MIA  >  Archive  >  Cliff  >  Stalin’s Satellites  >  Chapter Index

Ygael Gluckstein

Stalin’s Satellites in Europe

Part One
The economy of the Russian satellites

Chapter VI
Socio-economic relations in the satellites
(Part 2)

The workers’ resistance

Reference has already been made to the way in which the workers of Czechoslovakia expressed their rising dissatisfaction with the Communist Party leaders by rejecting the official list of candidates to Works Committees in 1947, thus driving the Party to abolish the secret ballot. But the workers found other ways of expressing their dissatisfaction, the most important being greatly increased absenteeism, which reached the proportions of an epidemic in Czechoslovakian industry. At the 9th Congress of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Slansky, the General Secretary, disclosed that whereas before the war absenteeism in the foundries totalled 2.4-3.5 per cent, it had risen in January 1949 to 12 per cent and in March to 15 per cent. The position was even more critical in the building industry: in the four principal building undertakings in the Morawská Ostrawa district alone 53,420 working-shifts had been lost, while another building enterprise at Tábor registered 50 per cent of absentees (Quoted by News from Czechoslovakia, May 1949). On September 21st, 1949, Premier Zapotocky told the Czechoslovak Trade Union Council that absenteeism among the workers so far that year was already more than 37 per cent higher than in 1947 (Lidové Noviny, 22nd September 1949). Even the National Assembly’s decision of 24th March 1950 to deduct from the holiday days missed without good reason would probably not altogether stop this expression of the increasing “enthusiasm” of the workers for the regime.

It is not only the Czechoslovak workers who put up some resistance, however limited it must be by the totalitarian character of the regime. The Times of 5th September 1949 gave a report from its correspondent in Budapest of a conference of the Communist Party of Greater Budapest – in which more than 6o per cent of Hungary’s industry is concentrated – which was attended by all the foremost leaders of the Party. “The report (of the Conference) says that productivity is stagnant in most industries and declining in some. Between February and July it fell throughout the manufacturing industry by 17 per cent ...” “Far too many workers were applying for sick relief – in a recent week in one factory 11 per cent, in another 12 per cent. Instances are given of self-inflicted wounds.” Rákosi in his speech claimed that in many factories the number of days missed for sick leave was two to three times higher than before the war (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 6th September 1949). On August 31st, 1949, he said that in the previous few months productivity had fallen by 10-15 per cent.

In Poland an epidemic of absenteeism drove the government to adopt harsh measures. On April 19th, 1950, the Sejm passed a law concerning the “Socialist discipline of labour”. Extremely heavy punishments are imposed on absentees. A worker who has been absent from his work for four or more days in a year without a satisfactory excuse suffers a wage cut of 10-25 per cent which may last for three months.

The Yugoslav workers also use the weapon of absenteeism in their struggle against their bad conditions. The Times of 1st November 1950, quoting the Belgrade trade union paper Rad, said: “... absenteeism in the coal mines in Serbia reached 19%; Croatia – 17½%; Slovenia – 15%; and Bosnia-Herzegovrna – 14%. The plan allowed for a maximum absenteeism of 11%.” In his speech to the Federal Assembly on 17th April 1950 Tito said: “In 1949, there was a 26.26% loss in working time. In Croatia, this percentage reached 33%, of which 21% was spent in holiday-taking and absenteeism. This proves the weak struggle for discipline ... The workers also frequently change their place of work. In a speech to the Serbian parliament, Jovan Vesilinov, Vice-Premier of Serbia, reported that during ten months of 1949 state enterprises in Serbia took on 628,064 persons but lost 430,050 workers who had left their jobs (The New York Times, 29th January 1950). Borba of 21st August 1950 stated that in the Trepcha lead mines and refinery – one of the largest in the world – some 11,000 workers were taken on in 1949, of whom 10,000 left before the end of the year because of very bad conditions, irregular pay “usually between the fifteenth and twentieth of the month, often between the twenty-fifth and the thirtieth”, and the irregular distribution of the rations (in August the rations were distributed ten days late, and in the meantime the workers had to do without bread).

The Government took strong measures to fight against absenteeism and the frequent changes in the place of work. On 26 January, 1950, it passed a decree stating that food ration cards would be withdrawn from persons leaving their place of employment without permission, and no new cards would be issued them. The decree further stated that a clause might be included in labour contracts obliging a worker to reimburse the enterprise for any loss in production resulting from his unjustifiable absenteeism.

Another symptom of the increasing dissatisfaction of the workers is the decline in the quality of what they produce. For example, in the speech quoted above, Rákosi stated that the percentage of waste in the Manfred Weiss iron foundry, the second biggest metal factory in Hungary, had risen from 10.4 to 23.5 per cent. In Poland, in 1948, of 67 million tons of coal, 1,100,000 tons were stones; in 1949 the percentage of stones in the coal reached 5 per cent. In 1948 and 1949 a sizeable proportion of the exports of Czechoslovakia – the country with the reputation for products of good quality – was returned as below standard.

