The zveno (Russian: звено, IPA: [zʲvʲɪˈno] ⓘ; Ukrainian: ланка, romanized: lanka) was a small grassroots work-group within Soviet collective farms.
Like the early brigades themselves, the zvenya could be temporary, specializing in one particular job (ploughing, harrowing, sowing, harvesting etc.
A huge column of ploughs simultaneously tilling a field might appear a glamorous example of large-scale socialist agriculture.
In the 1932 harvest, in large collective farms the typical zveno was composed of just one reaping machine, with 6-8 people binding the grain behind it.
At the beginning of 1933 the agricultural writer Samarina considered that, in the drier steppe areas, task-combined zvenya would ensure that all related jobs in spring work (ploughing, harrowing, sowing) would be carried out in quick succession before the soil dried out.
The zvene'voi usually held the key job in the zveno, e.g. the sowing or reaping machine operator.
Samarina's recommended zveno was composed of two subunits consisting of a harrow and two ploughs each, and a sowing machine.
[4] At the end of 1933 a USSR-wide conference of collective farms decided that stability was best served by preserving a nucleus of workers who had achieved work-harmony.
[5] A task-combined zveno, wrote Kayurova, had or should have plots of land fixed to it for the whole period of its work cycle.
[6] Fully fixed or permanent zvenya (of one year's duration or more) were first set up in individual specialist crops.
In May 1933 a central Communist-Party and government resolution recommended that zvenya of 5-7 workers, responsible for all agricultural operations in the year, be widely adopted for sugar-beet.
For the sake of stability there should be a basic skeleton of zvene'voi and skilled workers, and the plot should be fixed for the year.
Even in the mid-1930s writers were arguing that (in contrast to specialist crops) the cultivation of cereals fell into two distinct and separate phases, {*early and late,} and thus there was not the basis for zvenya fixed for the whole year.
These zvenya too adhered to the principle of a fixed skeleton of skilled personnel during the year with a fluctuating periphery of labourers.
But by the end of the 1930s the dominant trend, at least in the southern grain-surplus areas, was to assign all collective-farm personnel, cultures and land plots to zvenya.
In March 1939 a Party congress resolution called for the "wide adoption of zvenya in collective farms".
However, a still more important reason would seem to have been that zvenya independent of brigades fell outside the State's imposed structure for the economic exploitation of the peasantry.
[citation needed] Kursk oblast fell seriously behind in its delivery obligations as a result of the system it had practised.