In his 1881 letter to Vera Zasulich, Karl Marx wrote that historically the "agricultural commune" is the most recent type of archaic forms of societies.
They began to form spontaneously following the 1917 revolution but had their roots in much older Russian traditions of communal life in agricultural settings.
The agricultural communes of the 1920s were often religious in nature, either explicitly (as was common in the North Caucasus) or strongly influenced by non-conformist and sectarian religion.
[2] With the forced state collectivisation programme beginning in the late 1920s, the agricultural communes were transformed into kolkhozes, collective on paper but in practice having many of the characteristics of state-owned enterprises.
The reasons for their formation vary with the time and place and include the pursuit of religious ideals, utopianism and practical necessity.