The admonitions of the leaders to the workers are often of such a character as to leave no doubt about their indocility. Istvan Kossa, Hungarian Minister of Industry, said in a speech at Debrecen on December 6th, 1948, that “The workers have assumed a terrorist attitude to the directors of the nationalised industries”, and he threatened them with forced labour.

Chivu Stoica, Rumanian Minister of Industry, addressing the workers of the Resita plant, the largest metallurgical establishment in the country, on December 25th, 1948, accused them of not having fulfilled the plan and of being “capitalist agents”.

In Yugoslavia, Vice-Premier Edvard Kardelj, in his report to the Fifth Congress of the Communist Party (July 1948), attacked those workers who showed “resistance to realistic norms, against competition, and on the other hand – in exaggerated demands in regard to pay”. “It is clear that the consequences of such a stand are a decrease in work discipline, insufficient aid to rationalisers and innovators in the realization and application of their proposals, an incorrect and unfriendly attitude toward the heads of the enterprise, an incorrect attitude toward competitions” (The Communist Party of Yugoslavia in the Struggle for New Yugoslavia, for People’s Authority and for Socialism, Belgrade 1948, pp.87-8).

That the workers nevertheless remain members of the Communist Parties – as the official statistics show – is not because of their enthusiasm for them, but because it is too dangerous to leave. Anyone who leaves the Party faces the threat of economic sanctions (at least). This is shown clearly by some figures issued in October, 1948, by Jozsef Révai, editor of Szabad Nép, the Hungarian Communist Party daily. He says that the paper is read by only 12 per cent of the Party members. At the big MAUAG factories, for example, where 6,000 out of the 8,000 workers are Party members, only 780 read the Party newspaper. (For a Lasting Peace, For a People’s Democracy!, 15th October 1948). Thus a large number of workers are merely nominal members of the Party.

The large-scale “purges” in the Parties also express the increasing hostility between the leaders and their “supporters”. In the “purge” in Hungary nearly half a million members were expelled from the Party. In Czechoslovakia, there was a “purge” of a quarter of a million members in 1948 and the first half of 1949. In Rumania, over 192,000 “hostile elements”, that is, over a fifth of the total membership of the Party, were “purged” between November 1948 and May 1950. In Bulgaria, 92,500 members and candidates, out of a total of 442,183, were expelled from the Party between June 1949 and June 1950.

While the workers within the “People’s Democracies” cannot express their dissatisfaction through the police-controlled plebiscites, miscalled general elections, those on the other side of the frontier, who are close enough to know the reality of the regime inside the “People’s Democracies”, and free enough to express their opinion of it – as in Austria and Berlin – have decisively shown their disapproval.

Chapter Index

The expropriation of the peasantry

The parvenu ruling class in Eastern Europe in order to add to its wealth and comfort, devotes all its energy to increasing the number of workers employed in state industries. Hence it comes into conflict with the masses of the peasantry.

As has been pointed out, the progress of agriculture in the Eastern European countries depends on their industrialisation. Their inherited backwardness, their separation from Western Europe by the division of the Continent into two spheres of influence, Russian imperialist exploitation, the greed of the local bureaucracy – all these factors impede the accumulation of capital, necessary for industrialisation. Had industry already existed on a big scale, the countryside would voluntarily have supplied agricultural products to the urban population in exchange for industrial products, and would also have supplied the necessary labour power for industry, as the surplus population would have been attracted to the towns by their higher standard of life and culture. Conversely, if the village supplied the agricultural products and labour necessary for the towns, industrialisation would have been much accelerated. These two conditions are mutually dependent. But the bureaucracy cannot tolerate a gradual development of agriculture and industry, and prefers to try to escape from the vicious circle by forced “collectivisation”.

All previous land reforms had, for a number of years at least, the effect not only of not increasing the agricultural surpluses available for the towns, but actually of reducing them. This is because large estates, based either on tenants’ or workers’ labour, obviously have relatively larger surpluses than the small peasant farms, even if both have the same productivity. Land reform, by dividing the large estates into many small peasant farms has, as an immediate consequence, a decline in the marketable agricultural surpluses. The surpluses necessary for industrialisation could be obtained by the encouragement of kulak farming, but this would be unwise from the standpoint of the bureaucracy, as socially and politically it would raise a new ruling class clinging tenaciously to private property, and economically it would lead to a demand by the kulaks for industrial goods in exchange for their surpluses. The bureaucracy needs a cheaper way of getting this surplus. It might have recourse to taxation and requisitions. But this too can hardly be relied on to provide large enough quantities of agricultural products for quick industrialisation, for the disgruntled peasant can “go on strike” and decrease his sowing area, or neglect his fields, so that the surplus available for requisition decreases, or he can hide part of his yield, for it is impossible to supervise millions of small peasants scattered in thousands of villages. These drawbacks are virtually eliminated and the obligatory deliveries much more easily secured if millions of peasants are concentrated in some tens of thousands of large farms. The peasants, it is true, may react to their expropriation and herding in semi-serf camps by slaughtering their livestock. This may reduce the total agricultural production for a number of years and famine may stalk the land bringing death in its train, but no matter. If the quantity of agricultural goods in the hands of the state increases, everything is satisfactory. “Collectivisation” also enables the state to supervise the labour power in the countryside, and, if the wages in the towns are not high enough to attract people from the countryside, they will be drawn there by the mechanisation of agriculture and the elimination of superfluous mouths in the “collective farms”. Further, if capital construction is being undertaken, which demands very little skill and can be done by a large number of workers with very little or no machinery (for the bureaucracy likes to “waste” as little of the expensive machinery needed for industrialisation and militarisation as possible) the “collective farms” can provide an ample supply of this cheap labour from the “kulaks”, i.e. all who dare to show any resistance to the bureaucracy. As yet it is scarcely possible to prove from experience that this will be the fate of agricculture in the satellites, because the process is only in its early stages. That this is the tendency, however, is clear enough, from the developments so far and from the history of agriculture in Russia since 1928.

