PEASANTS IN SOVIET

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26605, 15 December 1951, Page 7

PEASANTS IN SOVIET

Wbrk Conditions Described (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, December 14. “The average Russian peasant, although conscious of. the hardness of his life, is not by riow living under any all-pervading sense of constant repression,” says the diplomatic correspondent of “The Times,” summing up the evidence of Russian village life compiled from some 20 Russian refugees who escaped to the West between 1946 and 1950.

The correspondent says that most of the workers on the land are workers on collective farms. They also own small plots of private ground near their homes.

“Almost all the refugees emphasise the importance of the private plots. In the Kharkov Province in 1947 a severe drought meant that the yield from private plots was reduced to almost, nothing and one refugee, describing this, said that many people died of starvation since the farmers based their existence on their private glots. Most private plots appear to e about one-third of an acre, used mainly for vegetables, but rye is often grown, and many peasants have one cow. or a few sheep or goats.” The correspondent describes a typical peasant day in the Smolensk province as follows: Start at 6 a.m.. work at home, attending to the family cow, work in the garden, bringing water from the well and chopping firewood. Breakfast a chunk of black bread and a pint of milk. If no milk is available the bread is eaten with salt. At 8 a.m. the collective farm foreman called out the villagers and detailed them to work in the fields of the collective farm. At 2 p.m. they had a lunch break of two hours in which thev returned home for a meal of bread, soup and potatoes. At 4 p.m. the foreman called them out again to work until dark. They then ate what was left of the lunch, and went to bed.

“Somewhat Improved” “It appears that conditions in rural areas are somewhat improved, that the collective system is firmly established over a wide area, and that the Government should be able to maintain the system indefinitely if it does not try to tighten it too hastily,” says the correspondent. The correspondent says that the refugees complain of the taxes on collective produce, which are levied in kind. They have to pay income tax, cultural” tax (which nominally goes to , the improvement of communal buildings or for local amenities), agricultural tax for the services of local machine and tractor service stations, and social insurance. They complain that since the war social insurance dues have been entirely used up. There is much .exorbitant taxation of private produce. A refugee from the Kazakh Republic said that the owner of an average plot had to surrender about 4cwt of potatoes, 901 b of meat, 75 eggs, and a sum in cash annually, and that most farmers had to buy the eggs and the meat at a co-operative shop, or from private traders, to fulfil their State deliveries.