1% Socialism

When Wladyslaw Gomulka was swept into power in the 1956 Warsaw upheaval, one of his first concessions was to abolish forced collectivization of agriculture and let peasants go back to farming their own land in their old individual way. So swift was the rush to private ownership that within weeks collective farms had all but disappeared from the Polish countryside.

Ever since, Communist Gomulka has been trying vainly to lure the peasants back into what his government calls "cooperatives." Biggest lures: fat, long-term loans to any group that wants to socialize itself; cut-rate machinery and fertilizer, plus state money to buy livestock and state land if needed. As a result, 499 collectives were formed in 1958--but in the same year 470 were dissolved. Typical example: five farmers near Warsaw announced that they intended to form a cooperative farm. The government lent them funds to buy pigs and offered land to raise them on. Starting with eight brood sows in February, the farmers sold the fattened litters in October, made a handsome profit, paid back the government loan, gave back the land, dissolved the collective and went back to private farming. Polish officials wryly call such operations "milk" collectives--collectives that milk the government.

Between a cagey, determined peasantry on one side and the knowledge that Nikita Khrushchev must think this is a poor way to run a socialist country, Gomulka must do a delicate dance. Just before his Moscow trip last fall, he proclaimed that renewed collectivization "is inevitable." Immediately, private farmers began slaughtering livestock to avoid being forced to turn it over to the state. They sold so many calves on the open market that Poland, glutted with meat in 1958, faces a meat shortage in 1959.

In a desperate effort to stop the trend, the government announced last week that it would pay up to 36% higher prices for compulsory livestock deliveries. But the government's prices are still far below the free market prices. Gomulka is caught in a dilemma: he cannot go on as a leader of a socialist country whose farm sector is only 1% socialist; yet every time he breathes too strongly in the socialist direction, the peasantry resists.

Hungary, which also freed its farmers from collectives at the time of the 1956 revolution, has lured more of them back. Partly, in the melancholy wake of the Soviet suppression, Hungarians feel resigned to getting along with their Communist masters. By boosting Hungary's investment in agriculture and by funneling two-thirds of the funds straight into the collective farms, Communist Boss Janos Kadar has managed to bring roughly 17% of Hungary's land and peasants once more under collectivization. But it is slow going, and Hungary remains, after Poland, the most "hesitant" Soviet-bloc country in socializing its agriculture.

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