Chapter Index

The example of “collectivisation” in Russia

The influence of the collectivisation of agriculture on the agricultural output in Russia is clear from the following table:

This shows that, ten years after the drive towards “collectivisation” began, the number of cattle was 10 per cent lower than before, while gross grain output was 16 per cent higher. The main reason for the rise was the cultivation of new steppe lands which required agricultural machinery. The total sown area rose by 21 per cent and the grain area by 11 per cent.

That the productivity of labour in Russian agriculture, despite the mechanisation, was not higher in 1931-5 than in the countries of Eastern Europe is confirmed by the following calculation made by W.E. Moore:

Even if the improvement in Russian agricultural production after 1931-5 is taken into account, it is clear that her output per male engaged in agriculture was not more than that of Rumania, Bulgaria or Poland, and must have been far short of that of Hungary or Czechoslovakia.

Does this mean that the rulers of Russia failed to achieve what they aimed at by “collectivisation”? This question can be answered by examining the proportion of the agricultural output taken by the state in the form of obligatory deliveries:

From 1927/8 to 1936/7 these obligatory deliveries taken by the state from agriculture increased from 112.2 million centners to 260 million (i.e., by 131.8 per cent) and the proportion in the gross yield of agriculture which they represented from 15.4 per cent to 34.9 per cent, and of the net yield from 18.5 per cent to 42.4 per cent.

The obligatory deliveries are virtually direct taxes, as the prices paid by the government for the products delivered is only a small percentage (not even 5 per cent) of the price which the government charges the consumer.

It is interesting to note that Lenin writes in his book, The Agrarian Question in Russia at the End of the Nineteenth Century (1908): “The horseless and one-horse peasants (i.e., the very poor peasants – Y.G.) pay in the form of taxes one-seventh and one-tenth respectively of their gross expenditure. It is doubtful whether serf dues were as high as that ..”. The agricultural toilers in the “Socialist Fatherland” pay much more than that! [10]

Collectivisation not only transformed into proletarians those who came into industry, but also those who remained in agri. culture. The overwhelming majority of agriculturists are in reality, if not in theory, people who do not own any of the means of production: they are compelled to work an ever-increasing number of days on the kolkhozes for very low payment, below even that of the unskilled worker in the towns. The constant rise in the number of days that every household works in the kolkhoz compared with the quantity of grain per household remaining to it after the obligatory deliveries is shown in the following table:

To add to the difficulties of the poor agriculturists, not everyone has to give the same number of labour days. The higher strata of kolkhozniki give far fewer labour days than the poor kolkhozniki. The reward for their labours, however, is in inverse proportion to the time contributed.

There is less justification in calling the Russian agriculturists of today owners of the means of production than the serfs of the nineteenth century.

Miss D. Warriner in 1940 noted as regards the productivity of Russian agriculture: “Russia both before and after collectivisation had a lower productivity than Eastern Europe ... Russian collectivisation has not really achieved much increase in productivity through reforming the peasant system. Yields are still lower in Russia than in every part of Eastern Europe, cattle density is still much lower ...” (Eastern Europe after Hitler, London 1940, p.4). In another place Miss Warriner writes: “... the physical output per man in corn is slightly higher in Russia than in the very poorest regions of Eastern Europe, and the value in terms of industrial products certainly lower” (Economics of Peasant Farming, London 1939, p.188). As regards the standard of living of the Russian agriculturists in relation to those of Europe Miss Warriner says: “As things arc at present, on the basis of purchasing power, the Russian farmer is certainly not so well off as the peasants in Poland.” “On the Russian farms meat consumption must be much lower than in Poland, and milk consumption must be lower also” (Ibid., pp.188, 189). [11] To gain a rough idea of what the standard of living of the Polish peasant was before the war, we quote the following passage: The Polish peasants’ “poverty was proverbial. It was said that during the depression the peasant would split a match four or five times, and would boil potatoes over and over again in the same water to save the salt ... According to the Polish Minister of Finance the average cash income of the peasant in 1934-5 was eleven groszy (about one penny) a day ...” (Henryk Frankel, Poland, The Struggle for Power 1772-1939, London 1946, p.134).

