Chapter 318
If we look at it from a forward-looking perspective, or from the perspective of a time traveler, Khrushchev's proposal was absolutely correct. In later generations, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when people judged the gains and losses of the Soviet Union's decades of construction, they always criticized its policy of sacrificing agriculture and light industry and developing heavy industry at all costs.
From today's perspective, only those who truly care about Soviet agriculture can realize how difficult it is to feed a mere 200 million people on the Soviet Union's 22.4 million square kilometers of territory.
Of course, this difficulty is not because there is a lack of land that can be cultivated within the borders of the Soviet Union. On the contrary, during the 70 or 80 years of the Soviet Union, the entire country has not really completed the reclamation of farmland. Even after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Russia was still rushing to develop land after entering the 21st century.
The reason why the Soviet Union's agriculture could not feed such a small population was entirely due to human factors, or it could be said to be policy factors. It seemed that from the day the Soviet Union was founded, the entire country's superstructure lacked goodwill towards farmers. To be more precise, this was not a socialist alliance of countries in which the proletariat of workers and peasants held power, but an alliance of socialist countries in which the proletariat of workers held power. The rights and status of farmers were thoroughly weakened.
To be specific, from the early days of the Soviet Union, the war communism policy during Lenin's time, to the collective farm system rapidly implemented after Stalin came to power, the rights and benefits of farmers as a class can almost be said to have been completely deprived.
During the years when the War Communism policy was implemented, peasant uprisings broke out one after another in the Soviet Union. In just one year from 1920 to 1921, peasant uprisings of various types and sizes spread across 13 states in the Soviet Union. Comrade Lenin was obviously aware of the seriousness of the problem, so he abolished the almost cruel War Communism policy in 1921 and replaced it with the New Economic Policy.
Objectively speaking, the New Economic Policy was in line with the national conditions of the Soviet Union at that time, where small peasant economy was dominant. During the three years of its implementation, the Soviet economy was fully restored and developed greatly. Unfortunately, the good times did not last long. In 1924, after Comrade Stalin came to power, the New Economic Policy was quickly abolished, and a large number of rich peasants who had grown up were eliminated as a class. The production enthusiasm of farmers instantly fell to the bottom.
At present, Yuri is familiar with the fact that Soviet farmers under the collective farm system are extremely burdened. The products they produce need to pay taxes in three forms:
The first is mandatory sales. Every collective farm, regardless of the good or bad years or the amount of harvest, must sell a certain amount of products to the state every year. This kind of sales is not free, but the purchase price is shockingly low. Take potatoes as an example. In the mandatory sales process, the sale price of one ton of potatoes is only 30 rubles, while a collective farm needs to invest 400 rubles in production costs to produce one ton of potatoes. Others, such as vegetables, are purchased at 20 kopecks per kilogram, beef, 20 kopecks per kilogram, and milk, 25 kopecks...
Therefore, almost all collective farms in the Soviet Union were operating at a loss, and the farmers on the farms had no income at all after working for a year.
The second is the so-called state procurement, which is a means for the state to obtain the remaining products of the collective farm after the collective farm has paid its annual mandatory sales quota. The price of this procurement is much higher, often more than ten times the sales price, but the farmers do not make much profit. The most terrible thing is that although this procurement is nominally voluntary, in fact, according to the collective farm system, private transactions between farmers are prohibited, and if they don't sell, the state has nowhere to sell.
In addition to the above two burdens, farmers in collective farms also need to pay the "agricultural machinery tractor station" that provides agricultural machinery services, including: plowing fees, harvesting fees, agricultural machinery usage fees, labor fees, etc.
After these three rounds, there was basically nothing left of the harvest from the collective farmland in the collective farm. The only thing the farmers depended on for survival was actually the output from their private plots. One can imagine how difficult their lives were.
Therefore, in the collective farms throughout the Soviet Union, the farmers had no enthusiasm at all to work on the collective farmland. They would cheat whenever they could and get by whenever they could. But on the pitifully small piece of private plots they owned, they would cultivate the land intensively and carefully, wishing to devote all their energy to that land.
As one of the core members of the Soviet leadership, Khrushchev obviously saw the drawbacks of the collective farm system, so he proposed to abolish the most exploitative compulsory sales system and adopt a procurement system for the collection of grain. Although such a policy could not completely eliminate the problem, it could alleviate it to a certain extent.
