Keller, Shoshana. "The puzzle of manual harvest in Uzbekistan: economics, status and labour in the Khrushchev era". Central Asia Survey, vol.34, no.3 (2015): 296-309.

Keller, Shoshana. "The puzzle of manual harvest in Uzbekistan: economics, status and labour in the Khrushchev era". Central Asia Survey, vol.34, no.3 (2015): 296-309.

• Alleged child labour in Uzbekistan has been a major source of international and domestic tensions, as children miss classes, labour for up to 9 hours a day with inadequate food, hydration, and sanitation, and are exposed to potentially dangerous chemicals (296).
• The continued presence of child labour is mystifying from an economic standpoint, as it seems to have been continuous from the 1950s onward, despite the fact that most child labour on farms disappears w/ mechanization which should have occurred after WWII (296).
• Previous studies (Pomfret 2002) have argued that the surplus of labour during the Soviet era made it more economical to continue impressing women and children into cotton harvest rather than using inefficient Soviet machinery, but the author finds this unconvincing as a complete explanation (296).
• The mechanization of agriculture in Central Asia began under Stalin when several tractors were send to collectivized farms in UzSSR and TSSR, but further mechanization waited until the 1950s b/c WWII destroyed so much agricultural equipment and war concerns dominated industry (297).
• Attempts to greatly implement mechanization of cotton production in UzSSR were impeded by erratic domestic production, poor quality, and the lack of trained mechanics and necessary parts to repair units when they broke-down (297).
• The percentages of cotton harvested by mechanical means consistently fell short of Komsomol expectation, reaching only 10% of the harvest in 1960 (297).
• Mechanization was further impeded by Khrushchev's reorganization of raion-divisions and collectivized farms, turning collectivized farms into centrally-managed state farms, leading to a period of general disorganization which retarded completion of all reforms (297). 
• Even when farms possessed the proper equipment could not afford fuel to run it or train mechanics to service the equipment. This meant that any piece of equipment in poor areas where largely decorative and existed on paper (298).
• Soviet attempts to increase productivity through incentivizing mechanized harvest of cotton were consistently impeded by inefficiency within the Soviet system, whereby bureaucratic confusion or the ability of farm bosses to directed worker's salaries into public services meant that increases in salary at the top were rarely implemented (300).
• Due to sexism within rural areas, mechanized harvesting and other high-prestige jobs within collectivized farms where given to men, whereas women were left with manual labour, esp. during cotton harvests. Woman not official employed often labored at lower rates than men as well, leading to a large market of illegal labor by women and children to exceed production quotas (302).
• There was a tradition within the Soviet Union of sending Komsomol and Young Pioneer brigades into collectivized and state farms to participate in labour, where farm labour was seen to be part of their education as young Communists (302).
• Strangely, this tradition of using underaged laborers continued despite a massive population boom under Soviet rule, leading to overpopulation and large-scale unemployment. This also continued despite directives from Moscow from 1959 (303).
• Continued use of labour from city dwellers and university students was identified as a drain on the industrial potential of Uzbekistan, which prevented the further development of industry in the Republic. The use of schoolchildren in the harvest also negatively affected rural education, leading to a further labour surplus as rural children could often not be absorbed into the industrial economy (304).
• The lack of mechanization certainly contributed to these trends, as the use of labour from outside the collectivized and state farms only made sense in context of manual harvesting, which could be performed within skills or education (304).
• Farmer's resistance to mechanization was largely due to the perception that it would increase unemployment in rural areas, leading to the kind of population transfer into industrial centers which had devastated the culture of the Ukrainians and Belarusians (306). For this reason equipment was neglected, or possibly even sabotaged, by collectivized farmers (305).
• Most of the men who would have been unemployed instead utilized corruption to gain supercilious administrative jobs in departments of non-existent importance. This is reflected in the massive administrative staff of collectivized and state farms (305).
• The central problem was that collectivized and state farms were given ever higher quotas to meet, but these increases were not met with increases in funds available to employ farmers, leading to farm bosses hiring children and the elderly to perform harvests at a fraction of the cost of employing adult laborers. This fed into the problem of rural unemployment, which prevent the mechanization which would demand adult, usually male, labour (305).
• The prominence of women, elderly, and children in cotton production has now given work in cotton harvests gendered connotations, leading to a general perception that to be a cotton harvester is unmanly. This attitude stops many man from participating in the harvest, with many preferring to be unemployed rather than losing social status by performing work on cotton farms (306).