Miss Warriner’ s analysis, based on Soviet statistics, conforms with the conclusion Victor Serge reached from his direct contact with Russian toilers: “The vast majority of the peasants live more poorly than before the collectivisation, that is, on the whole, at a level lower than pre-war” (i.e., pre-World War I) (op. cit., p. 37).

The peasants did not gain anything out of the “collectivisation”, but that does not detract one iota from the success of “collectivisation” from the standpoint of bureaucratic state capitalism.

Miss D. Warriner was quite right when she said of the results of “collectivisation” in Russia: “Apparently, then, most of the increase in output could have been achieved by extending the State farms in the sparsely settled and uncultivated regions, without collectivizing the peasant villages in the already settled parts; had there been no collectivization, then all the loss of capital through livestock slaughter would have been avoided and corn production in 1931 and 1932 would have been maintained” (Economics of Peasant Farming, op. cit., p.174). This is true. But then the state would not have got such a large part of the agricultural output for nothing!

Chapter Index

The satellites follow in the footsteps of Russia

Undoubtedly the circumstances in which the collectivization of agriculture is being and will be carried out in the satellites are to some extent different from those in which it was carried out in Russia. In part they will moderate its results, and in part will render them more severe. The moderating influence will be the lesson learnt from the experience of Russia, which will prevent the Communist Party from making similar mistakes in the satellites; namely, rushing through “collectivisation” at a feverish pace, far outstripping the development of the necessary technical basis for large-scale farming, and then hastily retreating [12]; and secondly taking all the livestock – cows, sheep, poultry – away from the peasants and putting them into the kolkhozes, and then reversing their policy after half the livestock had already been slaughtered.

The Eastern European governments will avoid such damaging twists and turns. According to the Plans, the technical basis for collectivisation will be much better prepared than it was in Russia. In 1933 in Russia, when 65.6 per cent of the peasants were in kolkhozes, there was one tractor per 615 hectares of arable land. When the current Plans are completed, the minority of peasants in the satellite countries will be in co-operative farms while there will be one tractor per 290 hectares. The co-operative farms in the “People’s Democracies” are leaving the majority of the livestock to the peasants as their private property, and are even compromising with the private interests of the peasants on the question of co-operative cultivation of the land, as can be seen from an examination of the types of co-operative farms in these countries.

In Hungary there are three types of co-operative farms:

1. The lowest, in which ploughing and sowing alone are done collectively while further cultivation and harvesting are done by the individual peasants. Draught animals or machines for the ploughing and sowing are obtained from the members of from the nearest State Tractor Station. In the former case, the members who own the draught animals or machines are paid a customary rent for them. Each member pays the cost of ploughing and sowing according to the quantity and quality of land he owns.

2. The intermediary type is similar to the lowest type except for the fact that harvesting and threshing are also done collectively.

3. In the highest type all the land is pooled for common cultivation, except for about two acres which are kept by each member as his private plot. Members are paid wages according to the amount and quality of work they do and rent according to the quantity and quality of land they contributed. No more than 25 per cent of the profit may be set aside for rent.

In Russia the peasant belonging to the lowest form of “co-operative farm” – the kolkhoz – is allowed less private property than members of the highest form in Hungary. Iii many districts no kolkhoznik is allowed to own more than 0.6 acres, in others 1.2 acres and, in a small number of districts 2.4 acres, and no rent is paid for the land contributed to the kolkhoz.

In Yugoslavia there are four types of co-operative farms. In the first and second types, the land remains the private property of the co-operative member, and rent is paid for it. In the third type the land remains private property but no rent is paid for it. The fourth type is like the Russian kolkhoz. At present the overwhelming majority of co-operatives belong to the first two types.

In the Bulgarian co-operative farms the net income is generally divided thus: 60 per cent is distributed among the members according to the number of working days they contribute, 30 per cent is paid out in rent in proportion to the quality and quantity of land brought by each peasant into the collective farm. The Model Statute of the Co-operative Farms (adopted by the Second National Conference of Cooperative Farm Representatives, held on April 5-7, 1950) describes another mode of distribution of the income: “... a number of working days, from 1 to 5 per decare (1 decare = ¹/10 hectare – Y.G.) of land, depending on the quality of the land, fixed by the General Meeting as rent is given as a bonus to every co-operative member. In this way the working days given to every co-operative member for his pooled land are added to the working days contributed by him with his labour, and for the sum of these working days he receives agricultural and animal products and cash” (Article 17b). For a hectare the owner gets a rent of 10 to 50 days. Since the maximum amount of land permitted a person is 20 hcctares (except for Dobrudja where it is 30 hectares), a peasant who gives 20 hectares to the co-operative farm will receive a rent equal to the wages of 200 to 1,000 working days. The co-operative farm thus does not equalise the peasants and abolish exploitation (even if we discount the exploitation of the co-operative as a collective by the state bureaucracy through obligatory deliveries, the fixing of prices for agricultural goods, etc.).

