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Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-00415R006800050005-6 Collective Farms Amalgamate For Greater Progress HE year 1950 was marked by a new T ptogressive development in social- ist agriculture, the amalgamation of small collective farms into large, highly productive units engaged in every field of husbandry. This amalgamation of the collective farms initiated by the collec- tive farmers themselves opens unlimited possibilities for still greater progress of agriculture; it will be highly instru- mental in stepping up production on the collective farms, in raising the produc- tivity of farm labor, and in creating an abundance of food for the popula- tion and of raw materials for industry. That is why this, as does every other progressive innovation, receives every encouragement from the Soviet Govern- ment. There have been cases in the past when several small collective farms unit- ed into one big farm, but only this year has it taken on the proportions of a mass movement. ‘What accounts for the development of this movement at the present mo- ment, and what has made it possible? ‘The answer to this question is furnished by the tremendous achievements of so- cialist agriculture which has within a short period of time developed into the most highly mechanized, most ad- vanced agriculture in the world based on the largest scale of farming. In the past, in the early period of collectivization, when there was a shortage of tractors and an inadequate number of agrono- mists and other specialists in the vil- lage, when the collective farm leaders I i jin il 590 By Professor V. M. Rumyantsev Doctor of Science (Agriculture) were just learning to manage large-scale collective production, collective farms were frequently formed on the basis of the existing villages. In a small vil- lage one found a small collective farm. This was a good beginning. And it would have been inexpedient to organ- ize only large collective farms in those years. It was not fortuitous that at that time the Communist Party warned that it was unwise to concentrate on the for- mation of gigantic collective farms which would lack any economic roots in the villages. In 1930, J. V. Stalin wrote in his Reply to Collective Farm Comrades: “Attention must now be concentrated on the organizational and economic work of the collective farms in the vil- lages. When this work begins to show the required results, the ‘giants’ will ap- pear as a matter of course.” This time is here now. The tremendous success of socialist agriculture is generally known. The collective farms have made immeas- urable progress; their crop yields and gross harvests of grain and industrial crops are growing year after year. However it should be noted that not all the collective farms have been de- veloping with equal success. The un- questionable advantages of the large col- lective farms could not escape the at- tention of the members of the smaller collective farms existing side by side with them; they could not fail to see that the big farms can make greater use of the most up-to-date agricultural ma- chines and implements, of electric power, and other achievements of sci- ence and technology in agricultural pro- duction ; they could not fail to see how rapidly the big farms are developing their productive forces, the successful progress made by them in every branch of husbandry, the fact that the incomes of the big collective farms and the liv- ing and cultural standards of their mem- bers are growing rapidly. With the smaller tracts at their disposal, the small collective farms could not keep pace with the bigger farms in advancing their common economy and in using the pow- erful up-to-date machines. The result was that every year found the smaller collective farms lagging more and more behind the big farms with respect to the crop yields, development of live- stock raising, as well as in construction, cultural, and other developments. The process observed in the capitalist world, where the large farms ruin and swallow up the small ones and convert the small farmers into farmhands or unemployed, is entirely out of the ques- tion in the Soviet Union. In the USSR, the large socialist farms assist the small- er farms in amalgamating, and, conse- quently in achieving the successes al- ready gained by the large collective farms whose superiority is obvious and unquestionable, Let us take, for example, two collec- tive farms in Borisoglebsk District of Yaroslavl Region, the Vperyod with 154 households, and the Kollektivist which USSR INFORMATION BULLETIN Approved For Release 2004/02/19 : CIA-RDP83-00415R006800050005-6