Andrew rothstein

1 Leninism (1944), p. 322.

2 Treti Pyatiletni Plan (1939), pp. 12, 28-9.

3 Pravda, 7th March, 1947.

1 Ibid., 23rd September, 1946.

2 Pravda, 30th September, 1946.

3 Pravda, 22nd September, 1946.

4 Ibid., 26th September, 1946.

5 Soviet Monitor, 20th October, 1946.

6 Memorandum of the Ukrainian Delegation at the San Francisco Conference, 1945 (Soviet Union at the San Francisco Conference), p. 54.

7 Pravda, 15th November, 1946.

1 Pravda, 22nd September, 1946.

2 Ibid., 23rd September, 1946.

3 Ibid., 15th November, 1946.

4 List published in Pravda, 9th October, 1946,

5 Leninism (1944), p. 566.

1 U.S.S.R. Speaks for Itself (1943), p. 15.

2 Bolgov, Sila i Zhiznennost Kotkhoznogo Stroya (1945}, pp. 23-4.

1 Pravda, 2nd October, 1946.

2 Ibid., 3rd October, 1946.

1 Pravda, 3rd October, 1946.

2 Ibid., 21st November, 1946.

3 Ibid., 9th October, 1946.

4 Soviet Monitor, 15th. December, 1946.

5 Izvestia, 25th February, 1947.

6 Resolution of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. on measures for restoring agriculture after the war (Izvestia, 28th February, 1947).

1 Pravda, 7th March, 1947.

2 Izvestia, 17th January, 1947.

3 Ibid., 24th January, 1946.

4 Pravda, 7th March, 1947.

1 At this point it is appropriate to comment on the remarkable discovery of a Special Correspondent of The Times {27th March, 1947) that the German invader destroyed, not only material equipment, but “the whole collective farm system”—presumably, since it is not the material part of the system, the moral part as well. “All over the Ukraine... and in the most fertile regions of the Volga,” wrote the correspondent (as though to underline this point) not only had land to be reclaimed, fertilisers supplied, houses rebuilt and population resettled, but also “the collective system re-established—not without opposition, active and passive, from stubborn peasant individualism.” Over large areas, he summed up, what was required was “the re-collectivisation as well as re-equipment of agriculture, with all that that implies”. These assertions, full of ambiguous hints and dark allusions, are nevertheless quite unmistakable in their general drift.

The correspondent did not quote any evidence of this momentous emergence of “stubborn peasant individualism”, nor yet of the Germans’ alleged success in destroying the moral or political bases of Ukrainian collective farming. He could not do so, because the evidence was not there. Among the mass of evidence to the contrary, contained in the news columns of the Soviet Press, perhaps it is sufficient to mention the following. Izvestia of 22nd February, 1947, published a letter to Stalin from a conference of collective farmers, individual peasants, State farm and M.T.S. workers, agricultural technicians and scientists of Ukraine, It announced that, in spite of “enormous destruction” wrought by the Germans, all the collective farms had been restored (there were 26,919 in 1940, and 27,006 in 1947), 713 State farms (out of 875 in 1940) and 1240 machine and tractor stations {in 1941 there were 1225). The area under crops in 1946 was 81.2% of pre-war, and the collective farms had completed the State spring sowings plan 102.2%. Thousands of collective farms were engaged in Socialist emulation. Izvestia had already reported (13th February) that the collective farms of Ukraine had carried out snow-retention measures in the winter of 1946-47 over an area of 7½ million acres (1 million acres more than the plan). Truly astonishing examples of “stubborn peasant individualism”! It should be added that by mid-October, 1947, the Ukrainian collective farmers had gathered in a bumper harvest, completed grain deliveries to the State nearly three weeks ahead of schedule, and over-fulfilled the plan of winter sowings for the 1948 harvest, increasing the area under wheat by 1½ million acres. Ukrainian collective farmers were among the first to respond, in the first months of 1948, to a new appeal of the Altai grain growers for nation-wide Socialist emulation to make 1948 the “decisive year” of the fourth Five Year Plan—by bringing crops, yields and numbers of collective farm livestock up to or past the pre-war level (Soviet News, 19th April, 1948).

1 For this period, as indeed for the whole history of Soviet economy, see M. H. Dobb’s Soviet Economic Development since 1917.

2 Works (3rd Russian edition, 1931), vol. xxvii, pp. 39-30.

3 Sorokin, op. cit., pp. 40-1.

1 Leninism (1944), p. 263.

2 Leninism (1944), p. 267.

3 Ibid., p. 432.

4 Leninism (1944), p. 640.

5 271,000 on 1st January, 1933 (Summary of Fulfilment of First Five Tear Plan, Moscow, 1933, pp. 210, 212), and 327,000 on 31st December, 1937 (Leninism (1944), p. 640).

6 Arutinian and Markus, Razvitie Sovetskoi Ekonomiki (1940), p. 527.

7 Leninism (1944), pp. 513, 551.

1 The only passing and abnormal exception was in the war and post-war years (1941-7) before production and distribution of consumer goods had recovered from war-time dislocation, and when a certain volume of semi-legal speculative petty trade—intermediary between the collective farm market and the consumer of foodstuffs, or between the town retail stores and the village consumer of manufactured goods—made its appearance.