There is another important difference between the agricultural working co-operatives in Eastern Europe and the kolkhozes in Russia. When a peasant leaves the kolkhoz or is expelled from it he loses all rights to the kolkhoz’s property; when a peasant leaves the agricultural co-operative, he is allowed, at least according to the law, to detach or sell the property he contributed or the plot he received in exchange.

On the other hand there are two factors which will render the results of “collectivisation” in the satellites more severe than in Russia: 1. As we have seen, the increase in the grain output which followed upon “collectivisation” in Russia was due in the main to the great extension of the area cultivated; but such an extension is out of the question in the countries of Eastern Europe. 2. Although Eastern Europe is not as suitable for meat and milk production as Western Europe, but, like Russia, is much better for growing corn, it already has many more branches than Russia of intensive farming (milk, pork, vegetables, wines, tobacco, etc.) whose prosperity is dependent on the existence of an urban population with a high and rising standard of living. The present regimes do not augur well for such a development.

Chapter Index

Peasant resistance

Although “collectivisation” has hardly begun in the “People’s Democracies”, the agricultural policy of the governments has already met with a peasant resistance which is on the increase. lit is partly resistance to requisitioning and a protest against the lack of industrial goods and partly resistance to “collectivisation” (of course these two reasons cannot be separated in practice).

Just as it was natural that the resistance of the working class to the industrial policy of the governments of Eastern Europe appeared earliest and was strongest in Czechoslovakia, the most industrialised country in the region (except for the Soviet Zone of Germany and Austria), so is it natural that the peasant resistance to their agricultural policy is boldest in Bulgaria. The reasons for this are: first, Bulgaria is the country least affected by the land reform, so that the peasants have not much to thank the Government for on this score; secondly, Bulgaria has the highest percentage of peasants engaged in small-scale intensive farming-tobacco, grapes, roses – so that the inducement needed to break their opposition to “collectivisation” is the greatest; thirdly, the basis upon which the industrialisation of the country is taking place is the weakest (except for Albania), and the industrialisation plan is the most ambitious (except for Yugoslavia), so that the need to squeeze the peasant is the most desperate. [13] This last point is clearly illustrated by the targets of the various Plans, all of which aim at the “collectivisation” of only a minority of the peasants – except the Bulgarian plan, which by 1953 aims to have 60 per cent of the peasants in co-operative farms.

The peasant resistance took the characteristic form of non-delivery of their quota of products. Despite the good harvest in 1948, by October 10th only one district had delivered its quota, 33 districts had delivered between 80 and 90 per cent, but many more had not even fulfilled half the quota. (Rabotnichesko Delo, organ of the Communist Party, October 15th and 17th, 1948). 1948 was bad enough, but 1949 was much worse. The sowing quotas were nowhere near completion on the final date, March 15th. Only 56 per cent of the wheat quota was completed, 45 per cent of the rye, 55 per cent of the barley, 51 per cent of the oat, and 14 per cent of the sunflower quotas. (Otechestven Front, 25th March 1949). The Ministry of Agriculture reported that many villages met great obstacles in collecting grain. In the village of Dimitrievo, for instance, the Village Council showed no effort to fulfil its duty and barely 1,200 kilos of grain were turned in. The co-operative of Yaborovo village refused to give up its allocation. Many villages had very inadequate granaries, etc., etc. (Otechestven Front, 31st July 1949).

That even members of the Communist Party were taking part in the resistance of the peasantry to the Government’s agricultural policy was made clear in Dimitrov’s speech at the Fifth Congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party (December 19th, 1948): “In some villages there were ‘Party members’ and even Party leaderships who did not head the campaign for ensuring food to the people and even de facto sabotaged the delivery of cereals. The same holds true for some village Communists who do not help and sometimes impede the creation of co-operative farms” (G. Dimitrov, Political Report to Fifth Congress of the Bulgarian Communist Party, Sofia 1948, p.80). [14]

The extent of the peasant resistance and its causes were admitted to at the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party on June 11th and 12th, 1949, where in an excess of “Bold Self-Criticism”, the Party laid bare its “mistakes” and promised to relax its stringent policy towards the peasantry.

Shortly before the Plenum the Acting-Premier had said that “no progress was registered since September 9th, 1944, in the output of cereals despite the import of tractors and other agricultural machinery and considerable agro-technical improvements.”

One of the reports to the Plenum says:

We must admit that we have fastened the screw too tightly in our relations with the medium farmer. . . We must unloosen the screw and switch over to methods which will induce the farmer and especially the medium peasant, by an appeal to his self-interest, to improve and increase his production.

The Plenum Resolution says:

Excesses have occurred in the system of quota purchases, which have led to the requisitioning of practically the entire marketable part of the produce at fixed low prices. This applies especially to grain farmers, who constitute the huge majority of our peasantry. In this way agricultural producers have been to a large extent deprived of their personal interest in developing and increasing production, improving its quality and generally raising the productivity of agricultural labour ...

