions and allowances stipulated in the present law.

ARTICLE 21. Beginning in 1964, all collective farms will make monetary contributions to the central all-union social-security fund for collective farmers in amounts to be determined by the USSR Council of Ministers.

Funds subject to transfer to the central all-union social-security fund for collective farmers are excluded from the incomes of collective farms in levying the tax.

V. Final Provisions

ARTICLE 22. Collective farms that pay pensions to their collective farmers in excess of the amounts established in the present law may maintain the size of these pensions by making the corresponding additional payments out of the collective farm's funds.

ARTICLE 23. The USSR Supreme Soviet resolves to charge the USSR Council of Ministers with issuing, on the basis of the present law:

(1) rules governing the system of granting and paying pensions to collective-farm members;

(2) rules governing the granting and payment of maternity allowances to women collective-farm members;

(3) rules governing the central all-union social-security fund for collective farmers.

The rules governing the system of granting and paying pensions to collective-farm members should, in particular, stipulate the conditions for granting pensions: to members of the collective farms of those republics and provinces in which collective farms were set up later than in other regions of the country; to members of collective farms who joined the collective farms during the first years of collectivization but who, as a result of old age or disability, stopped working on the collective farms without having the work record necessary to qualify them for a pension.

ARTICLE 24. The present law takes effect 1 January 1965.

A. MIKOYAN, Chairman of the Presidium, USSR Supreme Soviet
M. GEORGADZE, Secretary of the Presidium.

Source: Current Digest of the Soviet Press, Vol. XVI, No. 29 (1964), p. 25.