Tyhe Waikato Times. With which Is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. TUESDAY, MAY 20, 1930. SPRING SOWING IN RUSSIA

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 18024, 20 May 1930, Page 6

Tyhe Waikato Times. With which Is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. TUESDAY, MAY 20, 1930. SPRING SOWING IN RUSSIA

Stalin seems, to have called a halt only just in time—if indeed it is in time—to the bands of young Communists who were dispatched into the country to terrorise the villages into collectivism. It is clear, however, that the slackening in the persecution of the peasantry was not due to any abandonment of the Communist objective or to any compunction for the excesses perpetrated by the local agents Sf the party. The use of more humane, if slower, methods was urged merely because the violence originally employed was defeating its own object, and because the rural life of the country was becoming so thoroughly demoralised that the success of the spring sowing was in peril. The Communist leaders, in fact, had become alarmed at the prospect of serious difficulty in feeding the Army and the industrial workers in the cities. The collective'farms, which had been collectivised at a great cost of productive efficiency, would evidently not be able to supply them with food in sufficient quantities, and it was important to avoid such a state of irritation and discontent among the peasants not yet collectivised as would paralyse their productive activities. They are, for the time being, to be reprieved from forcible collectivisation and be encouraged to grow food and to bring it to market. A short while ago a peasant who sold his produce privately risked arrest, the confiscation of his goods, and classification as a kulak. Now the local authorities have been ordered to encourage him to do so, and are threatened with severe punishment if they put difficulties in his way. Even the crusade against the kulaki is to be relaxed. The kulaki are, for the present, to be left more or less undisturbed, in the hope that they will grow enough to tide the Soviet authorities over the food crisis -which they see approaching. When they have done that the work of exterminating them can be resumed, though perhaps in a more leisurely fashion. This sudden change of tempo in the drive towards complete collectivisation has been accompanied by an equally sudden slackening of the religious persecution which has hitherto been an inseparable feature of the Bolshevist policy. This may be due in part to the pressure of foreign opinion. Not that the Soviet rulers attach any importance in itself to the indignation aroused abroad by their proceedings, but they were beginning to find that the widespread hostility aroused was -creating political and, what mattered more, commercial and financial difficulties which they wished to avoid. Although this was doubtless one of the factors in their decision, the discrimination in favour of the peasants seems to imply that their main object was to mitigate the unrest caused in the villages, and that this tempering of their anti-religious zea l —like the parallel slackening in the war of extermination against the kulaki —was part of an endeavour to save the spring sowing, which their previous violence had placed in such serious jeopardy. The information that reaches Moscow about the conditions on the collective farms and about the state of mind of the peasantry tends to show that the retreat may have been sounded too late to serve its purpose. From Stalin’s previous record, and from the vigour with which, under his orders, the full policy of exterminating individualism was pursued throughout the winter months, it is clear that nothing short of overwhelming necessity would have induced him to modify it, or rather to suspend its execution. Apart from his own fanatical devotion to the extreme Communist creed, he is running a serious risk to his own dictatorship by his change of attitude. His orders to shorten sail, though they have been supported by the official Press, have not been too well received by the crew of young Communists upon whom he has hitherto relied for support and who have been his principal agents in terrorising the countryside. Having been incited for months to show no quarter to the kulaki, or to other peasants with individualist leanings, they are now proving difficult to restrain. To them the work of collectivising ail production is a sacred crusade. They believe implicitly in the saving grace of the Communist faith, and live in the confident expectation of an imminent world-revolution when that faith will be adopted by all the peoples who now walk in the outer darkness of individualism. Stalin professed and sought to apply the same beliefs. In preaching moderation and restraint to the party zealots he is running the risk of being regarded as a lukewarm believer in Hit. faith, perhaps even as a hore-tic at heart. That, of course is the comii ( n fate of the leaders of extreme revolutionary movements, but, if thedictator cannot effective.y control his f-.mat'ral followers, the outlook for the next harvest in Russia wilt be dismal inde-cl.