In the formation of the co-operative farms, instead of strict compliance with the laws, Government directives and Party instructions, throughout almost the whole country there have been irresponsible requisitionings of the best and most favourably located land, which is incorporated in the co-operative areas, while the private farmers are given in exchange distant and barren plots. Farmers are not being compensated in accordance with the quantity and real value of the land.

... peasants are forced to join co-operative farms while they !are still unconvinced of their advantages ...

To this end the Plenum decides:

1. That fundamental changes be made in the system of quota purchases so that, while preserving the principle of progressive quotas, agricultural producers shall be left the greater quantity of their excess stocks to sell them freely to the state, co-operatives and consumers at free prices.

2. That a real and fair correlation be established between the price of cereals and the price of other agricultural products, industrial goods and artisan services; that the prices of cereals be raised ...

5. That producers be guaranteed the freedom to sell their surpluses directly to consumers, after delivering their quota to the state ...

8. That the supply of the village with staple industrial products, both from local industry and from abroad, be improved ...

10. ... returning in certain places fields wrongly requisitioned from private farmers who received in exchange land of less value. (Quoted by Free Bulgaria, 1st July 1949).

The extent to which the Government overdid the exploitation of the peasantry was revealed even more clearly both by the evidence given during the Kostov Trial about the position of the agricultural population, and from the rise in the official prices for agricultural products after the June Plenum.

In the Trial the defendant Nikola Pavlov stated that for some years up to the end of 1948 there had been “a strict quota system which oppressed the peasants”. “... the quota system attained such proportions, that almost everything produced by the peasants was taken away from them, according to this order, and only such a part was left to them, which could only cover the current needs of their families. The quota system included almost all rural produce which served for direct consumption by the population, such as wool, eggs, meat, milk, potatoes, even including apples, chestnuts and peanuts ...” This produced a sharp reaction. “The peasants not only did not sow all areas that they had sown till then, but began to diminish them.” The deposition of Kostov showed very clearly that the poor peasants suffered no less from the quota system than the rich and medium peasants, and were no less discontented. “The discontent of the poor peasants was also caused by the decree for the collection of wool . . . according to which even peasants owning i or 2 sheep were not exempted from the delivery of wool.” [15]

The extreme hardship the quota deliveries imposed on the peasants is illustrated by the fact that in 1948 they totalled about ii milliard leva, while free market sales totalled only 715 million.

How low had been the prices paid for the products taken from the peasants is revealed by the extent to which they were raised after the June Plenum: hard wheat was raised from 19 leva per kilogram to 25 (31.6 per cent); ordinary wheat from 17 to 23 leva (35.3 per cent); rye and oats from 15 to 20 leva (33.3 per cent); barley, millet seed and corn from 13 to 18 leva (38.5 per cent); sunflower seed from 25 to 30 leva (20 per cent); dried beans from 30 to 60 leva (100 per cent); lentils from 44 to 55 leva (25 per cent). (Otechestven Front, 2nd July 1949).

The resistance of the peasantry has also compelled the government to slow down its drive for “collectivisation”. On November 5th, 1949, Otechestven Front said that eighty-six government commissions had been set up to remedy mistakes in connection with the collective farms. They had to inquire into the activities of 1,264 co-operative farms (two-thirds of all the co-operative farms in the country) and examine 61,854 complaints of illegal requisition of land from peasants who had not joined the co-operatives. In 35,311 cases the land had been restored to its previous owners and those responsible for the mistakes punished.

The Bulgarian government is, it seems, compelled to go gently with the collectivisation drive, but it nevertheless does not renounce its aim. While on January 1st, 1950, there were 1,600 co-operative farms with 156,500 families and 1,377,050 acres, on October 1st the number of co-operative farms reached 2,249, with 474,800 families and 4,707,700 acres. Thus 43.4 per cent of the agricultural population is in co-operative farms. (Vulko Cliervenkov’s Report to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, October 7th and 8th, 1950).

Bulgaria is not the only country to experience peasant resistance to government policy. There is a food shortage in Czechoslovakia. The Russians are not responsible for this, as they buy scarcely any agricultural products from Czechoslovakia. Nor does Czechoslovakia export much food to other countries. There was a drought, it is true, but that was two years ago, and even at that time the number of livestock compared with pre-war was better than in any of the other satellites. Moreover the population was much below its pre-war number owing to the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans. The reason for the shortage must therefore be ascribed, at least partly, to the resistance of the peasants to delivering their products to the Government. The peasant resistance also expresses itself in the slowness of the progress of collectivisation. The mister of Agriculture, Julius Duriš, said at the 9th Congress of the Communist Party, that in only 208 villages out of 13,000 were farm co-operatives operating (Lidové Noviny, 28th May 1949).

There had been many cases of almost open revolt at village meetings convened by the Communist Party to launch cooperatives, while other meetings had been boycotted by the peasants. The General Secretary of the Party, Rudolf Slansky, went as far as to say: “The Party has failed to organise an explanatory campaign within its own rank and file, with the result that some Party members, not having been made to understand the significance of the co-operatives and not having been persuaded of their usefulness, have begun to waver and to fall under reactionary influences.”

