Private capital in agriculture.

Private Capital in the USSR -1927
State publishing house

Translated from the Original- no omissions

Private capital in agriculture.

Bilateral development

Under the commodity‐market form of economic relations, the capitalist, capitalism, grows out of simple labor commodity production. Therefore, from the beginning of the New Economic Policy in the Soviet countryside, individual phenomena of property inequality begin to turn into class differences. In other words, the inequality in the level of well‐ being of the two labor producers begins to turn into capitalist exploitation by the richer of his poor neighbor.

Of course, to some extent, although in a disguised form, commodity relations persisted in the Soviet countryside even during the period of war communism. This can be seen, for example, from the data that in 1918‐1919. of all the bread, flour and cereals consumed by the urban population, more than half was delivered not by the Peopleʹs Commissariat of Food, but by bagmen. And even in 1920, bagmen and other ʺunscheduledʺ purveyors delivered up to two‐fifths more. These data from the works of the Central Statistical Bureau of that time (in particular, Comrade Lositsky) I cite from the book by M. Zhirmunsky ‐ “Private Capital in Commodity Turnover”

(published by the Supreme Council of National Economy of the USSR in Moscow in 1924).

But the very size of the food supply of the cities in those days was so small that the cash, including the procurement of half or a third by the way of commodities, did not yet impose the stamp of commodity‐market relations on the countryside as a whole. Moreover, direct administrative measures prevented any broad transformation of natural accumulation into an instrument of exploitation (compulsory redistribution of inventory, etc.). The establishment of the New Economic Policy in 1921 served as the starting point for a new development of the capitalist elements of agriculture, the limits and scope of which we must now determine.

In the respect that interests us now, the Soviet state differs from the bourgeois state in that it does not regard the development of capitalist elements in the countryside either benevolently or even passively. On the contrary, the Soviet state has a negative attitude towards such a development and is taking a number of measures to strengthen the socialist elements in agriculture and for their ultimate victory over the capitalist ones, despite the presence of commodity‐market relations so far. The totality of these measures, the successes achieved and the outlined line are widely known (I will refer, for example, to my book The Soviet Village). The revolution achieved undoubted success in improving the condition of the poor. We now, as before the revolution, have peasants (without farm laborers and without workers living outside the cities, employees, craftsmen, and merchants with their families) make up about 75% of the total population. According to the calculation made by Comrade Lenin in 1916, before our revolution the division of the peasants into strata was such that, if it had remained unchanged, it would have accounted for 50% of the poor, 15% of the middle peasants, and 10% of the total population of kulaks. (See

Vladimir Ilyichʹs article recently published in a separate edition, previously unpublished, ʺComrades, workers, we are going to the last, decisive battle!ʺ)

And now these about 75%, which are peasants in the entire population, are divided as follows:

Peasant poor	21.7%
Middle peasants	49%
Fists	1,6%

The poor peasants have been moved by our revolution halfway to the middle peasants.

But we are now interested not in our successes, but in the results of capitalist accumulation in agriculture by 1927.

All net agricultural production for 1925/26, without its circulating part (as livestock feed, etc.), according to the report at the planning meeting of the State Planning Committee, published in Planned Economy No. 3 for 1927 on page 46, in pre‐war rubles amounted to about 7600 million rubles. at pre‐ war prices. Moreover, about 4 billion pre‐war rubles of it were the natural part (54%) ‐ that which remains in the economy, and about 3,600 million rubles. (46%) ‐ the commodity part, that is, that which is alienated by the rural owners to the side, is sold. So we have to determine, in particular, what proportion of this commodity part must be attributed to capitalist entrepreneurship, and what proportion must be attributed to simple commodity labor economy.

The process of growth of capitalist elements in private labor agriculture is naturally accompanied by ruin, by the withdrawal from the ranks of independent economic units of another part of the countryside—the smallest farms. The two‐ sided nature of the fate of private labor agriculture under the

dominance of commodity‐market conditions has not yet been adequately overcome by the organized intervention of the state. With a greater accumulation of state funds, the state will be able to a much greater extent than at present to help the poorest sections of the peasants to stay in agricultural production. This requires a much larger agricultural credit, which would enable the broad masses to pass over to collective farming, as well as to the development of its labor‐intensive branches.

This two‐sidedness is masked on superficial observation by the general rise of the countryʹs agriculture. Whoever looks at the statistical tables for a number of recent years will at first think that a one‐way upward movement is taking place. The percentage of non‐sowing farms is becoming smaller every year, the sowing farms are growing in all groups, etc. In fact, it is not taken into account here that some of the poorest farms abandon farming altogether, completely liquidate it and move out, and therefore are no longer included in the statistical tables. One layer at the top is growing from a private labor economy into capitalist agricultural enterprises, while another layer, at the bottom, is leaving the ranks of the rural owners altogether—severing ties with the countryside, moving to the cities, taking their families there. It is known that so‐called

ʺindividual workersʹ housing constructionʺ is now widely developed in a number of factory districts. It consists in the fact that a worker (yesterdayʹs peasant) who has entered the factory sells his village hut and, with the proceeds, builds himself a hut “on chicken legs” near the factory or on the outskirts of the city, so as not to be forced to an expensive life “for two houses”, so as not to be separated from the family and provide themselves with at least some housing at the factory.

According to Gosplanʹs Control Figures, over the past three years the composition of the employed proletariat (except for the unemployed) has increased by three million people across

the USSR. To them must be added the family members who are dependent on them. Two‐thirds of this mass came from the countryside, liquidating their miserable ʺprivate economyʺ there. This is one of the manifestations of the second side of the evolution of private labor economy in our agriculture. Other similar manifestations are the increase in the number of peasants who turn into hired workers in agricultural production itself, and the increase in the annual departure for seasonal non‐agricultural earnings (construction work, logging, etc.).

