N.I. Bukharin and E. Preobrazhensky: The ABC of Communism

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE ORGANISATION OF AGRICULTURE

§ 103. Agrarian Conditions in Russia prior to the Revolution.

Even before the revolution, Russian agriculture was preeminently peasant agriculture. After the November revolution, after the expropriation of the landlords’ estates, our agriculture became almost exclusively peasant agriculture, and almost exclusively small farming. In these circumstances, the Communist Party encountered wellnigh insuperable difficulties in the way of its campaign on behalf of large-scale collective farming. But the campaign is in progress, and even in this most difficult period, at the very outset, certain results have been achieved.

To understand the environment, to understand the conditions in which, as far as the rural districts are concerned, our party has to realise its program, we must study the data concerning Russian agriculture prior to the revolution and those concerning the changes which the revolution has brought about.

Prior to the revolution, landed property in European Russia was distributed as follows:

Nearly all the State lands consisted of forests, or were in other respects unsuitable for cultivation in their present condition. The land privately owned by individuals and institutions (apart from that held by the peasants) may be classified as follows:

As far as concerns the peasants’ lands, according to the statistics of the year 1905 these comprised 12,277,355 farms, so that the average size of a peasant farm was 11.37 desyatinas. In the outlying provinces, where much of the land is unsuitable for cultivation, the peasant farms are considerably larger than this average, which means, of course, that land-hunger prevails among the peasantry of the central provinces of Russia. In actual fact, the average size of farms owned by the ex-serfs who comprise the majority of our peasant population is only 6.7 desyatinas. In some of the provinces, and in some of the counties, the farms are only half that size. By the year 1916, the number of peasant farms had risen to 15,492,202, although the share of the peasantry in the total cultivable land had increased very little. The land-hunger, therefore, had been greatly aggravated.

Since, however, most of the crown lands were unsuitable for cultivation, the only way in which the peasants could increase their holdings was at the expense of the land owned by “private individuals and by institutions.”

Among these private individuals, those who had to be deprived of their estates were for the most part great landlords (owning 53,169,008 desyatinas), merchants, and rich peasants, and various cooperatives and companies of a moneymaking, bourgeois type. Individually owned estates exceeding 20 desyatinas comprised in all 82,841,413. The cooperatives owned 15,778,677 desyatinas. It was in these directions that the main onslaught of the peasant revolution moved. As far as concerns the land owned by institutions, the peasants were chiefly interested in the estates held by the church, the monasteries, and the nunneries, and also to some extent in the crown lands.

§ 104. Agrarian Conditions in Russia subsequent to the Revolution.

Before the revolution, privately owned land, and especially the land in the possession of the great landowners, was heavily embarrassed. Over 60,000,000 desyatinas were mortgaged, for a total sum of 3,497,894,600 roubles. In other words, the real owners of these estates were Russian and foreign banks. This explains why the various parties of the social solidarians, the social revolutionaries in especial, although they had clamoured for the assignment of all the privately owned lands to the peasants without compensation to the owners, were afraid to face the issue, or desired to postpone the confiscation when the day of realisation approached. It was only the party of communist bolsheviks, the party of those whose sole relationships with capitalism were the relationships of war to the knife, which (in contrast with the social solidarians) pushed to its logical conclusion the peasant revolution directed against the landlords. This revolution secured legislative expression in the Land Decree brought forward by the Communist Party and adopted by the second soviet congress.

By the terms of this decree and by those of the Fundamental Land Law adopted by the third congress, private ownership of the soil was formally abolished. All the land of the republic was placed at the disposal of any and every person who is a working occupier and cultivates the soil by his own labour. There are no restrictions on account of nationality. The land is allotted equally among the population, in quantities not exceeding that which can be properly tilled by the working occupier. Furthermore, in accordance with the prescriptions of the socialist land distribution, all the territories of the republic have been declared to be the property of the whole workers’ and peasants’ State, upon which devolves the supreme right of dealing with the land.

As the outcome of the land revolution, thus legally established, agrarian conditions in Russia have been completely transformed, and are still undergoing numerous changes.

Above all, throughout Great Russia, landed proprietorship, whether large-scale or small-scale, has been abolished. Thus, as regards land-ownership, the rich peasants have been placed upon the same footing as the medium-rich peasants.

On the other hand, the utilisation of the land by the poor and land-hungry peasants has been levelled up, and they have profited by a share in the cattle and farming implements of the rich peasants, and as a result of the division of the great estates.

As regards the equalisation of land-holdings throughout the various rural districts, counties, and provinces, the matter is still in progress, and is far from being completed.

At the present time it is impossible to give a conclusive picture of the results of the agrarian revolution. Speaking generally, we may say that almost all the land owned by private individuals, either in very large estates or in those of a considerable size, has passed into the hands of the peasants who work their own farms.

The private estates have been put under cultivation. The Soviet Power reserved for soviet agriculture approximately 2,000,000 desyatinas. The peasants are also cultivating part of the municipal territories. Furthermore, the peasants have received all the church lands, all the monastery and nunnery lands, and part of the crown lands. All in all, the peasants have secured about 40,000,000 desyatinas of land that was privately owned before the revolution.

In addition to the reserves of the Soviet Power, and in addition to the territories of the sugar refineries, there still remain at the disposal of the Soviet State nearly all the areas that used to be State land, and also the nationalised forests that used to belong to private landowners.