2 Leninism (1944), pp. 512-13.

3 XVII Syezd VKP(b) (1934), p. 668.

4 With the temporary exceptions noted earlier, in the sphere of petty retail trade, and for a limited time.

5 Collected Works (English edition), vol. XXI, Book i, p. 186.

1 Selected Works (English edition), vol. VI, p. 266.

2 Selected Works (English edition), vol. VII, p. 326.

3 Selected Works (English edition), vol. IX, p. 290.

4 Baykov, op. cit., p. 65.

1 Summary of the Fulfilment of the First Five Year Plan, p. 207.

2 Kozlov, Kkoziaistvenny Raschet v Sotsialisticheskom Obschestve (1945), pp. 70-1.

1 Stalin, Leninism (1944), p. 640.

2 Figures for 1932 in Batov, Co-operatives in the Soviet Union (1945), p. 10; for 1933-38, in Stalin, Leninism (1944), p. 640; for 1939, in Baykov, op. cit., p. 254; for 1940, in the special volume “U.S.S.R.” (1948) of the Large Soviet Encyclopaedia, pp. 1023-4.

3 Kozlov, op. cit., p. 74; Batov, op. cit., pp. 28, 61.

4 Land of Socialism Today and Tomorrow (Moscow, 1939), pp. 371-2,377.

5 Quoted by Baykov, op, cit., p. 255.

6 Arutinian and Markus, op. cit., p. 538.

1 See, for example, the article on short-term credit in Soviet economy by M. Usoskin, Planovoye Khoziaistvo (1947), No. 3.

2 Rovinsky, Gosudarstvenny Biudzhet SSSR (1944), p. 68.

3 Kozlov, op. cit., pp. 65-6.

4 Dohody Gosudarstvennogo Biudzheta SSSR (1945), p. 31.

1 Figures in the first two columns are taken from Molotov’s speech at, and the final resolution of, the XVIII Party Congress in 1939. Figures in the last column are given in Law on the Five Year Plan, pp. 13-14, supplemented by the Council of Ministers on 23rd December, 1946, except those relating to paper, given by Voznesensky, Report, etc., p. 13.

2 Soviet Co-operation: Official Report of the British Co-operative Delegation to the U.S.S.R., 1944 (Co-operative Union, 1945), p. 21.

1 Batov, op. cit., p. 60.

2 Pravda, 15th September, 1946.

3 Ibid., 15th November, 1946.

4 Pravda, 28th November, 1946.

5 Ibid., 22nd November, 1946.

1 Ibid., 17th October, 1946.

2 Pravda, 16th and 19th October, 1946.

3 Izvestia, 23rd February, 1947.

4 Speech of Lyubimov, Minister of Trade, at the Supreme Soviet, 18th March, 1946 (Pervaya Sessia, etc., p. 239).

5 Pravda, 1st March, 1947.

1 Pravda, 23rd November, 1946.

2 Soviet Monitor, 17th December, 1946.

3 Ibid., 1st February, 1947

4 Soviet News, 21st March, 1947.

5 Pravda, 23rd November, 1946.

1 Arutinian and Markus, op. cit., p. 538.

1 E. S. Bates, Soviet Asia (1942); Davies and Steiger, Soviet Asia (1943); Leonard Barnes’ penetrating analysis, Soviet Light on the Colonies {1944); and two informative booklets by D. G. Wolton, Peoples of the Soviet Union (1944) and Asia Reborn (1945).

2 Vol. XXVII, p. 422.

3 Year Book, p. 493.

4 Ibid., p. 199.

1 The first two columns are quoted from Granovsky and Markus, Ekonomika Sotzialisticheskoi Promyshlennosti (1940), p. 397; the third is taken from Law on the Five Year Plan.

2 Kontrolnye Tzifry na 1928-29, pp. 536, 616, 617.

3 Kontrolnye Tzifiry na 1928 -29, p. 618.

4 PyatiletniPlan (1929), vol. iii, pp. 262, 267, 269, 274.

5 Kontrolnye Tzifry na 1929-30 (1930), pp. 376-7.

1 Pyiatiletni Plan (1929), vol. iii, p. 299.

2 Ibid., p. 290.

3 Itogi Vypolnenia Vtorogo Pyatiletnego Plana (1939), pp. 141-51.

1 Russian Year Book, 1916, p. 464.

2 Further references throughout this chapter, except where otherwise stated, are to reports of ordinary sessions of the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. Four of them are available in the verbatim transcripts published in volume form—the 10th (Desyataya Sessia Verhovnogo Soveta SSSR, 1944), from 20th January to 1st February, 1944: the 11th (Odinnadsataya Sessia, etc., 1945), from 24th to 27th April, 1945: the first after the elections of February, 1946 (Zasedania Verhovnogo Soveta SSSR, Pervaya Sessia, 1946) from 12th to 19th March, 1946: and the second (Zasedania, etc., Vtoraya Sessia) from 15th to 18th October, 1946. The last, at the time of writing—the 3rd, from 20th to 25th February, 1947—is available only in the newspaper accounts. For the sake of brevity, references will be indicated by a Roman numeral, followed by the page number or issue of a newspaper. The present passage is from XI, pp. 189-90.

1 For further vivid details, see Davies and Steiger, op. cit. The Soviet Kalendar-Spravochnik na 1944 contains some later material on the pre-war position.

2 X, p. 128.

3 II, p. 138.

4 Ibid., p. 135.

1 I, pp. 160-1.

2 X, p. 76.

3 I, p. 211.

4 X, p. 67.

5 II, p. 99.

1 Pravda, 26th October, 1946.

2 III, Izvestia, 21st February, 1947.

3 X, pp. 76-7, and XI, p. 141.

4 Izvestia, 16th February, 1947.

5 Pravda, 1st June, 1946.