Come! Let’s read and discuss This Soviet World.

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The political implications of this chapter are of course the 1930s famine. However, again, Strong does an excellent job explaining the process of mechanizing farming, and drawing comparison in the reader to the factory collective. It’s undeniable that the soviets ended famine in a region that was historically fraught with famine.

No other events of those years will be so long remembered-not the struggles of the League of Nations, nor the American New Deal; not even the world-wide economic crisis which was but one more, the worst, of many crises. Even the rise of the Chinese Soviets and the turning of Central Europe to fascism may receive less space in future history books than the collectivization of Soviet farming, whereby men won the dream of centuries, security on the soil.

Ahhhh why has it been the complete opposite of this!

But on a serious note every time the collectivisation period is mentioned in Western History its always that collectivisation was forced and therefore evil, the Soviet Union starved millions of its people despite evidence showing that the famines during the 1930s were caused by drought and crop diseases; with sabotage by kulaks worsening the situation on top of that. But once collectivisation had been implemented and famines were practically stopped in the USSR (barring the post WW2 one) yet this has always been ignored and forgotten.

Heck you could also throw in the collectivisation of the Soviet sector of Germany immediately post-war that resulted in more food production compared to the Western sectors combined, just for more Soviet examples of collectivisation succeeding (the collectivsation process here were different, organising individual small farms to work together rather than the collective farms).

Anyway the rest of the chapter was fascinating to read, more so compared to the industrialisation process of the USSR. The jump made in agriculture is way more impressive than the improvements made in industry. Not just the technological advancements but the farmers attitudes going from oppressed peasants to proud kolhozniks; seeing people excited and interesting in educating themselves, advancing their social lives and even being aware of the state of the world not just their individual farms feels other worldly. As Capitalism progresses, encroaching and enveloping people they close themselves off in an attempt to save themselves shutting out anything and anyone around them which hinders their stability in a collapsing society.

Yet when Socialism progresses the complete opposite happens, the ordinary person’s life will open up and bring a very real world that seemed fantasy just years before.

By no means all Soviet farms are yet well organized, but efficiency steadily increases. By no means all of them are prosperous, but prosperity steadily grows.

Socialism is a process not a means to an end, the important part of a revolution is what happens after consolidation of power, with land reforms arguably the most important act to complete.

I apologize for being so late, I had the most hectic of weeks.

Even the rise of the Chinese Soviets and the turning of Central Europe to fascism may receive less space in future history books than the collectivization of Soviet farming, whereby men won the dream of centuries, security on the soil.

Forgive me for being weeb’ing out, but in Eichiro Oda’s One Piece there’s an overarching plot thread about a lost history that was squashed by the world hegemony for centuries. I used to think that plot point was absurd; there were characters in the story who were alive or just 1 generation removed from the lost history. However, with the illegal overthrow of the USSR, its place in the history books has been reduced down to historical flash-points and problematized to the extent that even uttering its name is taboo. Even though there are many, many people in the world who have living memories of the Soviet republics, their history is withdrawn and melancholy. To suppress the history of the USSR among its people required decades of forced austerity and economic devastation leading to numerous civil wars including the current one in Ukraine.

Security on the soil! Security from drought, from floods, from mortgages, from the chances of nature and the exploitations of man!

The aspect of socialist security is crucial in farming. The idea that a bad harvest wouldn’t doom your family or village and that these things can be planned out and mitigated would radically transform a system of peasant farming to one of science. The soviet state placed a lot of emphasis on farming and ensuring that farm workers would always be compensated for their work.

The movement was bitterly fought by the small rural capitalists known as kulaks, who farmed with hired labor, lived by money-lending, or owned small mills, threshers and other means of production and used these facilities to exploit their neighbors…

…The most difficult period was from the 1932 to the 1933 harvest when kulak sabotage, added to difficulties of inefficient organization, caused a grain shortage that put the whole country on short rations.

Obligatory: Kulaks fuckin’ deserved it.

“Living quarters, family cattle and fowls and the buildings necessary for their use are not socialized but remain for the private use of the members’ family.

I guess communism really doesn’t take away your toothbrush. Who knew?

The “work-day” is the unit for payment, but work-days are of different value according to the quantity and quality of work done. A tractor driver’s day may count as two ordinary work-days, a night watchman’s as three-quarters of a day. When possible, work-days are related to a definite amount of labor done—an area plowed or harvested—and additions or subtractions are made for work above or below the norm

I’m interested in learning more about this system of “work days" since one of the prevailing anticommunsit myths in America is that people in the Soviet Union were either overworked (the state forced them to work) or underworked (there was no point in trying their hardest if they were going to be compensated the same). While Strong does not go in-depth on the labor compensation here, it still does allude to a system of labor compensation that did scale with labor done and not the trope of the doctor earning as much as a coal miner that I remember hearing about when I was growing up (literally was 9 years old at the time).

The Russian winter which in former days was a season of hibernation in snow-bound villages, is today a season of active farm-planning on a nationwide scale. Not even the farthest farm is isolated; visits of experts and newspaper campaigns keep it in touch with the life of the country.

Instead of waiting around for easy profits, socialist planning is a constant process of self-improvement. The democratization of farming only led to more work being done on the farms rather than less work.

The news-gathering organization which some of the Soviet newspapers put on the sowing or harvest is beyond the scope of the biggest dailies in the capitalist world. Every provincial paper adds its reporters. The story is the world’s biggest annual story with more reporters than covered the World War!

We also get a treat in this chapter where it not only covers the collectivization of farming but also the socialization of the news media and the widespread proliferation of journalism which stands in contrast to the anticommunist myths of a repressed press apparatus by the state.