In this way the Russian Communist Party has carried on its fight for socialism despite the unfavourable conditions that prevail as far as the land question is concerned. By far the greater part of the land actually held by the State is unsuitable for cultivation. Most of the land fit for cultivation has been allotted to the lesser peasants, to those who work their own farms.

But however unfavourable the conditions for the socialisation of agriculture in Russia, and however stubborn the resistance made by the petty-bourgeois agricultural system, in rural Russia the future belongs exclusively to large-scale socialist agriculture.

§ 105. Why does the Future belong to large-scale socialist Agriculture?

Large-scale capitalist methods have gained the victory over the methods of artisan production and peasant production, although it must be noted that in manufacturing industry this victory has been speedier and more complete than in agriculture. The communist economic system is yet more advantageous, yet more productive, than the capitalist economic system; in like manner, communist farming on the large scale will prove more productive than peasant farming on the small scale. If a pound is heavier than an ounce, and a hundredweight is heavier than a pound, it is obvious that a hundredweight is a great deal heavier than an ounce.

We must, however, discuss the matter in detail, and make it perfectly plain.

The first requisite is that in socialist agriculture all the land of the republic should be utilised in such a way that in every district, farm, and field, that particular crop should be raised (rye, oats, hay, flax, hemp, beetroot, Jerusalem artichoke, etc.) which, having regard to the quality and the peculiarity of the soil, would grow most advantageously. Precisely which crop is the most suitable, is a matter for agricultural experts to determine. In our peasant system of agriculture the very opposite frequently happens. For instance, wheat is planted, and yields a very poor crop, in places where flax would thrive; or rye is sown where wheat would do much better; or something even more stupid may be done.

The general introduction of scientific methods in the utilisation of the land under cultivation, were the change simply to be one of a better choice of crops, would greatly increase the yield, even though in other respects everything should continue as before.

But the many-field system can only be introduced by the adoption of medium-scale or large-scale agriculture in place of petty agriculture; and of course the large-scale is more advantageous than the medium-scale. By the rotation of crops we are enabled to utilise the land far more thoroughly. To-day, our peasants, with the three-field system, leave at any given moment practically one-third of the land fallow.

For the peasants it is a practical impossibility to introduce a proper rotation of crops and the many-field system. It is impossible to the peasant who farms his land in isolation, for he has not enough land for a proper system. It is even more impossible when the communal land is cut up into strips.

In large-scale agriculture we avoid the waste of land which is inevitable, under petty culture, at the corners and edges of the fields. Our peasants waste hundreds of thousands of desyatinas in this way. According to my calculations the loss is equivalent to from 60,000,000 to 80,000,000 poods of grain.

Manuring is the principal means for maintaining the fertility of the soil. In large-scale agriculture, since a smaller number of horses will suffice for the work on any particular area of land, more horned cattle can be kept and there is therefore more manure from stall-fed beasts. In large-scale agriculture it is profitable to use artificial manures, or even artificially to make various kinds of manure, whereas these things are much less practicable in the case of petty agriculture.

Especially difficult, in small-scale agriculture, is it to arrange for ploughing at appropriate times, sufficiently deeply, and in a labour-saving manner. In this matter the isolated peasant is a mere dwarf when compared with his rival in socialist agriculture (and, indeed, as compared with his large-scale capitalist rival). The cheapest, quickest, and deepest ploughing is done with the aid of tractors. On the small strips of peasant culture, tractors have no place. Besides, it is less advantageous to work with a single tractor than with groups of eight or ten tractors in unison.

The same considerations apply to various other labour-saving machines. Steam threshers and steam harvesters can only be used in large-scale agriculture.

Finally, the full utilisation of all the farming implements is only possible in large-scale agriculture. For example for the full utilisation of

The use of steam ploughs and tractors will by itself suffice, though other conditions remain unaltered, to increase the productivity of the soil by fully one-third.

Even when we have to farm any area merely with the aid of horses, large-scale agriculture is more advantageous than petty agriculture, seeing that in the former each individual horse is utilised for a larger area. It has been calculated that in this respect large-scale agriculture requires only about one-third the number of horses.

Electricity can be used only in large-scale agriculture. And by the use of electricity on one large farm we can dispense with the need for a hundred small and badly constructed stables, for a hundred little kitchens, etc. We can conduct everything in one large and well-equipped building.

Dairy-farming can only be economically conducted on the large scale.

But the greatest saving of all is the economising of labour power, the possibility of reducing to one-half or one-third the countryman’s hours of labour, not only without reducing the productivity of the land, but actually while increasing it threefold or fourfold.

Here is an example. According to the last census returns, those for the year 1916, there were in Russia 71,430,800 desyatinas of cultivable land. If we assume that this area is tilled once every year (every agriculturist knows that this is far too liberal an estimate), the peasants will have to use all the available labour power (that of 20,000,000 men) and all the available farm beasts. But to plough the same area with the aid of tractors (a tractor can plough from 8 to 10 desyatinas in one day, or considerably more if it works continuously), the labour of 1,000,000 workers would suffice. One man does the work of twenty.¹

If in place of preparing 100 meals in separate kitchens, we prepare one dinner for the same number of persons in the kitchen of the village commune, 90 cooks out of the 100 will no longer be needed. Their services can be devoted to some other useful purpose, whereby the labour of yet others will be lightened.

