sovkhoz, state-operated agricultural estate in the U.S.S.R. organized according to industrial principles for specialized large-scale production. Workers were paid wages but might also cultivate personal garden plots. Its form developed from the few private estates taken over in their entirety by the state in the original Soviet expropriations. The number of sovkhozy increased during the period of collectivization beginning in 1929 and spurted again during the 1950s when a number of kolkhozy, or collective farms, the more prevalent form of agricultural enterprise, were converted to sovkhozy. The Virgin and Idle Lands Campaign initiated in 1953 relied mainly on the sovkhozy. In 1973 the total area of sovkhozy was greater than that of kolkhozy for the first time. In 1990 the Russian government began encouraging the gradual conversion of sovkhozy to private farms.