Poland has had its troubles too. The Government was obliged to supply the wheat growers with far more industrial products than it had planned to do, and at lower prices than were prevailing on the free market. (Glos Ludu, May 4th, 1948). Other manifestations of peasant resistance disturbed the countryside. According to The Times of 25 January 1949: “During the last few weeks of 1948 at least 20 cases were published in the Government-controlled newspapers of Communist organizers killed while on duty in country districts. Most people think the figure much higher.” The Government in alarm retreated, and instead of carrying out its ambitious plan of organising 7,400 co-operative farms in 1949, reduced its target to a mere 200. (The World Today, August 1949). The peasant resistance, although strong enough to slow down the collectivisation drive, did not divert the Communist leaders from their aim. On April 1st, 1949, there were 40 producer co-operatives in Poland; by October 1st, 145; by February 1st, 1950, 332, and by March 5th, 590. Of these 590 co-operative farms, 345 have been founded on a statute similar to that of the Russian kolkhozes, 192 are of what is called the second lowest type: 30-40 per cent of their net income is distributed as rent for land and implements pooled in the co-operatives, and 60-70 per cent as wages for labour. 53 were of the lowest type: common cultivation of privately-owned land (Roman Zambrowski, Secretary of the Central Committee of the P.P.R., in For a Lasting Peace, For a People’s Democracy!, March 10th, 1950). We may assume that the tempo of “collectivisation” will be accelerated after the first experiments have been completed. An important step in hastening the “collectivisation” was the decree that put the zloty at par with the Russian rouble: every peasant had until 13th November 1950 to give up 100 old zloty for one new one, while as regards workers’ wages and prices three new zloty were changed for 100 old zloty. With their meagre savings swept away, the peasants’ resistance to collectivisation will be weakened.

Rumania has also experienced great peasant resistance to “collectivisation”. In June 1949 the government had to take strong measures against a partisan movement in the countryside, strongest in the Banat region. The government called the resisting peasants “kulak hooligans”, but a mere glance at its extortionate demands from the peasants belies this accusation. Every farm, down to the very smallest, must deliver large amounts of grain for low prices. For example, a peasant who has a farm of only 3 hectares must deliver 22 per cent of the yield for less than 20 per cent of the free market price. (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 7th April 1949). No wonder the peasants rebel. The “collectivisation” of Rumanian agriculture is still at its beginning: in September 1949 the number of co-operative farms was only 55.

In Hungary the government was very careful in approaching the problem of “collectivisation” and for a long time denied any intention of proceeding with it. thus, for instance, in a speech before a peasant meeting in Debreczen on June 29th, 1947, Premier Lájos Dinnyes said: “... if the Government had any intention of creating kolkhozy it would not have carried out the land reform. What is good in one country is no use in another. A Hungarian Government which aimed to give up the principle of private property would be digging its own grave and the nation’s. We aim to fortify the new peasantry” (The Times, 30th June 1947). After a certain amount of manoeuvring, nevertheless, the Hungarian Government did proceed to “collcctivise” agriculture, but it did so carefully and slowly. Up to November 1st, 1949, co-operative farms made up only 3.5 per cent of all the arable land of the country, and state farms another 3.5 per cent. Since then it has advanced considerably. In May 1950 co-operative and state farms made up 17.8 per cent of all the land under cultivation.

In general it can be said that the process of “collectivisation” is full of contradictions. Its aim is to secure food supplies and agricultural raw materials for the towns and for export, in order to facilitate industrialisation, as well as to get the necessary supply of labour power for industry and public work. The greater the speed of industrialisation, and the smaller the existing amount of capital relatively to labour, the greater the speed of “collectivisation”. Hence Bulgaria and Yugoslavia have gone much further along this road than the other “People’s Democracies”. At the same time, the greater the tempo of industrialisation, and the greater the subordination of the people’s consumption to the needs of capital accumulation, the less the readiness to wait for the establishment of “collectives” until the technical conditions for large-scale agricultural production (sufficient tractors, combines, etc.) exist, and until the peasants are convinced that large-scale agricultural production is superior, a conviction which depends largely on the readiness or otherwise of the government to supply the peasantry with industrial consumption goods. Social-political factors – the fear of the government, first of all, that it will be isolated or strongly opposed by the peasants – can modify the extent, the speed and the ruthlessness of the “collectivisation” process. [16]

Chapter Index

The primitive accumulation of capital

When the British bourgeoisie first arose it had to drive the peasants off the land in order to get the surplus agricultural produce for the towns as well as the reserves of labour it needed for its growing enterprises. Britain went through this phase of development mainly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, of which Marx wrote: “The history of this ... is written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire” (Capital, Vol.I, p.786). In its rise the Stalinist bureaucracy must repeat the same process so as to get the wealth of the country under its control.

But much more blood flowed in Russia during this “primitive accumulation” than in Britain. Stalin accomplished in a few hundred days what it took Britain a few hundred years to accomplish. The scale on which he did it and the success with which he carried it out completely dwarf the actions of the English landlords who let the “sheep devour man”. They bear grim witness to the superiority of modern industrial economy concentrated in the hands of the state, under the direction of a ruthless bureaucracy.

