Another Famine?

Out of Russia last week rolled rumors of another impending famine. Many store shelves in Moscow were again reported empty. Travelers from the provinces said that food was scarce even in some rich agricultural sections. Soviet newspapers had recently criticized the widespread neglect of agricultural machinery, and failure to provide proper fuel for tractors, binders, harvesting machines. The Soviet Union's last famine, in 1933, was caused by peasant opposition to Dictator Stalin's collectivization program. The present agricultural difficulties seem to be caused: 1) by the chaotic conditions in the much-purged Commissariat of Agriculture; 2) by an attempt to impose on recalcitrant farmers a crop-alternating scheme.

Last year Mikhail Alexandrovich Chernov, the People's Commissar for Agriculture, was dismissed, eventually shot as a "traitor." He was replaced by Robert In-drikovich Eikhe, who was hailed with press panegyrics as the right man for the right job. Commissar Eikhe was soon after heckled as a "harmer," later "disappeared." His successor in a few months' time was Commissar Volkov, but he too soon lost his job. After that the office went begging for occupants.

Conditions grew so chaotic that the editors of the Government newsorgan Izvestia took a hand, invited officials to confer with them, later devoted three columns to shocking revelations and a blunt analysis of what was wrong in the Agriculture Commissariat. Izvestia blamed everything on the lack of a "single coordinating authority which would direct the work in a rational way." Higher officials were wasting their time in endless conferences which brought no results. Sleepy workers were staying on their jobs sometimes 24 hours a day, fearful of showing a "lack of zeal." Said Izvestia: "Real work usually begins after 8 or even 10 p.m. Up to then the People's Commissar himself and the chiefs of department spend their time in uninterrupted bustle, receiving thousands of visitors or talking themselves hoarse in conferences.

Comrade Ryvin, a new official of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, told the meeting of the following case: 'Once,' he said, 'we worked out the rates of remuneration of a certain class of collective-farm workers. It was an important and urgent document. We took it to the Vice Commissar for his approval. While, however, we were giving him our explanatory comment on the document, he fell asleep.

Then, waking up, he apologized and explained that, the night before, he stayed up until 6 o'clock in the morning--he attended a conference. Before coming to him, we went to see the chief of our department; he was sleepy, too, and for the same reason.' " The crop-rotation scheme, Izvestia revealed, is no nearer realization now than it was in the spring, and Sotsialisticheskoe Zemledelie (Socialist Agriculture} gave a ready explanation for the delay: the "enemies of the people" formerly in charge of the Commissariat made a hit-or-miss job out of allotting land to the collective farms. There was no survey, with the result that "deeds of eternal possession" to the same plot of land were often handed to two or three different farms. The peasants then quarreled over who was the right possessor, while the land often remained completely idle. Sometimes an individual peasant's farm was divided among collective farms miles away. This state of affairs, the newspaper argued, creates confusion in soviet agriculture and makes any agricultural planning impossible until a new, scientific survey has been completed.

Meanwhile, there were signs last week that the Soviet Union's rulers at last realized that conditions in the Commissariat of Agriculture had become dangerous. I. A. Benediktov, formerly a Vice Commissar, was named as the new Commissar, equipped with the full powers to "coordinate."

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