Thus the task of the Communist Party is to do its utmost to establish a more perfect system of agriculture, a communist system, which will be competent to deliver our rural population from the barbaric waste of energy which occurs in the extant system of dwarf agriculture; to save Russia from the barbaric exhaustion of the soil which is now going on; from the barbaric and Asiatic methods of cattle keeping; from the barbaric methods of individual cookery.

How will the Communist Party achieve this great aim? There are various lines of advance. Let us consider the speediest first.

§ 106. Soviet Agriculture.

When the landlords’ estates were seized by the peasants at the end of the year 1917, there were among these estates many on which model farms existed, where there was pedigree stock, and where up-to-date agricultural machinery was used. Some of these farms, which the soviets took under their care promptly, were saved from destruction, and they have become known as soviet farms. In addition, there passed into the system of soviet agriculture certain estates which could not be wholly distributed among the peasants because these already had as much land as they could work.

The soviet farms are the only ones in which large-scale socialist model farming, with all its advantages, can be carried on. Only by means of the soviet farms can we demonstrate to the peasants the advantages of large-scale collective agriculture.

On the soviet farms we can introduce a proper rotation of crops, and can give practical proof of all the drawbacks of the three-field system.

Here, too, we can use all kinds of agricultural machinery, including the most complicated.

The soviet farms are the only places where pedigree stock can be preserved from destruction and can be bred. Only by the use of the soviet stud-farms shall we be able by degrees to improve the farm stock of the surrounding peasantry.

At the soviet farm it will be easy to have demonstration fields for the peasants, and also to improve the seed by selective methods. Already on these farms we have sorting machines for the selection of the best seeds, and the neighbouring peasant farmers have the use of the machines.

The soviet farms organise agricultural schools, arrange for lectures on agriculture, inaugurate agricultural exhibitions, etc.

They institute workshops for the repair of agricultural implements, primarily for their own immediate use, but secondarily for the assistance of the peasant farmers of the district.

The task of the Communist Party is to increase, wherever possible, the number of the soviet farms, and to enlarge them (as far as may be without interfering with the interests of peasant agriculture). By degrees we must assemble here the best breeding stock in the republic. Here we must organise the most perfect technical elaboration of agricultural produce. We must make an end of bureaucracy, must be careful to avoid the transformation of the soviet farms into something like monasteries, concerned only with the prosperity of their own employees and workers, and caring nothing for the Soviet State. The farms must gather together a staff of highly skilled workers; they must not merely inaugurate workers’ control, but must proceed in due course to the actual management of the estates by the workers. The peasants of the environing regions must be induced to interest themselves in the farms, must be led to examine the agricultural methods and plans of these, until they are gradually induced to regard the soviet farms as the direct concern of the entire working population.

In the autumn of 1919 there were 3536 soviet farms, the cultivable area of land upon these (without counting forest land) being 2,170,000 desyatinas.

§ 107. Urban and suburban Agriculture (Market Gardening).²

In view of the terrible food crisis which has been the inevitable outcome of the war and the revolution, a sound system of market gardening has become of extreme importance to the safety of the urban proletariat. This form of agriculture is beginning to flourish, and it will have a great future. The immediate task of municipal agriculture is to secure that every town shall have a sufficient area of cultivable land for the proper development of market gardening upon a large scale. Prior to the revolution, our towns owned about 2,000,000 desyatinas. The greater part of this area, occupied by buildings, pastures, parks, and vegetable gardens, still belongs to the towns. Part of the arable was assigned to the peasants, and has therefore been lost to the towns. But possession of such areas should be resumed by the towns. Further than this, all the environs of the towns should be expropriated, in so far as such a measure is requisite for a sound and generalised system of market gardening.

Already in the year 1919, in some of the towns, the agricultural sections of the soviets were successfully engaged in market gardening, and were securing supplies of vegetables sufficient for the population of these towns throughout an entire year. Further advance must be made along such lines. Every town must have at its disposal for market gardening an area large enough to supply the whole population of the town with kitchen-garden produce. Furthermore, it is essential that every town should have a large dairy-farm supplying at least enough milk for all the invalids and children in the town, and therefore having a sufficiency of land to provide fodder for the cattle. If the municipalities conduct their agriculture properly, they can supply the urban workers, not only with potatoes and cabbages, but also with meal (buckwheat, millet). In this way every town will be enabled to provide out of its own resources for the feeding of all the town’s horses, which will make it easier to arrange for the nationalisation of the transport system. If we leave the two capital cities out of account, the experience already accumulated has shown that within the next year the practical realisation of such a scheme is possible for all the towns of the republic — provided they do not attempt to realise the utopian design of supplying their own inhabitants with corn.

Municipal soviet agriculture is of great importance for two additional reasons. The first of these is that it provides opportunity for the better utilisation of the enormous quantity of manure produced in every town in the form of street and household refuse, stable manure, and nightsoil. At present, the greater part of such manure is simply wasted. The second is that it provides for a better association of manufacturing industry with agriculture. Next year it will be possible for a definite proportion of the urban population to participate (without any interference with manufacturing industry) in agricultural production, by working in the large-scale market gardens adjoining the towns.

It is important that soviet agriculture and municipal market gardening should be something more than model enterprises. They must definitely help to relieve the food crisis. Experience has shown that in the most difficult season, just before the new crops are harvested in the rural districts and when the peasants have not begun or are only just beginning to thresh, the situation has been saved by the existence of the soviet farms. In the years 1918 and 1919, the first corn of the new harvest was provided by the soviet farms. In the future, the importance of the soviet farms in this respect will be greatly increased. By the utilisation of all the land on the soviet farms, the Soviet Republic will be enabled to provide about half of the corn needed to feed the urban workers and employees. This will tend to a notable extent to reduce the dependence of the townsfolk upon the peasants.

