Russian Peasants' Passive Resistance

...Wolin, a former consultant to Radio Liberation and the Voice of America, is co-editor of « forthcoming book on the Soviet secret police...

...On the other hand, the Soviet regime cannot halt its policy of attacking the independent peasants without surrendering its basic ideological purposes and undermining one of the key props of the dictatorship...

...The Georgian Council of Ministers was compelled to adopt a special resolution to check this form of private enterprise, which is noted "in many districts and kolkhozes...

...The new directives are an important step toward eliminating the tiny "private sector" in Soviet agriculture...

...As Stalin did earlier, the present collective leadership wages unceasing war on the peasants and their remaining shreds of independence...

...In one kolkhoz in Azerbaijan, 300 members were assigned for urgent work during the cotton-picking season, but only 120 to 150 appeared in the field...

...Therefore, the antagonism between the Kremlin and the peasantry, which has become a constant feature of the Soviet social structure, will continue without pacification in sight...

...One Latvian paper reported that 452 Party representatives had been sent to various kolkhozes and "recommended" for election as their new chairmen, obviously in order to implement the new directives...

...Their actual purpose was to reduce further the small private economy the peasants are still permitted to maintain and to force them to put in more work for the collective farm...

...The cases cited are probably somewhat exceptional, and they were publicized to prod local authorities into taking more drastic action against "shirkers" and "loafers...

...work-days" which each peasant must give annually to the collective, originally set at 120 and later increased to 180, has now reached 300...

...What all these news items add up to is, quite simply, peasant sabotage of the collective-farm system...

...The manpower shortage is officially explained as due to the rapid growth of urban population...

...As a result, planned deliveries to the state went unfulfilled...

...It is interesting to note that the hard Soviet experience with the peasants in the 1930s was what compelled the satellites to go slow with collectivization...

...The manpower shortage which has developed since the war in Soviet agriculture has led to the expanded use of female labor and to certain emergency measures, such as the use...

...In Yugoslavia, on the other hand, the harsh collectivization laws were substantially modified after Tito's rift with Stalin, and in Poland they were eased after Gomulka came to power...

...To be sure, this sabotage did not reach sufficient dimensions to damage last year's excellent crop...

...Newspaper reports from various parts of the USSR show how the peasants have been reacting to it: • In one Armenian collective, "many kolkhoz members neglect their duties, violate the kolkhoz charter, and work mainly on their private plots or loaf in the streets of the village...

...But since last year's harvest, the first after the promulgation of the new directives, another note has been creeping into news dispatches...

...While shirking their duties in the collective, some peasants were gathering wild apples and pears, producing vodka from them, and selling it on the market...

...In one Tadzhik kolkhoz, the number of horned cattle a peasant is permitted to own has been cut from 8 to 2; and the plots of land which peasants own and cultivate privately have now been reduced to half of their former negligible size...

...The peasants' private plots, however, were in excellent condition: "You can see immediately that they are tilled with great care...

...in Uzbekistan and elsewhere, of high-school students during harvest periods...

...The great majority of Soviet peasants cannot avoid working for the collective, not only because they are constantly driven by a vast army of Party officials, instructors, policemen and propagandists, but because they need their share of the kolkhoz's output in order to live...

...At first, the regime simply pretended that the peasants were "voluntarily," indeed "enthusiastically," accepting these new inroads on their economic freedom...

...104 of 154 able-bodied members were chronic absentees...

...After the harvest, the latter were to pay 25 centners of corn for each hectare leased and keep the rest...

...All quotations in the article come from Soviet newspapers of the last six months...

...It became clear that the peasants' passive resistance to collectivization, which has not abated since 1929, is as strong as ever...

...Thus, a report from a Moldavian kolkhoz states that the number of Here Simon Wolin launches the first of « series of periodic reviews of trends in Soviet daily life, gleaned from the Soviet central and provincial press, which he examines regularly...

...and, in a third, 400 out of 500 peasants came to work in the first few days, but the total quickly dwindled to 280-290...

...There was not a single case," the writer exulted, "in which kolkhoz members rejected a chairman recommended by the district Party committee...

...In Georgia again, peasants and even entire kolkhozes shipped their wine and other products to various parts of the USSR at a large profit...

...When first announced, the directives were hailed in the Soviet press as a new measure to develop "democracy" in the kolkhozes, expand peasants' rights and raise their living standard...

...in another, the turnout was 90-100 instead of 200...

...In Bulgaria, the most collectivized, collectivization has only now reached 75 per cent of arable land, after a vigorous drive early last year...

...In one kolkhoz with 141 members, only 116 worked regularly for the collective: in another...

...A newspaperman who went out to report on the harvest was outraged to find a group of peasants taking a sun bath...

...In Georgia, "there are manifestations of private-property trends, of ¦indifference toward the development of I lie collective...

...The quota for childless women, which was 140 two years ago, has now been raised to 220, though it has been reduced from 140 to 100 for nursing mothers...

...It is pure sabotage of the collective effort...

...In one Byelorussian kolkhoz, "'many able-bodied kolkhoz members participate poorly in collective labor and do not fulfil the work-day minimum...

...Rut another cause of the shortage is the peasants' abstention from the work of the collectives: • After a Latvian kolkhoz had attributed its lagging production to insufficient manpower, an investigation revealed that only half of the members worked regularly for the collective...

...The contrast between the peasants' unwillingness to work in the collectives and their zeal in their own tasks leads to various forms of private enterprise on the kolkhozes: • In Kirghizia, a kolkhoz illegally went into business leasing state-owned land to private individuals...

...In one Azerbaijani kolkhoz, most of the cotton-picking was done by the women, while the men spent much of their time in the village teahouse...

...But if peasants sunbathe rather than work, that is not what is generally meant by a shortage of manpower...

...Despite the presence of 30 Party propagandists, 300 peasants, including "many" Party members, had failed to meet their "work-day" quotas...

...The opposite policy prevails in the USSR, where agriculture is almost totally collectivized...

...Collective farmers pursue 'free enterprise,' shirk kolkhoz work Russian Peasants' Passive Resistance By Simon Wolin A major agricultural reform is currently being implemented in the Soviet Union on the basis of the directives for modification of the kolkhoz charter first promulgated in March 1956...

...They were also gathering timber beyond the 6 cubic meters each is allotted for his own needs and selling it...