Of course, there are many people who can see the problem like him, such as Comrade Kaganovich, who has always been regarded as incompetent in later generations. However, Comrade Kaganovich's views are completely opposite to those of Comrade Khrushchev. He does not advocate the abolition of the compulsory sales system, but advocates the abolition of the private plot system in collective farms.
His idea was: Don't the farmers care about their private plots instead of cultivating the collective land? Then cancel their private plots, and the farmers will naturally turn their attention to the collective land.
As a time traveler, Yuri has never dealt with rural or peasant work, nor does he have any relevant experience in governance, so he cannot comment much on Comrade Kaganovich's propositions and suggestions. However, if he is forced to make a comment, he will smile without hesitation: Haha.
In Yuri's eyes, Comrade Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich, who closely followed Comrade Stalin, should not have been born a shoemaker. His means of making a living in his early years should have been as a barefoot doctor. Treating headaches and foot pains was his specialty.
Of course, Comrade Kaganovich was obviously not only incompetent in government work, but his experience in political struggle was also obviously much less. His political sense was not sensitive enough to perceive the problem, and he threw himself into the quagmire of Ukraine without hesitation - I don't know whether Comrade Khrushchev, who was demoted, would be grateful to him from the bottom of his heart.
The current situation in Ukraine is very bad. This year's floods have had a significant impact on agriculture, and the situation next year is not expected to be much better. In addition, the impact of the nearly four years of war on Ukraine has not been eliminated, mainly because it has been in the German occupation zone for a long time. It will take time for the Ukrainian people to regain their hearts after the restoration of their land.
Due to natural and popular factors, it will take some time for Ukraine's production to return to pre-war levels, but Moscow 's policy obviously does not give them that much time. The grain that needs to be handed over this year can be temporarily exempted, and the grain that needs to be handed over next year can be halved, but what about the year after next? The year after next will obviously return to normal, but the reality is that by the year after next, Ukraine's agriculture will not be able to return to its pre-war level.
If the entire Ukraine fails to complete the task of unified grain purchase, the first secretary will inevitably suffer the consequences, and the label of incompetence will be attached to his forehead by Comrade Stalin. Khrushchev obviously saw this clearly, so he made some trouble for himself in his political stance, and was dismissed from his position as the first secretary of Ukraine and became the first secretary of Moscow Oblast. This may seem a bit embarrassing, but it is the best way to reduce losses.
Yuri thought about what would happen in Ukraine in the next two years. Comrade Kaganovich went to Ukraine with great confidence, and then reorganized the collective farms according to his plan and abolished the private plots of the farmers. The farmers' enthusiasm for production suffered a fundamental blow, and there might be social unrest on a larger scale.
As a result, Ukraine's unified grain purchasing task will not be completed next year, and the society will be in chaos, which may affect future agricultural production, and thus affect the unified grain purchasing task the year after.
By that time, Comrade Stalin will certainly have an opinion. He will compare the past data with the data of the past two years to judge Comrade Kaganovich's work performance.
So when were the past achievements made? Without a doubt, they were made before 1941. Before that, the first secretary of Ukraine was Comrade Khrushchev. At that time, although there were nationalist guerrillas active in Ukraine, the overall social atmosphere was relatively stable, mainly because the annual grain procurement task was exceeded.
In this comparison, Comrade Stalin would probably have a very intuitive and emotional view: Kaganovich is a fool, he only uses those crude working methods to solve problems, without any wisdom. Although Comrade Khrushchev has more ideas, his execution and work ability are still no problem, at least much better than Comrade Kaganovich.
With this view, Comrade Stalin, whose working methods were equally simple and crude, would only make one choice, which was to let Comrade Kaganovich, who was ranked high in the Presidium of the Central Committee at that time, stand aside and then put Comrade Khrushchev in the position that originally belonged to him.
If Comrade Khrushchev could quickly change the situation in Ukraine and clean up the mess left by Comrade Kaganovich, his importance in Comrade Stalin's mind would be even higher.
Only by understanding Comrade Khrushchev's method of retreating to advance can we understand how politically skilled this seemingly "foolish" guy is. He has a keen sense of smell, knows when to advance and retreat, and is not swayed by temporary interests. For a politician, it is really not easy to do this.