§ 108. Communes and Artels.

The soviet farms can increase only at the expense of those areas which now lie fallow in their environment, or at the expense of the crown lands which are brought under cultivation by improved methods, by reclamation and drainage. As regards Russian agriculture in general, this cannot become socialist agriculture until peasant agriculture has entered the socialist road. At the soviet farms, the peasants will be able to learn the advantages of large-scale collective agriculture. But as far as they themselves are concerned, they will only be able to realise these advances through cooperative farming, through uniting to form communes and artels. In capitalist society, the change from the petty agriculture of the peasants to large-scale agriculture was usually achieved by the destruction and proletarianisation of the smallholders. In socialist society, large-scale collective farming will arise out of small-scale farming chiefiy through the union of a number of small farms.

Among the peasants, the words “artel” and “commune” mean almost the same thing. Many communes term themselves artels, for the peasant is not fond of the word “commune,” and is afraid to use the name even when a commune is perforce created in practice. Generally speaking, the difference between the commune and the artel is that the artel is only a productive union (a cooperative of production); whereas the commune is not only a productive union but likewise a distributive union — a cooperative at once for production, distribution, and consumption.

The number of communes and artels is rapidly increasing in Soviet Russia. Here are the latest figures, those for the autumn of 1919.

The figures show that the tendency towards the formation of communes and artels has the character of a mass movement and that it is progressive. But the figures also show the weak side of these types of union. In the case of the communes in especial, the average size of the area concerned is very small. What we are now considering is not a change from small-scale agriculture to large-scale agriculture, but a change to medium-scale agriculture or to something very little better. Hence the communes are unable to demonstrate either to their members or to the neighbouring population the real advantages of large-scale agriculture. Upon a farm of a few desyatinas, agricultural machinery cannot be utilised to the full extent of its powers; nor is it possible on such a farm to organise a proper rotation of the crops. Even so, the significance of these unions for the purposes of medium-scale agriculture is very great. They realise the advantages of the division of labour. Some of the women are released from housework, and are therefore able to help in the speedier finishing of the land work; on a given area, fewer horses are needed, the work is done in more timely fashion, and the ground is more thoroughly tilled; as a net result, better returns are secured than from the little plots of ordinary peasant agriculture.

The economy of labour power realised by the commune is further displayed by the fact that most of the communes engage in enterprises supplementary to land work. They build mills; undertake various small industries in the home; erect repairing shops; etc.

The communes can only advance along the road to socialism by a further process of union.

This can either be achieved by the fusion of two neighbouring communes; or else by the enlargement of particular communes through enrolling considerable numbers of new members from among the neighbouring peasants; or, finally, by the fusion of one or more communes with an adjacent soviet farm.

The chief task of the Communist Party as far as the rural districts is concerned is, at this juncture, to advance small-scale peasant agriculture to a higher stage, and as a first step to the stage of medium-scale communal agriculture. There is good reason to believe that the further development of the productivity of the land will mainly proceed along this route. It is within the power of the proletarian State to hasten the process, not only through the propaganda of word and deed (soviet farming), but also through the provision of all possible advantages to the communal farms now in course of creation — by furnishing them with financial support; by supplying them with seed, cattle, implements, and advice as to agricultural methods.

§ 109. Cooperative Farming.

The commune is an intimate union among peasants, not only for productive labour, but also for distributive purposes and for cooperative social life. The artel is a permanent union solely for productive purposes, for joint labour. Cooperative farming is an even less intimate association, looser than that of the artel, more casual so to speak. The inhabitants of any particular village who are unable, owing to internal dissensions, to unite for the formation of a commune, and who for the same reason are unable to form an artel, can at least engage in cooperative ploughing in a fashion which does not bind the cooperators to anything further. The net upshot of this is that everything remains as of old, with one important exception. The common land of the village is no longer divided up into strips, but is cooperatively farmed. Each small farm has its own vegetable garden; every peasant retains his own private property; but the machines and the horses work for a definite period on behalf of the whole village.

The regulations concerning the socialisation of the land which have been approved by the Central Executive Committee, provide likewise for this most primitive stage of collective agriculture. The advantages of such a form of union consist in the complete freedom of activity which is preserved for each peasant apart from the actual process of labour, so that every peasant can readily enter into such a union without risking the loss of his independence. But, in addition, cooperative farming entails quite a number of advantages: it puts an end to the division of the individual smallholder’s land into long strips which are often widely separated one from another, and this reform renders the introduction of a many-field system possible; agricultural implements and machinery can be adequately utilised: there can be a more effective division of labour for the aid of households which lack workers, implements, cattle, etc.

Cooperative farming is the very first stage of collective agriculture; and we can therefore naturally expect that in so far as collective agriculture as yet exists, it will chiefly be in this form. The data relating to the 1919 season show that cooperative farming is already becoming established in quite a number of districts. Large areas have been divided into tithings and farmed cooperatively. In some cases part of the common land of the village has been cooperatively farmed in this way.

§ 110. Agricultural Cooperation.

