The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24, 1921. DECAY OF RUSSIAN AGRICULTURES

Taranaki Daily News, 24 August 1921, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24, 1921. DECAY OF RUSSIAN AGRICULTURES

The evil effects of Communism have never been more strikingly demonstrated than by the deplorable condition into which Russia has sunk since Soviet rule replaced autocracy. Formerly the world’s main granary, now in the throes of famine and pestilence, this vast country, which possesses enormous resources, has become rotten to the core. In the war between town and country—which the Special Commissioner of the Observer describes as “probably the most cruel part- of the civil war in Russia”—the peasants were ultimately victorious, but their victory was achieved by the utter destruction of agriculture itself. Never, says this Commissioner, was the impoverishment and disorganisation of Russia more manifest. Under “war Communism” the town population, like the army, until recently existed on food requisitioned from the peasants, the people receiving irregular hunger rations in exchange for work —a system that constituted the real basis of life in Soviet Russia, in accord with the creed that those who do not work shall not eat. Suddenly this system

ceased and the workers and townspeople had to rely for their food on free barter with the peasants, so that those who have nothing to barter cannot obtain food. As industry and trade have been ruined to a greater extent than agriculture, the fact that there was nothing to give the peasants in exchange for their grain, was the chief reason for converting the State grain monopoly into >

a most cruel and devastating war on the peasants, ■ whose produce was seized, without payment, there being only a vague promise to pay “when industry revived.” In reality this requisitioning by force served the double purpose of securing food and defeating the tendency of the middle class to accumulate capital. That fierce and ravenous risings ensued, accompanied by the burning of . Government stores and the killing of commissars, was only natural, but it was “the decay of agriculture that was the main armour of the peasants in this queer and unprecedented war between the scattered and defenceless producers and the armed consumers,” contends the Observer’s commissioner. The' peasants realised that the less grain they produced, and the fewer cattle they kept, the less could they lose. Incentive to production disappeared—-the towns must be starved, even if the peasants themselves suffered from lack of food. Hence, while Soviet methods of requisitioning were being perfected, production fell to an extent that made requisitioning well nigh impossible. Not only has production been reduced to a minimum, but there is a serious lack of seed grain, the stock of which is under fifty per cent, of the needs. Under such disastrous circumstances it was evident that the policy of requisitioning must be abandoned, and the peasants given the incentive of being able to freely dispose of their produce. It is said that Lenin forced his party to agree.to this concession, the result being that, though a pretence is made that no change of policy has occurred, yet free trade is changing the whole economy of Soviet Russia. The inference is that industry could not be revived by State control and organisation, but only by encouraging the enterprise and initiative of the people. This is an object lesson which extremists in every country will do well to take to heart. The problem that has now to be solved in Russia is, how are the workers to acquire the necessary means of barter so as to obtain food from

the peasants? The payment of a living wage for work at the State factories seems out of the question, the alternative'’ being part wages in kind that can be bartered, or time allowed for making goods the peasants will take in exchange for food. Either of these systems will have ,an adverse effect on industry, While the workers appear disposed to establish small shops which must compete with the nationalised factories. On this matter the Commissioner considers that either the State will continue to harass the small workshops, or will return to the principle of free competition all round. The first, he contends, is the road to economic ruin, hut the second will ultimately lead to an industrial revival that will help to develop Russia’s unlimited wealth. Before this can take place, dictatorship must give way to stable Government, and that is Russia’s most urgent need.