kolkhoz means A farming collective in the former Soviet Union. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 85 out of 100.
kolkhoz is pronounced /kəlˈkɒz/.
Why “kolkhoz” is a great word
KOLKHOZ — [Noun] A collective farm in the former Soviet Union, formed by the compulsory amalgamation of peasant holdings and operated as a nominally cooperative enterprise under state control. From Russian колхо́з (kolxóz), a contraction of коллекти́вное хозя́йство (kollektívnoje xozjájstvo, "collective farm, household"), first attested in English in 1921. Unlike a sovkhoz, where workers were salaried state employees on state-owned land, or a commune, a voluntary community sharing possessions for ideological unity, the kolkhoz was a formalized instrument of agrarian control. It is the vast, fenceless field stretching to a treeless horizon; the meticulously falsified harvest report; and the stubborn potato plot secretly tended behind a peasant's cabin—a monument to the forcible reorganization of landscape and labor into something efficient, bleak, and enduringly barren.
Etymology
From Russian колхо́з (kolxóz), contraction of коллекти́вное хозя́йство (kollektívnoje xozjájstvo, “collective farm, household”).
noun
- A farming collective in the former Soviet Union.“And books were demanded of them, books on Russia, on sailors, on aeroplanes, on scientists, on metro-workers, on kolkhoz labourers, on women and schoolchildren and parachute heroes.”