Leon
Trotsky: Official Deceit and the Truth
Published
May 1930
[Writing
of Leon Trotsky, Vol. 13. Supplement (1929-1933), New York 1979, p.
40-42]
In
January of this year the leader in the Northern Caucasus, the Central
Committee member Andreyev, confirmed at a meeting on collectivization
that the movement in the direction of collectives “has now
proceeded so undeviatingly, has unfolded so powerfully throughout the
country, but especially in the Northern Caucasus … that now this
movement will break through each and every kind of obstacle in its
path.”
And
in the very same speech Andreyev complained that the rapacious
selling of equipment, cattle, and even seed “before entrance into
the collective farm takes on directly threatening dimensions. … We
must,” continues Andreyev, “stop this element no matter what.”
Before
us appear two “elements”: the irresistible movement into the
collectives and the rapacious annihilation of their future productive
bases. Is it possible to disclose more sharply the deadly
contradictions of the current collectivization? Not wishing that,
Andreyev characterizes the psychology of a broad layer of
collectivized peasants with the words of a joyless song: “My wagon,
it has disappeared/All four wheels.” This is not the psychology of
socialist construction.
As
if to highlight the picture still more, Andreyev confirms, and on
this occasion he is well founded, that if one took a poll of all the
kulaks throughout the Northern Caucasus, “the majority would
express themselves in favor of joining the collectives.” And here
he anticipates: “But this doesn’t mean that the kulak is a
partisan of collectivization. There is nowhere to go — he goes into
the collective. He enters the collective in order to wreck it from
within” (Pravda,
January 15). This is certainly correct. But unfortunately, it is not
limited to one kulak. The official statistics give 5-6 percent as the
number of kulak farms in the Caucasus. The strong middle peasant
follows their lead, and is followed, with less vigor, by the ordinary
middle peasant, and so forth. If the situation is such that the kulak
is prepared to vote for the collective together with the middle
peasant, then it is possible to distinguish the kulak from the middle
peasant statistically, but not politically. Just what kinds of
methods do Andreyev and his teachers use to determine whether the
middle peasant enters the collective farm “with all his heart,”
or just because “there’s no place to go”? Indeed, this very
same middle peasant, who according to Andreyev is breaking through
all obstacles on the road to socialism, embarks on his road by
liquidating his inventory and also in fact prepares the wreck of the
collective. Is he thus deeply differentiated, in this instance, from
the kulak, who “enters the collective in order to wreck it from
within”?
In
order to halt the destruction of farm equipment, Andreyev proposes:
“It is necessary to treat such farms (which sell off their cattle
and so forth) in the same way that the kulak farms are treated.”
Thus Andreyev in essence equates the desire of the middle peasant for
socialism with the kulak’s sabotage. No wonder if after several
weeks we will read in the same Pravda
that
the local “bunglers” have offended the middle peasants, deprived
them of the right to dispose of their property, expropriated them,
taken away their right to vote, etc. But what other ways are there to
fulfill the directives of Andreyev, who in his turn merely fulfills
the directives of Stalin?
The
whole picture in its entirety Andreyev summarizes thus: “The
victorious development of the socialist revolution in agriculture is
so swift that it upsets our most courageous presumptions concerning
collectivization.” This is said a month and a half before the
general diagnostician [Stalin] identified the symptoms of “dizziness
from success.”
And
now, in April, the Northern Caucasus presents a picture of
insufficient spring sowing, administrative panic, wailing about
excesses, and endless appeals … not to forget about the individual
peasant farm, the very one that the diligent Andreyev, without
recourse to reason, declared as early as January to have been
liquidated.