Even before the revolution, cooperation for the full utilisation of the various agricultural products was widely diffused among the peasants. To this category belong the dairy-farming artels (cheese-making and butter-churning) which are widely distributed throughout the northern provinces and along the upper reaches of the Volga. Artels likewise exist for the early stages of linen manufacture, for the manufacture of raw sugar, for the drying of vegetables, for the compressing of hay. The Soviet Power supports all such undertakings. It is incumbent upon the Communist Party to assist the rural workers to form and extend cooperatives, and to encourage the peasants to improve working methods. At the same time, the party must do its utmost to resist the attempts of small-scale capital to entrench itself in such artels for a struggle against the Soviet Power and against large-scale socialist agriculture.

§ 111. The State Utilisation of abandoned Areas; the Mobilisation of agricultural Experts; Lending Stations; Improvement of the Land; Land Settlements.

The extreme disorganisation of agriculture resulting from the war has thrown large areas out of cultivation. The proletarian State cannot allow these regions to lie waste at the very time when a grave food crisis prevails in the towns and in the less fertile provinces. The Soviet State, therefore, undertakes the cultivation of all waste areas, no matter to whom they may belong. This measure is of especial importance in districts where the civil war has raged, for here in many cases the rich peasants have abandoned their farms and have withdrawn in the company of the retreating enemy. Of no less importance is the State garnering of crops abandoned by the owners, and of crops which the owners are unable to harvest unaided.

Russian agriculture can only be restored from its present disorganised condition by a number of resolute and revolutionary measures. One of these measures is the mobilisation of the labour power of all expert agriculturists, or, in a word, the institution of compulsory service for such persons. There have never been many skilled agriculturists in Russia. To-day, in view of the enormous task that lies before us in respect of the transformation of agricultural methods, and in view of the urgent need for increasing productivity in the rural districts, we cannot fail to be peculiarly aware of this lack. The mobilisation of expert agricultural knowledge is practically equivalent to the socialisation of such knowledge, and in truth it can be best and most purposively administered by the State.

The imperialist war made it impossible for Russia to import agricultural machinery. The native production of such machinery has never been equal to the demand. Many machines, and among them the best and the most complicated, have hitherto been imported from Germany, Sweden, and the United States of America. Furthermore, owing to the lack of metals, the scarcity of fuel, and many other causes, the native production of agricultural machinery has fallen to a minimum. All this has led to a serious dearth of farming implements. In view of the enormous demand for machinery and tools, and in view of the scanty supply of these requisites accessible to the proletarian State, it has become a matter of extreme importance that we should rightly distribute such implements as we have and should ensure their most advantageous utilisation. But as long as private ownership in agricultural implements exists, their proper utilisation remains impossible, seeing that for considerable periods the machines lie idle; their owner is not using them at the very times when for lack of them his neighbours cannot plough their fields or cannot gather in the crops.

In order that we may render assistance to those strata of the rural population which suffer most from lack of implements, and in order that we may guarantee that the implements shall be fully utilised, we must see to it that we do not supply machinery and tools for permanent use by private owners, but we must ensure that they shall be kept at lending stations where they will be available for all who need them. In other words, the machinery and tools intended for the use of the peasantry and allotted to particular regions (villages, rural districts, or circles), will not be sold to any individual peasant; they will be provided for the temporary use of all who need them, and a definite charge will be made to cover expenses. The depots where such arrangements are effected are known as lending stations. At these the machines and tools are stored, cleaned after use, and (in well-equipped stations) kept in repair. Lending stations already exist and function, although as yet there are very few of them. It behoves the Soviet Power to ensure that, as far as may be, all agricultural machinery, and without exception all the more complicated types of machine, intended for the rural districts, shall be supplied only to lending stations. There is no other way of securing that the machines shall be adequately used throughout their working life — to say nothing of the fact that in this way we shall help the poorer peasants whose means will not suffice for the buying of machines as private property. The machines confiscated from the rich peasants must also be kept at the lending stations. In the long run, a widely organised system for the provision of agricultural machinery through the instrumentality of the lending stations, will lead slowly but surely to the nationalisation of all the most important implements of agricultural production; and will consequently, in addition to giving immediate help to peasant industry, tend to promote its socialisation.

In the agricultural program of the proletarian Power, the improvement of the land must occupy an extremely important place. The Soviet Power has at the present time under its control millions of desyatinas which, although they are not cultivable as yet, might be made cultivable by a moderate amount of work in the way of cleansing, the grubbing-up of roots, drainage (either by open channels or by the laying of underground pipes), irrigation, etc. However strict the limits imposed upon the enlargement of the soviet farms, as far as concerns land already cultivated or immediately susceptible of cultivation, there is unlimited scope for the provision of areas which, by the above-mentioned methods of land improvement, our young socialist agriculture will be able to wrest from nature.

Land-improvement work is the most important of all the public work which the Soviet Power has to organise. It is, moreover, preeminently work in which we can make a good use of all the parasitic strata of society.

LAND SETTLEMENTS. The point has been omitted from our program, but it is necessary to consider it here, for the Soviet Power will be compelled sooner or later to give practical attention to the policy of land settlement.

Notwithstanding the redistribution of the landlord’ estates, land-hunger is already manifest in a number of provinces. In outlying regions, on the other hand, there are huge areas of unoccupied land. Migration from the centre to the outskirts will be indispensable in the near future. It will be incumbent upon the proletarian State to ensure that the migrants to the newly settled districts shall not devote themselves to small-scale agriculture upon separate patches of land. We must see to it that everything is made ready for the newcomers, everything requisite for large-scale communist agriculture (communal farm buildings, communal land properly allotted for a many-field system, up-to-date agricultural machinery, and so on).

