Iosif Stalin, On the Grain Front. May 28, 1928
Talk to Students of the Institute of Red Professors, the Communist Academy and the Sverdlov University.
… The underlying cause of our grain difficulties is that the increase in the production of grain for the market is not keeping pace with the increase in the demand for grain.
Industry is growing. The number of workers is growing. Towns are growing. And, lastly, the regions producing industrial crops (cotton, flax, sugar beet, etc.) are growing, creating a demand for grain. All this leads to a rapid increase in our requirements as regards grain – grain available for the market. But the production of grain for the market is increasing at a disastrously slow rate…
… Is it not a fact that the grain crop area has already reached the prewar mark? Yes, it is a fact. Is it not a fact that already last year the gross of grain was equal to the prewar output, i.e., 5,000,000,000 poods? Yes, it is a fact. How, then, is it to be explained that, in spite of these facts, the amount of grain we are producing for the market is only one-half, and the amount we are exporting is only about one-twentieth of what it was in previous times?
The reason is primarily and chiefly the change in the structure of our agriculture brought about by the October Revolution, the change from landlord and large-scale kulak farming, which provided the portion of marketed grain, to small- and middle-peasant farming, which provides the smallest proportion of marketed grain. The mere fact that before the war there were fifteen to sixteen million individual peasant farms, whereas at present there are 24,000,000 to 25,000,000 peasant farms, shows that now the basis of our agriculture is essentially all-peasant farming, which provides a minimum amount of grain for the market…
… The abolition of landlord (large-scale) farming, the reduction of the kulak (large-scale) farming to less than one-third, and the change to small peasant farming with only 11 per cent of its output available for the market, in the absence, in the sphere of grain growing, of any more or less developed large-scale socialized farming (collective farms and state farms), was bound to lead, and in fact has led, to a sharp reduction in the output of grain for the market as compared with prewar times. It is a fact that the amount of marketed grain in our country is now half of what it was before the war, although the gross output of grain has reached the prewar level…
What is the way out of this situation?
Some people see the way out of this situation in a return to kulak farming, in the development and extension of kulak farming. These people dare not advocate a return to landlord farming, for they realize, evidently, that
such talk is dangerous in our times. All the more eagerly, therefore, do they urge the necessity of the utmost development of kulak farming in the interest of-Soviet power. These people think that the Soviet power can simultaneously rely on two opposite classes-the class of the kulaks, whose economic principle is the exploitation of the working class, and the class of the workers, whose economic principle is the abolition of all exploitation.
A trick worthy of reactionaries.
There is no need to prove that these reactionary “plans” have nothing in common with the interests of the working class, with the principles of Marxism, with the tasks of Leninism…
What, then, is the way out of the situation?
1. The way out lies, firstly in the transition from the small, backward and scattered peasant farms to amalgamated, large-scale socialized farms, equipped with machinery, armed with scientific knowledge and capable of producing a maximum of grain for the market. The solution lies in the transition from individual peasant farming to collective, socialized farming…
2. The way out lies, secondly, in expanding and strengthening the old state farms, and in organizing and developing new, large state farms …
3. Finally, the way out lies in systematically increasing the yield of the small and middle individual peasant farms. We cannot and should not lend any support to the individual large kulak farms. But we can and should assist the individual small- and middle-peasant farms, helping them to increase their crop yields and drawing them into the channel of cooperative organizations…
Thus, if all these tasks are fulfilled, the state can in three or four years’ time have at its disposal 250,000,000 to 300,000,000 additional poods of marketable grain-a supply more or less sufficient to enable us to maneuver within the country as well as abroad…
Should not, in addition to these measures, a number of other measures be adopted – measures, say, to reduce the rate of development of our industry, the growth of which is causing a considerable increase in the demand for grain which at present is outstripping the increase in the production of grain for the market? No, not under any circumstances! To reduce the rate of development of industry would mean to weaken the working class; for every step forward in the development of industry, every new factory, every new works, is, as Lenin expressed it, “a new stronghold” of the working class, which strengthens its position in the fight against the petty-bourgeois element, in the fight against the capitalist elements in our economy. On the contrary, we must maintain the present rate of development of industry; we must at the first opportunity speed it up in order to pour goods into the rural districts and obtain from them more grain, in order to supply agriculture, primarily the collective farms and state farms, with machines, in order to industrialize agriculture and to increase the proportion of its output for the market.
Should we, perhaps, for the sake of greater “caution,” retard the development of heavy industry and make light industry, which produces chiefly for the peasant market, the basis of our industry as a whole? Not under any circumstances! That would be suicidal; it would undermine our whole industry, including light industry. It would mean abandoning the slogan of industrializing our country, it would transform our country into an appendage of the world capitalist system of economy…
How will the measures proposed affect the alliance between the workers and the peasants? I think that these measures can only help to strengthen the alliance between the workers and the peasants.
Indeed, if the collective farms and the state farms develop at increased; if, as a result of direct assistance given to the small and middle peasants, the yield of their farms increases and the cooperative societies embrace wider and wider masses of the peasantry; if the state obtains the hundreds of millions of poods of additional marketable grain required for the purposes of maneuvering; if, as a result of these and similar measures, the kulaks are curbed and gradually overcome-is it not clear that the contradictions between the working class and the peasantry within the alliance of workers and peasants will thereby be smoothed out more and more; that the need for emergency measures in the purchase of grain will disappear; that the large masses of peasantry will turn more and more to collective forms of farming and that the fight to overcome the capitalist elements in the rural districts will assume an increasingly mass and organized character?
Is it not clear that the cause of the alliance between the workers and the peasants can only benefit by these measures? …
… The alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat should not be regarded as an alliance with the whole of the peasantry. The alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry is an alliance of the working class with the laboring masses of the peasantry. Such an alliance cannot be effected without a struggle against the capitalist elements of the peasantry, against the kulaks….
Source: I. V. Stalin, Problems of Leninism (Moscow: Foreign Language Publishers, 1934), pp. 248-249, 251-59.