Collective Farms of the Soviet Union The Soviet kolhoz, the term for a collective farm owned by all of its members, was a model of the inefficiency and tyranny of Joseph Stalin, their originator. Introduced as a way to industrialize Russia, they alternated between being a great success and being a utterly complete failure. Although Stalin's plans did in the end industrialize Russia, the costs were unjustifiable. An entire class of people was eliminated and famine was wrought on an entire republic. Stalin, who took control of the Communist Party after the death of Lenin in 1924, believed that the only way to create a powerful nation