§ 112. State Assistance to Peasant Agriculture.

The soviet farms, the communes and the artels, in conjunction with all the above-described measures, will serve, by means of the organisation of large-scale collective agriculture, to enhance the productivity of agricultural labour and to increase the yield from the land. There is no other certain, speedy, and direct way of reaching the desired goal. But whatever successes we may achieve in this matter of organising soviet farms and communes, for a long time to come small-scale peasant farming will continue to exist; for a long time to come small-scale peasant farming will be the predominant form of Russian agriculture alike in respect of the area thus cultivated and in respect of the quantity of agricultural produce. The question therefore arises, How can we help this method of farming to increase the productivity of the land, even though it is still restricted by its petty-bourgeois limitations?

Our program contains suggestions for a number of measures which the Soviet Power can apply to the help of small-scale peasant farming. They are the following.

First of all, help can be given in the apportionment of land. The chief evil of our rural life, one against which even the peasants are more and more inclined to kick, is the division of the cultivable land into long narrow strips. We continually find that the arables of one village will run right up to the kitchen gardens of the next village, and vice versa. Parts of the arable will be five or six miles from the dwellings, and are often left untilled. In order to put an end to this strip system, the peasants have, in elementary fashion, been endeavouring to do away with the obsolete method of apportioning the cultivable land, which conflicts for the most part with the new subdivisions made after the seizure of the landlords’ estates. In so far as the struggle against the strip system is the forerunner of a more highly developed form of agriculture, and generally speaking in so far as the peasants need assistance in the apportionment of cultivable land, the Soviet Power must come to their aid with its surveyors and its agricultural experts.

For sowing, the Russian peasants commonly use unselected seed, just as it might have been sent to the mill. If they sowed selected seed, they would get much better crops, even though the conditions were unchanged in other respects. Still better harvests could be obtained by the use of better varieties of seed. These, however, the peasant can only secure from the State, which alone is in a position to purchase them from abroad, or to provide the farmers with what they need out of the small stock of improved seeds which has been saved from destruction on the soviet farms.

The live stock of our peasant farmers is largely degenerate. There is urgent need for an improvement in the breed. Such pedigree cattle as still remain in Russia are at the present time concentrated on the soviet estates and the soviet dairy-farms and stud-farms. The State will be able to give great assistance to the peasants in this matter of stock raising by the organisation of pairing stations on every soviet farm which has pedigree stock, and by the systematic distribution of thoroughbred males to pairing stations in every district.

Many of our peasants are still ignorant in respect of some of the most fundamental and important agricultural questions. It is evident, therefore, that the diffusion of a wider knowledge of these matters cannot fail to lead to improvements in the working of the land. In addition to giving lectures upon agricultural topics, which it is the duty of the soviet experts to deliver at various centres, brief courses of lectures must be given at the soviet farms. The farms will have model fields for demonstration purposes, will organise agricultural exhibitions, will distribute popular literature dealing with agricultural subjects, etc.

In addition to diffusing agricultural knowledge, the Soviet Power must directly provide expert assistance to the peasants. In view of the present scarcity of experts, the mobilisation of the entire personnel will achieve a useful result in this way, that the expert, whose services were in former days placed exclusively at the disposal of the great landlords, will now be made available to the peasants. Furthermore, the Soviet Power must take extensive measures to train agricultural experts from among the ranks of the peasants. Besides increasing the number of agricultural courses of lectures and the number of agricultural schools, the best method of achieving this end in the immediate future will be by the provision of special courses for the most gifted members of the communes and artels. In this way a vanguard of trained agriculturists can be recruited from the peasants’ own ranks.

Of enormous importance to the peasants at this juncture is the provision of possibilities for the repair of agricultural implements. In view of the present iron famine, it is impossible for the small private workshops to undertake the necessary repairs. The State alone is in a position to organise the matter upon a sufficiently extensive scale, in part by enlarging the activities of the repairing shops on the soviet farms, and in part by covering the countryside with a network of shops especially instituted for the repair of agricultural implements.

Huge areas of peasant land now unfitted for cultivation are perfectly capable of being transformed into excellent arable. The necessary improvements are neglected to-day, partly because the work is beyond the means of any village community, and partly because the peasants are not acquainted with modern methods of land improvement. In this matter, therefore, the proletarian State can be of the utmost assistance to the peasants. Notwithstanding the civil war, in many districts excellent work is already being done along these lines.

During the decade 1901 to 1910, the yield per desyatina in various countries was as follows:

Thus despite the fact that the Russian soil is much richer than that of western lands, our country is the last in the list as regards productivity. Per desyatina, Russia grows three and a half times less oats than Denmark and Belgium; four times less wheat than Denmark, and three times less than Germany and England; three times less rye than Belgium. Even in Turkey, the yield per desyatina is twice as great as the yield in Russia.

It is necessary to point out that the yield of our peasant farms is yet lower than that given in the above table, for the table records averages, and therefore includes the high productivity of the private landlords’ estates, where the yield was from one-fifth greater to two and a half times greater than the yield of the peasant farms.

It follows, therefore, that without any inercase of the land under cultivation our peasants could effect a twofold or a threefold increase in their harvests, simply by abandoning antiquated methods in favour of up-to-date ways of cultivating the soil.

§ 113. The Union of manufacturing Industry with Agriculture.