Engels made a prognosis about the future of primitive accumulation in Russia which has been completely realised, although in different circumstances from those which he ever imagined. In a letter to Danielson dated 24th February 1893, he wrote:

... the circumstance of Russia being the last country seized upon by the capitalist grande industrie, and at the same time the country with by far the largest peasant population, are such as must render the bouleversement caused by this economic change more acute than it has been anywhere else. The process of replacing some 500,000 pomeshchiki (landowners) and some eighty million peasants by a new class of bourgeois landed proprietors cannot be carried out but under fearful sufferings and convulsions. But history is about the most cruel of all goddesses, and she leads her triumphal car over heaps of corpses, not only in war, but also in “peaceful” economic development. (Marx-Engels Selected Correspondence, London 1941, pp.509-10)

Marx and Engels were not describing the historical transition from class society to socialism, but the development of class society, of which Bureaucratic State Capitalism is another stage.

Next Chapter
I. The initial Soviet intervention:
Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary

Top of the page

Footnotes

10. Although the total quantity of products retained by the agriculturists in 1936/7 was lower than in 1927/8 (352.5 million centners and 493.7 million centners respectively) the quantity per household did not decline, and per capita of the agricultural population even rose. This happened because the number of households declined from 25.0 million in 1927/8 to 20.4 million in 1936/7, i.e., by 24 per cent, and the agricultural population decreased from 122.4 million to 78.6 million, i.e., a decline of 35.8 per cent. The fact that the per capita quantity of agricultural products retained by the peasants after making obligatory deliveries rose, does not mean that the conditions of the majority of agriculturists improved, because it was distributed more unevenly to the disadvantage of the masses. This cannot be dealt with here.

11. It is regrettable that Miss Warriner in her new book Revolution in Eastern Europe (London 1950) in the chapter Collective Farming overlooks what she herself wrote on the question of collectivisation in Russia in Economics of Peoswd Farming and also in Eastern Europe After Hitler.

12. In October, 1929, 4.1 per cent of all the peasants were included in kolkhozes. Five months later, on 10th March 1930, 58.0 per cent were. There followed a hasty retreat, and in September of the same year only 21 per cent of the peasants were in kolkhozes. Only after this mismanagement did the tempo of collectivization begin to be less erratic, even though the compulsion to enter the kolkhozes remained very strict for the peasants.

13. Yugoslavia, too, did not undergo an extensive land reform, and its very ambitious plan for industrialisation is also based on a very low technical level. But there the peasants are much more tolerant towards the government, because of the threat of Moscow to it.

14. Two years later, in his report to the Plenum of the Central Committee (7th and 8th October, 1950) the new General Secretary, Vulko Chervenkov, gave many more details about the sabotage of the agricultural deliveries by Communist Party members and organisations. He said: “... the former Minister of Home Trade last year, under pressure of various appeals from local organs, arbitrarily, quite irresponsibly, without the permission of the Central Committee of the Party and the Government, reduced three and a half times the plan for state grain deliveries. He was unable to grasp the fact that the appeals of the local organs reflected the pressure of private landowners and kulaks against the interests of the state.” “... the party organisations in the districts of Bourgas, Gorna Oryakhovitsa, Rousse and Kolarovgrad ... yielded to the pressure of a number of primary organisations which expressed private and kulak interests and attempted to wreck the plan for collecting the deliveries ...” The same crimes are attributed by Chervenkov to the first secretary of the Stalin District Party Committee, the vice-chairman of its People’s Council and the representative of the Central Committee of the Party and Government whose special task was to inspect the collection of the state grain deliveries in the district. “The District Party Committee and the District People’s Council” of the Pleven district “fell into the hands of the kulaks”; “the inspector of the Central Committee of the Party attached to the Pleven district played an unenviable role”. In every possible way he supported the local leadership in its “attempt to attain a reduction of the plan ...” The same crimes are attributed to the leadership of the Party and People’s Council in Vratsa district and the representative of the Central Committee there, Dimiter Dimov, who was at the same time a secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and a member of the Political Bureau. And this happened after the big “purge” of “Kostovists” in 1949!

15. The question arises why we accept this part of the evidence when we consider the Trial as a whole to be a frame-up. (See pp.301-2, Part III, Chapter VI, Anti-Titoist show trials). It is one thing to believe in the reality of the meat shortage, the obnoxious character of the quota system and so on – which are known to everyone who lives in the country – and another to believe that only Kostov and his co-defendants were responsible for it, while the rest of the leadership saw nothing of it for three or four years. If we look back at the “trials” of “witches” in the middle ages, we may disagree with the prosecutor when he accused the “witch” of causing the outbreak of a plague, but still accept the accusation as evidence of the existence of a plague at the time.

16. See pp. 246-8 (Part II, Chapter II, The conflict between Tito and Stalin over Yugoslavia’s agricultural policy).

Top of the page

Last updated on 16.6.2004