Payment for Work on Collective Farms, the main form of distributing the necessary product among farmers in the collective farm sector in the USSR in accordance with the quantity and quality of work expended by each farmer in social production. Reflected in it is, on the one hand, the specific features of collective farm-and- cooperative property, and, on the other, the specific features of agriculture as a sector of material production. The principal feature of remuneration of cooperative enterprises is the fact that the remuneration fund is formed from the incomes of the given collective farm. A direct link is ensured between the material position of collective farmers and collective farm profits, and the economic level it has achieved through payment for work. The principle of the formation of the remuneration fund from incomes of the given collective farm is inherent in collective farm-and-cooperative property itself. However, its concrete forms have changed and been improved parallel to the development and strengthening of the collective farm economy. The central policy is that of drawing the level and forms of remuneration for work on collective farms and at state enterprises closer together. For quite a long time, the remuneration fund of the collective farms was formed from the resources that remained after incomes in kind and money incomes had been distributed. The workday unit was a unique measure of the expenditure of labour and distribution of funds of individual consumption on the collective farms. But the workday unit could not guarantee beforehand a definite level and amount of payment. Remuneration for labour was usually determined and made at the end of the year. Payment in kind was predominant. But the greater socialisation of production and the upsurge of the economy of the collective farms made it possible to gradually transfer to payments in advance to collective farmers on account of the workday units to be earned over the year. Many collective farms began to plan definite remuneration beforehand. Following the March (1965) Plenum of the CC CPSU qualitative changes in the remuneration for work were introduced on collective farms. Measures to encourage agriculture ensured the growth and stability of collective farm incomes and created prerequisites for them to switch to a guaranteed payment for work according to principles valid for all farms. Wage rates on state farms for similar jobs have been adopted as a criterion of the level of remuneration. Farmers receive payment regularly during the year, and direct money rates are used. The share of payments has grown in the remuneration fund. Remuneration in cash makes collective farmers materially interested in the growth of the socialised economy, makes it possible to realise more fully 267 the principle of equal pay for equal work on the scale of the collective form-cooperative sector, and helps to further level out the rates of payment for work on collective farms and state enterprises. Alongside this, the significance of remuneration in kind has also been retained. The uneven levels of mechanisation of work, of the qualification of farmers, and different degree to which labour is used over the year are all objective bases for the differences in remuneration for labour which still exist. If they lack their own means, collective farms receive credit for payments for work. A policy is being implemented of priority growth of remuneration for work on collective farms. This brings earnings of collective farmers closer to those of industrial and office workers, and helps to eliminate differences in cultural and daily conditions of life in town and countryside. Today remuneration for work on collective farms is being improved, primarily by dovetailing the amount of the remuneration with the ultimate results of production, and ensuring equality in paying for work of equal difficulty, arduousness and intensity.