The Press THURSDAY, JUNE 1, 1950. SIGNS OF STRAIN IN RUSSIA

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26127, 1 June 1950, Page 4

The Press THURSDAY, JUNE 1, 1950. SIGNS OF STRAIN IN RUSSIA

The Western countries afe now searching as hopefully for signs of weakness, strain, or disruption in Stalin’s Russia as they did not long ago in Hitler’s Germany. There are abundant signs that the regime has serious difficulties; but the strict official censorship and the even more effective unofficial curbs on information make it difficult to establish facts or to assess the importance of those that are established. Most observers agree that the Politburo’s most pressing problem is the continued resistance of the peasants, especially in the Ukraine, to the national agricultural programme. Measure after measure has been introduced to break down the “ village economy ”, which has persisted in spite of collectivisation. Most of the peasants still farm their own acre or two in addition to working on the collectives; and they have hitherto been allowed to keep the proceeds of the sale of their own produce. A very heavy agricultural tax on the income from private holdings failed to discourage these individualists; the devaluation of The rouble, which cut heavily into their savings, was no more effective and no doubt increased their resentment. But the agricultural programme is fundamental to everything that Russia is now trying to do. Industrialisation in the towns has been pushed on at the price of a lowered standard of living; the maintenance of huge armed forces also pulls down the general standard of life. It has become increasingly important, therefore, to organise more and better supplies of food for the town populations; but in spite of the high priority given to this object, it is believed that progress has been insignificant. There have been purges in the very highest quarters of agricultural policymaking; and plans for a new attack on the problem are now taking shape. They seem to rely, for the most part, on the “ amalgamation ” of the collective farms, many of which are surprisingly small even by West European farming standards. It is at once an admission of the failure of the vaunted and hardwon collective system arid an admission of Russia’s compelling need to find additional food for flagging industrial workers in the towns. Under the new system the Russian peasants will increasingly become hired labourers working on huge State farms. They will not surrender the last remnants of their individualism willingly; and their passive resistance may yet be an important factor in shaping Russia’s future. Transport Failures i The purges and reorganisations among those responsible for agricultural planning and administration ■ have been matched in other fields. Recently Akapov, the Minister of i the Automobile and Tractor Indusi try, was dismissed without official explanation, but presumably be- • cause the 66 factories under his coni trol were lagging behind the production rate aimed at in the cur-

rent Five-Year Plan. Road transport is vitally important to Russia not only commercially but also strategically; yet motor transport is so expensive and unreliable that, according to Peter Wohl, in the “ Christian Science Monitor ”, trucking costs are 10 times as high as in the United States. Official figures notwithstanding, there is reason to believe that planned industrial targets are not being hit as unerringly as the regime would like. Many observers have pointed to a strange discrepancy—that while the usual claims are made for the completion of annual programmes in 11 months or less, party leaders have been critical of “ boastfulness and com- “ placency ” and “ bureaucracy and “ indifference ” in high officials. Edward Crankshaw, the noted writer on Russia, remarked in the “ Ob- “ server ” recently that the Party’s Central Committee had launched a widespread attack on “ countless in- “ dividuals and concerns for failing “ to fulfil their plans, for falsifying “ their returns, or for reaching their “ production quotas only by turning “ out shoddy or unwanted goods ”. These evidences of strain in the Russian economy can be multiplied again and again. They were added to this week by the cabled report from London that “ surprisingly “ frank ” articles are being pubI lished in Moscow accusing officials I of incompetence, corruption, and i “ lack of Bolshevist ideology ”, Such • denunciations are usually the prelude to a new purge of officials, ! high and low. It has now been j announced that the Minister of Building Materials has been rei lieved of his duties. This may well I be the first of a new. wave of : administrative changes. Attacks on the Party It is easy to make too much of these signs. Mr Paul G. Hoffman, Economic Co-operation Administrator, may have done so in an address to the Chamber of Commerce of the United States when he declared that “ mounting tensions ” in Russia will cause further satellite States to break away from Moscow and that in the foreseeable future “ the dic- “ tatorship of Stalin will vanish in “ turbulence like those of Hitler and “ Mussolini ”. “ How stable ”, he I asked, “ is a system in which one- “ eighth of a national population “ must be put in slave-labour camps “ to maintain it? ” Coming from a country full of forebodings about the ambitions and capabilities ' of Russia, this opinion is at least refreshingly new. And it is not such a very different conclusion, after all, from that reached by Mr Crankshaw after consideration of the

innumerable attacks now being macle on Government officials all over the country and even on officials and regional units of the Communist Party itself: If, after three years of the ideological campaign to glorify Russia and Bolshevism and wipe out the last traces of a corrupt bourgeois mentality. the rank and file of the party officials are losing enthusiasm and even passively conniving at the perpetual concealed resistance of the people against the Government, it means that the structure of the Soviet dictatorship is being subjected to an entirely new strain. This strain must be intensified by the fierce rivalries in high places, which can only increase as Stalin progressively delegates his powers; and it may well produce a situation which even Russia will find it hard to take in her stride. The Western democracies can at least take encouragement from the evidence that, popular ideas notwithstanding, a dictatorship is not necessarily more efficient than a democracy in organising its internal structure, political, social, and economic. There is at least some reason to hope that Russian expansion will be checked not only by external opposition but also by the dead weight of heavy internal problems.