Letters to the Editor
THE AGRARIAN CRISIS IN RUSSIA
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In the contemplation of history, particularly contem- porary history, " moral attitudes " of any description are a very plague ; and amid the spate of nonsense with which we are customarily served about Russia there is certainly relief, as you say, in " a presentation which is economic rather than moral." Nevertheless, the article in your issue of December 14th, citing Herr Paul Scheffer, seems strangely to miss the essence of the matter.
Your article would make it appear that the agrarian diffi- culties in Russia are due simply to " stupidity," to a doc- trinaire utopianism refusing to look facts in the face, to a personal struggle of rival demagogues to appease the mass by offering them the head of any neighbour who is more prosperous than the mean. But history, if it teaches any- thing, and especially the history of Russia, should have instructed us, surely, to distrust so naively simple, so "pro- vincial " a reading of events. The truth is that, whether we may approve of it or not, the Soviet Government is under- taking a perfectly comprehensible policy, fully conscious of its nature and of the difficulties involved. This policy has a triple aspect. First is the aim to carry through the indus- trialization of Russia in as short a space of time as possible. Secondly, to carry through this industrialization, not on the basis of laissez-faire, which has been the setting of the industrial revolution in all other countries hitherto, and most notably in England a century ago, but on the basis of conscious planning and centralized control of the main lines of economic development. Thirdly, to carry through this policy on a classless basis, with the conscious intention to prevent the emergence of a new propertied class such as has previously characterized all industrializing and industrial countries. History has so far seen nothing like this triple experiment in conscious directing of economic and social affairs. To prejudge so unique an experiment as a failure at this stage seems as rash as it is unreasonable : especially rash when we contemplate the fate of the much harsher prophecies which were current in 1917 and in 1920, and again in 1923 and in 1925. (There is a proverb about crying " Wolf " which should make us cautious.) To cite all difficulties involved in initiating the experiment as "evidence " of the stupidity of the end in view seems a particularly crude example of the hypostatic fallacy.
To transform a country from a backward semi-Asiatic agrarian country to a modern industrial nation with modem transport and up-to-date mechanical technique involves initially a very large expenditure of capital ; and this implies the expenditure of economic resources—of labour and materials —on constructional work which will only yield fruit in the future instead of on the production of immediate finished goods. Russia to-day has on the average less than one horse-power of mechanical power per worker in her industry as against over four horse-power in U.S.A. Her five-year plan of industrial development plans to double this figure to two horse-power per worker by 1933. This means to crowd into five years the developments which in other countries occupied twenty years or more, and involves in that period an extraordinarily intensive rate of capital investment and constructional work. It implies, for instance, as is at present the case, that over 80 per cent. of imports must consist of machinery or raw materials and under 20 per cent. of finished consumable goods. Nations in the past have acquired the capital to finance such an industrial revolution either by borrowing from abroad (as Japan and U.S.A.), by an historical process of capital accumulation at the expense of agricultural areas or agrarian colonies (our own Enclosures and our Mercantilist colonial and trading policy), and at the expense of a propertyless wage-earning class living at a relatively low standard of life. Russia in her present position and with her present aims is clearly less able to draw on any of these three sources than have capitalist countries in the past. In all countries industrialization has been at somebody's expense, and usually at the expense of the peasantry or of large sections of it ; and it is not surprising in Russia to-day to find the peasantry feeling the "pinch" of dear manu- factured goods and the urban population the " pinch " of rationed foodstuffs. Capital investment cannot come without " saving," as economists are so fond of saying.
The crux of the Russian agrarian difficulties at the moment is that industry is outdistancing agriculture in its development, and the demand of industry for raw materials, and of a growing urban population for food, is growing faster than the supply of agricultural commodities. At the same time, as a result of the greater equalization in the village, following the agrarian revolution, the agricultural surplus available for market outside the village is much smaller (as a proportion of gross produce) than before the War—a fact to which Herr Scheffer does not allude. Agriculture seems to have reached the limit of development on the basis of small-scale peasant holdings. Hence the shortage of grain for export and for the towns. In this situation the Soviet Government had two clear alternatives. It could slow down the rate of capital construction and make more finished manufactures available for village markets to encourage the peasant. At the same time it could give encouragement to the large peasant farm (kulak) producing a surplus for market. It is towards this policy that the " Right wing " at present leans. But to do this is, of course, inconsistent with the double aim of industrializing the country rapidly and on a classless basis : to encourage the rich peasant farm would be to encourage the rebirth of a rural bourgeoisie. Quite consciously realizing the choice, the Russian official policy has taken the only alternative course—that of repairing the agricultural defi- ciency by the development of large-scale State and collective farms, worked on up-to-date American farming methods. This they are at present doing, while at the same time adopting special measures to curb the kaiak, in a full con- sciousness of the transitional difficulties of political tension and food rationing which this extraordinarily bold policy involves. To carry through such a policy needs iron nerves and hands of steel ; and that explains much of the Russian " intolerance " at which we softer folk in the West wince.
When I returned from Russia at Easter I was inclined to think that the strenuous measures against the kulak might produce a sharpening of the agricultural crisis this autumn by contracting the cultivated area and the marketed surplus before the new State farms could develop to repair the deficiency. My fears seem to have been excessive. The sown area has not declined but increased ; the harvest is good ; the development of the State and collective farms has much exceeded expectations ; industrial output this year is in excess of the distinctly optimistic plans ; and Russian economists are now actually talking about " realizing the five-year plan in four years." Until the new policy of collective agriculture yields substantial fruit, the difficulties associated with scarce agricultural supplies will continue. But there seems no warrant at all for asserting dogmatically that the situation has " got out of control." While to speak only of the difficulties without speaking too of the indus- trialization programme, of the historical perspective, and of the constructional work being undertaken is to give a quite partial and misleading picture. A sober judgment would not, I think, estimate the critical elements in the Russian situation to-day as any greater than in 1923 and again in 1925, when they proved to be " growing-pains " rather than mortal disease.
Moreover, I feel sure that the inevitable journalists' temptation to throw events in Russia into the high lights of personal struggles for power and personal intrigue is to throw dust in the eyes of proper understanding. In Russia, where the party leaders have been schooled for years in the tradition of an order as strict in its ruling of personal conduct as the Jesuit, schooled, too, in Siberia and in exile, personal lusts and vanities probably play a very much smaller part in political controversy than in any other country. The truer explanation is undoubtedly a more prosaic one—in terms of quite comprehensible (and extremely interesting) differences of economic policy.—I am, Sir, &c.,
• Cambridge.
MAURICE Dons.
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