citizens, and the political leaders seemed to become more tolerant of illegal economic activity and corruption. Despite those general trends, problematic as they were, some Soviet citizens did strive actively to serve their fellow human beings, including the most vulnerable members of society. See also: KRUSCHEV, NIKITA SERGEYEVICH; LENIN, VLADIMIR ILLICH; MARXISM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
DeGeorge, Richard T. (1969). Soviet Ethics and Morality. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Evans, Alfred B., Jr. (1993). Soviet Marxism-Leninism: The Decline of an Ideology. Westport, CT: Praeger. Mehnert, Klaus. (1962). Soviet Man and His World, tr. Maurice Rosenbaum. New York: Praeger. Smith, Hedrick. (1983). The Russians, updated edition. New York: Times Books.
The Soviet-Polish War was the most important of the armed conflicts among the East European states emerging from World War I. The Versailles settlements failed to delineate Poland’s eastern border. The Entente powers hoped that the Bolshevik Revolution was temporary, and that a Polish-Russian
border would be established after the victory of White Russian forces. As the eastern command of the German Army withdrew after the armistice of November 11, 1918, Vladimir Lenin in Moscow and J?zef Pilsudski in Warsaw planned to fill the vacuum. Lenin hoped to export revolution, Pilsudski to lead an East European federation.
In early 1919, Lenin’s main concern was the White Russian forces of Anton Denikin. Pilsudski did not support Denikin, a Russian nationalist who treated eastern Galicia as part of a future Russian state. In late 1918, Pilsudski watched as the Red Army moved on Vilnius and Minsk. Pilsudski’s offensive began in April 1919, his forces taking Vilnius on April 21 and Mnsk on August 8. In collaboration with Latvian troops, Poland took Daugavpils on January 3, 1920, returning the city to Latvia. By then Denikin was in retreat, and the Red Army could turn to an offensive against the remnants of independent Ukrainian forces.
The Ukrainian National Republic of Symon Petliura allied with Poland in April 1920. With Ukrainian help, Pilsudski took Kiev on May 7, 1920, only to find his troops overwhelmed by the forces of Soviet commanders Mikhail Tukha-chevsky and Semen Budenny. On July 11 Great Britain proposed an armistice based upon the Curzon Line, which left Ukraine and Belarus to Moscow. These terms displeased Pilsudski, but Polish prime minister Stanislaw Grabski had agreed to similar ones in negotiations with British prime minister David Lloyd George. Moscow’s replies questioned the future of independent Poland, and the Red Army encircled Warsaw in August.
With the exception of its Ukrainian ally, Poland faced this attack alone. The French sent a military legation, but its counsel was unheeded. Pilsudski himself planned and executed a daring counterattack against the Bolshevik center, shattering Tukhachevsky’s command. He then drove the Red Army to central Belarus. The Battle of Warsaw of August 16-25, 1920, was called by DAbernon “the eighteenth decisive battle of the world.” It set the westward boundary of the Bolshevik Revolution, saved independent Poland, and ended Lenin’s hopes of spreading the Bolshevik Revolution by force of arms to Germany.
The Soviet-Polish frontier, agreed at Riga on March 18, 1921, was itself consequential. Poland abandoned its Ukrainian ally, as most of Ukraine was still under Soviet control. Yet the war forced the Soviets to reconsider nationality questions, and
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
led to the establishment of the Soviet Union as a nominal federation in December 1922. During the 1930s, Josef Stalin blamed Polish agents for shortfalls in Ukrainian food production, and he ethnically cleansed Poles from the Soviet west. These preoccupations flowed from earlier defeat.
Riga divided Belarus and Ukraine between Poland and the Soviet Union. The Red Army seized western Belarus and western Ukraine from Poland in September 1939 thanks to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty, undoing the consequences of Riga and encouraging forgetfulness of the Polish-Bolshevik War. Yet more than any other event, the Polish-Bolshevik War defined the political and intellectual frontiers of the interwar period in eastern Europe. See also: CIVIL WAR OF 1917-1922; POLAND; WORLD WAR I
D’Abernon, Edgar Vincent. (1931). The Eighteenth Decisive Battle of the World. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Davies, Norman. (1972). White Eagle, Red Star. New York: St. Martin’s. Gervais, C?line, ed. (1975). La Guerre polono-sovi?tique, 1919-1920. Lausanne: L’Age de l’Homme. Palij, Michael (1995). The Ukrainian-Polish Defensive Alliance. Edmonton, AB: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies. Ullman, Richard H. (1972). The Anglo- Soviet Accord. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wandycz, Piotr. (1969). Soviet-Polish Relations, 1917-1921. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
TIMOTHY SNYDER
The sovkhoz, or state farm, the collective farm (kolkhoz), and the private subsidiary sector, were the three major organizational forms used in Soviet agricultural production after the collectivization of Soviet agriculture, a process begun by Josef Stalin in 1929. Although the concept of the state farm originated earlier under Vladimir Lenin during the period of war communism, the serious development of state farms began during the 1930s as the Soviet state exercised full control over the agricultural sector.
The state farm might be described as a factory in the field in the sense that it was full state property,
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financed by state budget (revenues flowed into and expenses were paid by the state budget), and subject to the state planning system, and workers (rabochy) on state farms were paid a contractual wage. All of these major characteristics of the state farm distinguished it from the collective farm.
The sovkhoz was organized in a fashion similar to an industrial enterprise. The farm was headed by a state- appointed director, and the connection between labor force and sovkhoz resembled the structure of the industrial enterprise. Most important, capital investment for the sovkhoz was funded by the state budget. Thus, although prices paid by the state for sovkhoz produce were lower than for compulsory deliveries from collective farms, state farms were in a financially much better position. This was a major reason for the subsequent conversion of weak collective farms into state farms in the post-World War II years, a process enhanced by the Soviet policy of agro- industrial integration and the ultimate development of the agroindustrial complex comprising collective and state farms and industrial processing capacity.
The role of state farms in Soviet agriculture grew steadily during the Soviet era. The number of state farms grew from less than 1,500 in 1929 to just over 23,000 by the end of the Gorbachev era in the late 1980s. This expansion resulted partly from state policy-the amalgamation and conversion of collective farms to state farms-and partly from the use of state farms in special programs expanding the area under cultivation, such as the Virgin Lands Program. State farms were large. During the 1930s, for example, state farms were on average roughly 6,000 acres of sown area. By the 1980s, they averaged more than 11,000 acres of sown area per farm.
There were considerable differences in the output patterns between collective and state farms, and state farms were viewed as more productive and more profitable than collective farms. Generally speaking, the role of the state farms increased over time from modest proportions in the early 1930s. The sovkhoz came to be important in the production of grain, vegetables and eggs, less important for meat products. During the transition era of the 1990s, state farms were reorganized using joint stock arrangements, although the development of land markets remained constrained by opposition to private ownership of land. See also: AGRICULTURE; COLLECTIVE FARM; COLLECTIVIZATION OF AGRICULTURE
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Davies, R. W.; Harrison, Mark; and Wheatcroft, S. G., eds. (1994). The Economic Transformation of the
