Collectivisation did not increase aggregate agricultural output in Russia; on the contrary it led to stagnation. In a Report by Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to the Central Committee, in September 1953, the following table was adduced:
|
Livestock Population of the USSR (Millions of Head on Jan. 1 in Comparable Territory) |
|||||
|
Year |
Total |
Cows |
Pigs |
Sheep & Goats |
Horses |
|
1916 |
58.4 |
28.3 |
23.0 |
96.3 |
38.2 |
|
1928* |
66.8 |
33.2 |
27.7 |
114.6 |
36.1 |
|
1941 |
54.5 |
27.8 |
27.3 |
91.6 |
21.0 |
|
1953 |
56.6 |
24.3 |
28.5 |
109.6 |
15.3 |
|
* Start of Collectivisation. Source: Khrushchev, p. 21. |
|||||
Khrushchev goes on to say that “districts which had long been famous as butter suppliers are now producing less butter than before. Siberia, for instance, produced 75,000 tons of butter in 1913, and only 65,000 tons in 1952. [1] Vegetable farming, another intensive branch of agriculture, shows the same trend (although here, unfortunately, Khrushchev confines himself to pre- and post-war comparisons only and omits mention of the pre-collectivisation output):
“The vegetable crop area today is 250,000 hectares less than in 1940. The potato crop are in the country generally has increased but in some of the regions it is far below pre-war.”
Indeed, the only major agricultural food crop that has shown any advance since collectivisation is grain whose output in 1938 was some 16 percent higher than in 1928. Even this, however, is due more to the cultivation of new steppe lands with new agricultural machinery than to increases in productivity in the old areas: total sown area rose by 21 percent and that sown to grain by 11 percent. [2]
However, despite the fall in meat, dairy produce and vegetables output, and the meagre rise in grain production, the achievements of collectivisation in Russia could be claimed as a success. For, notwithstanding the decline in total output, the share of the State rose tremendously, the investment fund grew as taxation was facilitated:
“For instance”, Khrushchev writes, “in the period 1926/27 to 1952/53 the marketable surplus of farm produce rose from 10.3 million to 40.4 million tons in the case of cereals, from 3 million to 20.5 million tons in the case of potatoes, from 2.4 million to 5 million tons in the case of meat (live weight), and from 4.3 million to 13.2 million tons in the case of milk.” [3]
The power of the State over the collective farms does not show itself only in the considerable rise in obligatory deliveries on a background of declining agricultural production. It can be seen also in administrative integration; the MTS’s [machine tractor stations] are directly State-owned and heavy agricultural machinery can only be had on loan, not purchased, by the collectives; “The volume of statistical data the collective farms have to submit today is nearly eight times as great as it was before the war” [4]; and so on.
The struggle between the State and the peasantry over potential savings has been won by the State, although not without millions of deportations to slave camps [5] and not without placing the whole country under the threat of famine.
Moral judgements apart, the question that Russian collectivisation poses for any student of Southeast Asia and the Far East is this: the Russian Muzhik registered his protest against collectivisation by striking back where he was able, namely, by sabotaging intensive farming where, as in all capital-poor countries labour greatly outweighs capital in importance of production. In the extensive agricultural grain economy, he could be, and was, replaced by machinery in a large measure. There his opposition was hardly felt. Nevertheless, despite the considerable virgin areas of arable land and despite the fact that the Russian State initially disposed of a much more developed industrial structure than anything Southeast Asian economies can boast of, and finally despite the fact that the living standard of the Russian population was, on average higher than that of the population in our area, and the margin between subsistence and famine correspondingly wider, peasant opposition to collectivisation was such as to endanger industrial development through reducing aggregate output.
Can the weaker States of Southeast Asia force through collectivisation on a background of very low agricultural margins, of scarcity of unused arable land and, most important, of the intensive character of agriculture in the area? We shall take up these points one by one, showing the difficulties that Indonesia would be faced with were she to adopt as her own, some variant of the Russian Model.
1. Khrushchev, p. 26.
2. Gluckstein, pp. 111–112.
3. Khrushchev, p. 7; emphasis added.
The importance attached to direct taxation of the peasant in Russia might not seem, prima facie, to square with the overwhelming importance of the turnover tax (a sales tax reckoned as a percentage of the commodity’s price to the consumer) to the Russian budget. (It has averaged over 60 percent of receipts since 1931). However, the turnover tax which derives mainly from the sale of agricultural products (Holzman, p. 26; Cliff, pp. 43–7) conceals an indeterminate amount of direct taxation in kind of the peasantry through the below-cost procurement prices paid by the State for these products (Cliff, p. 38; Holzman, pp. 23f.). It is arguable that the direct tax component of the turnover tax, i.e. the part that bears on the peasantry, has grown progressively lighter losing its original preponderance in direct ratio to the growth of the urban, industrial sector. At its inception, however, it was the major component.
4. Khrushchev, p. 74.
5. Between 1928 and 1933 – the period of forced collectivisation – the population of “corrective labour” camps rose from 300,000 to about 5 million (Cliff, pp. 18–9).
Cliff, T. 1955. Stalinist Russia, London.
Gluckstein, Y. 1952. Stalin’s Satellites in Europe, London.
Holzman, F.D. 1953. Financing Soviet Economic Development, New York (mimeo).
Khrushchev, N.S. 1954. Measures for the Further Development of Agriculture in the USSR. Report Delivered at the Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, September 3, 1953, Moscow.
The Table in this text appears, to me, to be incorrect although Tony Cliff uses the exact same table in the 1964 edition of his book, Russia: A Marxist Analysis (p. 206). Either I am missing something or Cliff’s plagiarism extends to copying other author’s mistakes.
This text is extracted from Chapter V Saving out of Increasing Incomes: Methods and Problems (pp. 216–219) of Mike Kidron’s unpublished thesis:
Kidron, Michael. 1957. Problems and patterns of development in overpopulated backward countries with special reference to Indonesia. M.Litt. University of Oxford, Faculty of Social Studies, Balliol College, 289pp.
Last updated on 10 April 2020