SOVIET SEEKS REMEDIES FOR PRESSING NEEDS

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6843, 22 February 1929, Page 8

SOVIET SEEKS REMEDIES FOR PRESSING NEEDS

ONE PLAN DEMANDS MORE GRAIN FOR FOOD, ANOTHER MORE BUILDING MATERIAL.

Moscow, Jan 14,

The tenth anniversary of the Russian Bolshevist Revolution, celebrated in 1927, was largely given over to a review of the preceding decade. The eleventh anniversary, on the other hand, coincided with a period of hot discussion regarding the best means of solving certain pressing economic problems of the present and tho future. The difficulties with agricultural supply arc perfectly obvious to the man, or, more often, the woman in the street who must stand in line, sometimes for hours, in order to secure a meagre quantity of butter or milk and who brings homo a loaf of the soggy and unsatisfactory bread which is being baked out of various mixtures, introduced in order to save wheat and rye flour. The waiting lines for cast iron are invisible, but are none the less ominous for the industrial development of the country. Industrial Requirements.

Nikolai Bukharin, editor of the official Communist Newspaper, Pravda, and a member of the political bureau of the Party Central Committee, recently published a set of figures showing that industrial requirements for black metal, which were satisfied to the extent of 80 per cent in 1927-28, will be filled by only 71 per cent in 1928-29. Trotzky’s views are sufficiently alive and known to call forth occasional polemical denunciations. He is convincou that the root of tho trouble has proved unable to keep pace with peasant demand. His proposed remedy is a programme of super-industrialisation, to be financed ,nt least temporarily, by intensified pressure on the richer peasants, until the balance between industry and agriculture is restored. At the other extreme from Trotzky, whose ideas are still anathema to the orthodox Communist, stand the advocates of tho so-called 'right deviation’ in tho party. Whereas Trotzky advocates a ruthless sacrifice of the individualistic agriculture for the supposed benefit of tho socialist industry, the right deviationists believe that tho direct interests of the peasant agriculture producer must be given more consideration, They also stand for relaxation of the pressure against the rich peasants, or kulaks, and for slackening of the development of state-and collective farms.

Economic Analysis. Two interesting recent pieces of economic analysis, one written by Mr Bukharin under the title “Notes of an Economist,’’ and the other by Y. A. Yakovlev, Assistant Commissar for Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection, entitled “Economic Problems of the Coming Years,’’ represents almost diametrically opposed viewpoints on a number of important problems. Mr Bukharin holds that industry is outrunning agriculture and that increased production of. grain is one of the cardinal necessities of the present moment. He suggests that it is useless to draw up plans of industrial development which exceed the available building resources. Mr. Yakovlev is more optimistic in his appraisal of the situation. He suggests that instead of cutting down industrial building plans to fit the shortage of materials, the production of materials should be increased in order to make possible tho execution of the plans. He declares that the introduction of a two-sliift or three-shift system in some factories would permit more production of goods for the present market, thereby coaxing out more grain from the peasant stores.