Heavy Hand Again Laid on Muzhik

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7025, 8 December 1932, Page 9

Heavy Hand Again Laid on Muzhik

SOVIET RETURNS TO OLD REPRESSIVE ACTS AGAINST PRIVATE FARMER. FREER TRADE FAILS TO LOWER PRICES. MOSCOW. Tho plenary session of tho Communist Party Central Committee, which took place hero between September 29 and October 2, was awaited with considerable anticipation both by Russian and foreign observers in Moscow. It was held under circumstances of strictest secrecy—the Soviet newspapers did not even mention tho session until its labours were completed. It produced resolutions so conventional and unoriginal in character that they would have scarcely attracted more than passing notice if thoy had appeared in less authoritative form.

A plenary session of this committoc is something like a party Parliament. The party congress which is held at irregular intervals —there have been two in the last five years —elects a central committee as a supremo pariy executive during the period between congresses. This body, which includes 69 members and 67 “candidates,’’ or alternate mcmcbrs, in practico delegates its executive functions largely to the smaller group of 10 who constitute the Political Bureau, tho real ultimate source of power iu the Soviet Union. But the Central Committee is convened in plenarary session two or three times a. year. * Farm Plan Inadequate.

, Tho committee found that the success of the so-callled collective farm trade introduced last spring when peasants were permitted to sell their goods moro freely on the markets was “insufficient.” A resolution called for a drive against tho extremely high prices which prevail on private markets and for a ruthless campaign against speculators and middlemen. Factories weTe urged to rely moro on decentralised sources of food supply, such as long-term contracts with collective farms.

A resolution on provision of goods for broad consumption was in similar vein. Noting that tho quantity and quality of manufactured goods remain low—the percentage of spoiled goods is said to liavo increased in 1932 by comparison with 1931 and amounts to over 20 per cent in the textile industry, and over 17 per cent, in the woollen industry —the Central Committee prescribes measures to effect technical improvement in the industries which produce directly for the consumer. Pointing out that the iron and steel industries are considerably behind their schedules and are hence holding back other branches which require metal, another resolution outlines a number of reforms which should be introduced in this branch of economic life.

Concessions Withdrawn, It seems curious that such a basic subject as agriculture was not mentioned in the resolutions of the Central Committee, while food supply was referred to slightly and indirectly. There can be a negative as well as a positive significance about the decisions of this important gathering. In going no further in its recommendations, the Central Committee indicated its belief that the crisis of food supply and of agrarian underproduction in the Soviet Union can bo solved without any abandonment of the now economic policies, which have been carried into effect under the Five-Year Plan. What strikes an outside observer as the most formidable of the dangers now confronting the Soviet regime, the danger that the mass of the peasantry may simply lose the will to work as a result of a system that in some respects has substituted requisitions for free exchange between city and village, is apparently not regarded as urgently serious by the Soviet leaders. At least they seem to believe that an increased flow of manufactured goods into the villages will relieve the situation.

Forced Renting of Horses. Even those concessions which were made to the peasants in the spring and early summer are being limited and in some cases withdrawn. The exemption from requisitions—except for grain—accorded to peasants living in a 50-kilo-meter zone around Moscow has been cancelled. The decree obliging individual peasants to rent their horses to col-

lcctive farms is a new blow at individual farming. A tax in kind on meat, so framed as to discriminate sharply against tho individual peasants has recently been adopted. Since tho freer trade which was introduced last spring did not bring out enough food to lower prices on the private market, there is now a tendency to resort to more rigorous measures to extract foodstuffs from the peasants.

Tho real test of the Soviet food situation will come not in tho immediate future, when the country still has the benefit of the last harvest, but in early spring, when food supply in Russia always sinks to a seasonal law level. Then it will be easier to judge whether the recent decision of the Communist Party Central Committee to mark time and to take no vary new or original steps to meet the food shortage was justified.