Manawatu Daily Times Russia’s Decisive Year

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7199, 23 April 1930, Page 4

Manawatu Daily Times Russia’s Decisive Year

■ The announcement that as a result of the trade agreement between Russia and Britain the latter’s sorely-tried industries arc to receive huge orders, probably aggregating twenty millions sterling, shows that the Soviet is making strenuous efforts to bring to a successful issue its gigantic dream of communising the largest white population on the face of the globe., it would be a mistake to imagine that the success or failure of Russia’s experiment concerns only Russia. Few countries to-day live entirely to themselves; and the Soviet Union, with its population of more than 150,000,000 and its vast natural resources could not, if it wished, the isolated life of a Tibet or a Nepal. Success or failure alike in the Russian Communist experiment will have reverberations which will be heard around the world; and public opinion in foreign countries will be ill advised if it does not carefully follow and weigh the news emanating from Russia during the coming months. It becomes increasingly clear that the present year will be decisive in the fortunes of the Soviet. Never since 1921 and 1922, when the usages of military Communism were being scrapped in favour' of the “New Economic Policy,” has the change been so rapid (says one observer). Unlike those of 1921 and 1922 the present changes are away from capitalism, back or forward (depending on one’s viewpoint), to a more strictly Communist organisation of society. What has happened in the Russian villages alone is a revolution of tremendous, far-reaching significance. The will to private ownership of the Russian peasant has broken under the almost irresistible economic pressure which has been applied in favour of the new methods of collective farming, and about half the peasant households of the Soviet Union arc already included in the new collective farms. ’ a In industry, also, although the external forms are less changed, there has been a very important shift of emphasis during the last year. Hitherto, the worker’s basic incentives had been of the usual character: higher pay for increased output, lower pay or dismissal for inferior or clearly unsatisfactory .work. Now, through such devices as the “Socialist competition” between factories and the organisation of the workers themselves into “shock brigades,” pledged to concentrate on higher productivity, reduction of waste, etc., there is an effort to capitalise the Communist theory that in the Soviet Union the benefits of the workers’ toil accrues not to a private employer, but to themselves. Private trade is rapidly and visibly disappearing; the markets where it formerly flourished present an empty and deserted appearance. Another sign that the era of partially tolerated capitalism known as Nep is rapidly approaching its end is the widespread application of the rationed system in the sale of food and manufactured goods. The trade union card which entitles the holder to buy definite quantities of food has become more # important than the Soviet rouble. In short, the Communist Party, under Stalin’s leadership, is carrying out an extraordinarily daring experiment. On the one hand discarding many of the personal incentives which Benin found it necessary to restore with the Nep, crushing the peasant’s instinct for property ownership, drastically curtailing the opportunities for personal enrichment in the towns, at the same time the Conimunists are attempting to push ahead the economic life of the country at an unheard-of tempo under the fiv*year plan of national economic development, which it is now proposed to realise in four years. The year 1930 perhaps not give a complete answer to all the questions which are raised by this effort. But it will almost certainly he a year of decisive significance. What sort of harvest will be realised this year, when for the first time the important grain-producing regions are largely collectivised ? In view of the strained food situation the importance of thi3 question scarcely ha exaggerated