The development of the towns which has been the outcome of the divorce of manufacturing industry from agriculture and of the predominant role assumed by manufacturing industry in the economic process of social life as a whole, has, in the later phases of capitalism, become a monstrous growth. The best energies of village life have systematically passed from the village to the town. Not merely has the urban population grown faster than the rural population, but town has positively grown at the expense of country. In many capitalist lands there has been an absolute decline in the rural population. Some of the towns, on the other hand, have swelled to fantastic proportions. The consequences have been disastrous both to town and country. Among the ill effects, may be mentioned: the depopulation of the villages and their relapse into primitive conditions; the separation of rural life from urban culture; a severance of the townsfolk from nature and from opportunities for health-giving agricultural work, with the resultant physical degeneration of the urban population; the needless removal into the town of a number of branches of industry in which agricultural produce is elaborated; extreme exhaustion of the soil, dependent upon the fact that the towns do not return to the land in the form of manure that which they extract from the land in the form of food; and so on.

An approximation of town and country, a union between manufacturing industry and agriculture, a withdrawal of workers from factory occupations to agricultural — such, in this connexion, must be the immediate aims of communist reconstruction. A beginning has already been made in the assignment of tens of thousands of desyatinas of soviet land to various workshops, institutions, and enterprise which aim at the purposive and organised transfer of town workers to the soviet farms; by the creation of market gardens for individual factories and workshops; by Communist Saturdays in which urban workers visit neighbouring villages to help in agricultural labours; by the mobilisation of soviet employees for work in the municipal market gardens; and so on.

The Communist Party will continue to advance along these lines, in the conviction that the future belongs to the union of manufacturing industry with agriculture — a union which will ultimately lead to the withdrawal from the towns of the gross excess of urban population, and to the distribution of this excess throughout the countryside.

§ 114. The Tactics of the Communist Party in relation to the Peasants.

In our agrarian program we discuss what we wish to realise in agriculture. Let us now consider how we hope to realise our program; to what strata of the population we look for support; by what methods we think we shall be able to win over the majority of the peasants to our side, or at least to ensure their neutrality.

In the campaign against landlordism, the urban proletariat was supported by all the peasants, including the rich peasants. This explains the rapid success of the November revolution, for thereby was achieved the overthrow of the bourgeois Provisional Government which had been endeavouring to postpone the liquidation of landlordism. But the carrying into effect of the new agrarian law concerning the so-called socialisation of the land, with its equal division of the cultivable areas, transferred the rich peasants into the counter-revolutionary camp. For the rich peasants lost part of the purchased land which they had owned before the revolution, and they lost the land which they had been able to farm because they had rented it from the poor peasants. They lost everything which they had secured when the estates of the great landlords had been plundered. Finally, it was made impossible for them to employ wage labour. The rich peasants constitute the class which would have become a landlord class if our revolution had never gone beyond the limits of a bourgeois democratic revolution. They constitute a class which is from its very nature mortally hostile to all attempts in the direction of the socialistic organisation of agriculture. The aim of the rich peasants as a class is to bring about the development of our agricultural system in such a direction that it will come to resemble that of Denmark or of the United States of America. But for the proletarian authority and its socialistic policy, Russian agriculture after the abolition of the old landlord system would with remarkable celerity have developed into a system of bourgeois farming carried on by wage labour, with the aid of greatly improved methods of working the soil. In conjunction therewith there would have come into existence a huge class of semi-proletarian peasants. The rich peasant greeted the revolution inspired by the most rosy hopes and anticipations, but as a result of the revolution he found himself stripped of part of the land which he had owned before it occurred. As long as this class of rich peasants continues to exist, its members will inevitably prove to be irreconcilable enemies of the proletarian State and its agrarian policy. In its turn it can expect nothing from the Soviet Power but a pitiless struggle against its counter-revolutionary activities. The Soviet Power may eventually be compelled to undertake a deliberately planned expropriation of the rich peasants, mobilising them for social work, and above all for the task of improving peasant land and the land of the soviet farms.

The middle peasants form the great majority of the Russian peasants. These middle peasants secured their share of the landlords’ estates with the aid of the urban proletariat, and only with its aid can they retain their grip upon this land in face of the counter-revolutionary movement on the part of the capitalists and the great landlords. Only in alliance with the proletariat, only under the leadership of the proletariat, only through the frank acceptance of this leadership, can the middle peasants save themselves from the onslaughts of world capitalism, from being plundered by the imperialists, from having to pay the vast debts incurred by the tsar and the Provisional Government. The system of petty agriculture is in any case doomed. It must inevitably be replaced by a more advantageous and more productive system, by the system of large-scale cooperative agriculture. Only through an alliance between the socialist proletariat and the middle peasants can this transformation be achieved without poverty, ruin, and incredible torment for the latter.

