Calico in Five Years

Soviet reports of drought and dry winds following a late spring sowing have again come out of the Volga grain belt. The peasants are said to be worrying not only for their grain but for their potatoes. During the War and the subsequent Revolution when all else failed there were still potatoes to dull hunger--boiled and eaten with the skins on.

Seeming to support a famine fear was the decision made last week by the Council of People's Comissars at Moscow to retain bread cards and the existing bread prices for at least another year. Under the present rationing system, in existence for more than six months, inhabitants of Russia's larger cities, even those of the grain districts, are allowed but one pound of bread --in some cases only three-quarters of a pound--per person per day.

Able Newsman Walter Duranty, long-time correspondent in Russia for the New York Times, who early this month traveled down the broad Volga, left the river often to visit the interior of the great grain provinces of Samara, Kazan and Saratov. He noted no undue disturbances or signs of starvation and reported last week: "The harvest, instead of fair to medium, may be distinctly above the average if the weather remains favorable. The advocates of rationing claim that . . . it plays a useful role in the socialization policy which the Kremlin is now pushing so actively."

In other words, the rationing system is part of a vast plan which Dictator Josef ("Steel") Stalin is relentlessly pursuing. If the rationing system pinches Russian stomachs, then that also is part of the, plan, anticipated by Dictator Stalin and the Communist Party and to be borne stoically by Russians until Oct. 1, 1933, if necessary. For until that date the Soviet Government and "Boss" Stalin have thoroughly committed themselves to an economic problem which is to transform the Soviet Union into an industrial giant, nourished during the next four years by a 24-billion-dollar investment in factory equipment. Of this huge sum 78% is being spent on machines to make machines, only 22% on the manufacture of goods for direct consumption. Therefore Soviet stores have little goods on their shelves. Calico is as expensive as silk. Shiny new boots, seal of a Russian peasant's prosperity, are hard to find, harder to buy.

In retaliation the peasant farmer is growing less grain than he can, because: 1) he cannot buy anything with the money he gets from his grain, and 2) the Government is levying heavy grain taxes upon him by forcing him to sell most of his crop at a low Government-fixed price (to keep the price of bread within the means of urban workers and to net the Government a profit on its exports). The fact that there is more grain planted this year is due not to peasant efforts but to State farms and co-operatives inaugurated by the Government to combat the negative attitude of the peasant.

Of late, also, the Russian peasant, ingenious in his discontent, has discovered yet another way of annoying the Government. Of 9,000 peasant houses destroyed by fire in one (Samara) province last year, 3,000 were due to arson. Fire insurance paid out totaled four million rubles ($2,000,000). The peasant explains with a wink: "The peasant's cottage soon grows sick and draughty. Then comes a fire--is it an accident? The peasant gets a fine new home from the Government." A cogent scratch of the nose and then a conclusion: "They take taxes and fix a low-price for grain, but little Uncle Fire is free from their control."

But even here the peasant is being trammeled for recently the Government has clamped the death penalty, rare in Soviet Russia, on arson crimes.

But, despite famine fears and fire, Stalin and the Kremlin pursue their plan. Last year they inspired such confidence that International General Electric Co. of New York contracted to the extent of 25 million dollars to electrify the Soviet Union.

More recently (TIME, June 17) contracts have been let to other U. S. corporations--for a 100-million-dollar hydro-electric power plant in the Ukraine (to be the world's largest); for steel mills, coal mines, apartment houses in Moscow, tractor factories at Stalingrad, etc. etc. After 1933, Industrializer Stalin promises, if there is still necessity, to turn to lesser tasks--such as keeping the population supplied with food and clothing.