The petty-proprietor mentality of the middle peasants, however, inclines them to form an alliance with the rich peasants. An additional impulsion in this direction arises above all because the middle peasants are compelled to divide their superfluous grain with the town workers, or rather to hand over what they do not actually need for their own consumption without any prospect of receiving from the town workers in return the products of urban industry. It is therefore essential that the Communist Party should endeavour to detach the middle peasants from the rich peasants; for the latter are in reality the agents of international capitalism, and are endeavouring to lead the peasantry as a whole into courses which will involve the loss of all that has been gained by the revolution. Furthermore, our party must make it perfectly clear to the middle peasants that only consideration for transient and temporary interests can induce them to make common cause with the rich peasants and with the bourgeoisie; we must show them that their real, permanent, and far-reaching interests, as genuine workers, dictate an alliance with the urban proletariat. Finally, while striving to effect the socialist transformation of agriculture, we must be careful to avoid alienating the middle peasants by ill-considered and premature measures, and must make no attempt to coerce them into forming communes and artels. At the present juncture the principal task of communism in Russia is to bring it to pass that the workers upon their own initiative, and the peasants upon their own initiative, shall destroy the counter-revolution. When that has been achieved, there will no longer remain any insuperable obstacles in the way of the socialisation of agriculture. As regards the poor peasants, the proletarian and semi-proletarian strata of these have to a considerable extent, thanks to the revolution, been raised into the stratum of the middle peasants; nevertheless, the stratum of the poor peasants still constitutes a main prop of the proletarian dictatorship. It was owing to the alliance with the poor peasants that the Soviet Power was enabled to deal some sturdy blows against the rich peasants, and to detach the middle peasants from the rich peasants. The communist mentality of the poor peasants rendered it possible to create instruments of the Soviet Power in the rural regions, thereby bringing about the first important and decisive military mobilisation of the peasantry.³ Finally, up till now the poorer peasants have furnished most of the members of the communes and artels, and have actively assisted in the carrying out of the land decrees and of the other decrees of the Soviet Power.

The most important task of the Communist Party, as far as concerns the poor peasants, is to put an end to the disintegration that has affected this stratum since the dissolution of its committees. The best of all ways will be to unite the poor peasants upon the basis of production. Their influence in village life will be increased if they are enabled to participate in improved methods of agriculture. This can be achieved by enabling all the poor peasants to join forces in artels or in the communal cultivation of the land.

The reason why the rich peasant has so great an influence is because he is a successful farmer. But the farming of the rich peasant remains petty-bourgeois peasant agriculture. If the poor peasants combine to form communes they will be able to avail themselves of better agricultural methods than those ordinarily employed in peasant farming, and will thus from the economic outlook become as strong as the middle peasants, and even as strong as the rich peasants. The dictatorship of the poor peasants in rural life can be built up upon this economic foundation, upon the material superiority of the member of the commune over the small farmer. But it will not be a dictatorship of the poor peasants in the strict sense of the term; it will not be the rule of “paupers and loafers” of which the rich peasants used to complain (not without reason) in the days of the committees of the poor peasants. It will be the rule of the vanguard of the rural workers, the rule of that minority which is two centuries ahead of the majority.

It is, however, extremely difficult to induce all the poor peasants to enter communes. Of late, considerable numbers of the middle peasants have joined communes, and they have been still more inclined to enter artels. In so far as the poor peasants will not abandon petty agriculture, we must induce them to form trade unions of poor peasants. These unions must carry on the struggle against the rich peasants, must continue the struggle which was not fought to a decisive issue by the committees of poor peasants. The poor peasants must unite for purposes of mutual aid; they must enter into economic relationships with the State, in so far as they can undertake definite work for the State, receiving in return certain products on preferential terms, and various kinds of economic aid. Among the poor peasants of Russia there already exist large numbers of unions; these are formed for various purposes, but they are for the most part purely local, and have a temporary and casual character. They must be fused to form larger unities. There is a great future for such unions among the poorer strata of the population in the provinces whose production of food-stuffs is very small — the districts, for instance, from which we get pitch and tar, the forest regions where timber is felled and stored, and so on.

Additional work for the Communist Party, as far as the poor peasants are concerned, is to bring them in closer contact with the urban proletariat, to rid them of their petty-bourgeois habits and of their futile hopes that they will be able to continue vigorous, independent, individualist farming. Wherever there is any considerable number of poor peasants, we must see to it that communist groups, or groups of sympathisers with communism, are formed. Every poor peasant should become a member of a commune. Every member of a commune should become a communist.

Notes

¹ It is true that in addition to the men who are actually working the tractors we ought to take into account the workers who are employed in the workshops where the tractors are made, those who are employed in getting petroleum, etc., before we decide how many desyatinas of land one men can plough. This will somewhat reduce our estimate of the advantage of tractor ploughing, but the adventage will still remain exceedingly great.

² The familiar term “market gardening” is retained for the special form of agriculture described in this section, although the “kitchen-garden” products are no longer being produced for the capitalist market. — E. and C.P.

³ When we are agitating to induce the peasants to participate actively in the civil war, we have to stress the reasons why they will find this participation advantageous to themselves. What interests the peasant is not that we are fighting for socialism, but that we are fighting to make it impossible for the imperialists to exploit the petty proprietors in barbarous fashion, and to make it impossible for the imperialists to put the peasants’ necks again under the yoke of landlord or merchant.

Literature

ENGELS, The Peasant Problem in France and Germany. LENIN, The agrarian Problem and the Critics of Marx. LENIN, The agrarian Problem in Russia at the Close of the Nineteenth Century.

Among popular pamphlets published since the revolution, the following may be mentioned: ZHEGUR, The Organisation of communist Agriculture. KY, Rural Communes. MESHCHERYAKOV, Agricultural Communes. PREOBRAZHENSKY, Agricultural Communes. LARIN, The Urbanisation of Agriculture. MESHCHERYAKOV, The Nationalisation of the Land. LENIN, Speech concerning the Condition of the middle Peasants, delivered at the eighth Congress of the Communist Party. SUMATOHIN, Let us live in a Commune! LENIN, The Struggle for Bread.

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