Until now, there have been no official mass data that would make it possible to statistically illustrate this undoubted process of the disintegration and liquidation of part of the laboring farms by direct data on the village itself. This absence probably served as the basis for individual misconceptions that were sometimes encountered about the allegedly already achieved such a peculiarity in the evolution of private labor agriculture in the USSR, in which only its continuous growth occurs without any disintegration of the lower groups. The recently published CSO ʺStatistical Handbook of the USSR for 1927ʺ should put an end to such notions because it publishes the results of mass surveys of the same farms, covering about 600 thousand peasant households and showing everywhere the two‐sided nature of evolution (pp. 67‐71). These nearly 600,000 yards were examined in detail in 1924, and a year later, in 1925, it was re‐examined what happened to them. Those who liquidated the economy or reduced it fall into the category of those who have passed into the lower groups. The results by region are as follows:

AREA Number of farms surveyed in (thousand) Moved to lower groups (in %) No change (in %) Moved to the highest groups (in %)

Consuming 189 5 81.8 13.2

Producing	236	11.3	68.9	19.8
North Caucasian	53	15.2	55.8	29
Siberian	53	15.2	11.7	24.3
Ukraine	62	12.7	67.6	19.7
Belarus	10	6.1	75.3	18.6

The picture is perfectly clear. As one would expect, the two‐ sided nature of the process is all the more pronounced, the greater the role played in the peasant economy by agriculture— the North Caucasus, Siberia, the Ukraine, the ʺproducing regionʺ of the RSFSR 6 .

1) The well‐known work of Comrade Sukhanov ‐ ʺThe Evolution of Russian Agricultureʺ established the great two‐ sided nature of this process in proportion to the nature of agriculture in the peasant economy and for pre‐revolutionary Russia. (See in detail my book ‐ ʺThe Economy of the Pre‐Soviet Villageʺ, M. 1926)

In full agreement with this are direct data on the liquidation of farms, published in the same ʺSpravochnikʺ for 1922‐1925. (p. 65). These data cover about 350,000 peasant households surveyed annually in the gubernias of the consuming region, in 9 gubernias of the producing region, and in 5 gubernias of Ukraine. They indicate each year the percentage of households that moved out and liquidated, and the percentage of households that returned and relocated. The preponderance of the former over the latter, i.e., net eviction and liquidation as a percentage of the total number of peasant households, turns out to be the following by districts:

Districts	1922‐1923	1924‐1925
Consuming	o.8%	1.0%
Producing	o.8%	1.1%
Ukraine	1.0%	0.6%

The decrease in the percentage in Ukraine was, of course, also influenced by the resettlement of Jews to the land, which developed from 1924 to switch to agriculture. If we take one eviction and liquidation (not subtracting the newly settled and returned), then on average for the period 1922‐1925. about 2.4% of households will be liquidated and evicted annually in the consuming area, about 3.2% in the producing area, and about 2.8% of all households in Ukraine.

In passing to growth from the simple labor commodity production of capitalist agricultural enterprises, we must therefore keep in mind the other side of the process that has just been discussed.

Farming with hired workers..

There are now four forms of capitalist entrepreneurship in agriculture. First, an open, open entrepreneurial economy with hired workers, what we sometimes call a kulak economy. Secondly, the disguised capitalist exploitation of poor neighbors by allegedly renting out their implements and working livestock to them, but in reality by transferring, in this way, often on absolutely enslaving conditions, part of their production to their own disposal, and in reality they are laborers in disguise. Thirdly, agricultural pseudo‐cooperatives. Fourth, the entrepreneurial organization of a certain part of the annual departure of workers from the countryside to work, in particular for non‐agricultural work (forestry and construction).

In one of his speeches, Comrade Molotov recently said that the number of kulaks at the present time can be estimated at approximately 3% to 4% of peasant families.

I consider this figure to be exaggerated. Insofar as we are talking about a truly entrepreneurial economy in agriculture and animal husbandry, about an economy that is carried on with the help of hired workers, not only as auxiliary persons during the illness of the head of the family or during his absence, conscription, ‐ since we are talking about a real capitalist economy However small, we must establish a much smaller share of such a purely entrepreneurial stratum in the total mass of peasant families. Sufficient material has already accumulated that makes it possible to clarify the previous ideas about the kulak stratum in general and to single out from it elements of a definitely capitalist, entrepreneurial type.

The figure indicated by Comrade Molotov includes not only “kulaks,” but also those “close to them,” i.e., those elements of the countryside from which, according to their level of prosperity, capitalist entrepreneurs can develop, but have not yet developed.

According to the book “Agriculture of the USSR in 1924/25 according to the data of tax reports on agricultural tax” published by the Narkomfin, this book, for example, can be used to clarify more precisely that narrower group of peasant farms, which must be considered an economy of a definitely capitalist type. Such attempts are made, by the way, in the introductory articles of this book. They provide a number of useful materials on capitalist farms.

Such farms, as can be established from these data, include, on average, in the RSFSR, in Ukraine and Belarus, about 2% of all farms. On page 23 of the ʺIntroductionʺ one can find a comparison of some data on all peasant farms on the average

and on these 2%, one might say, on the most selective top of the peasant farm. If we take the average number of workers from family members of the farm itself per farm, then in peasant farms in general it is 2.1 people, while in this highest two percent group it is only 1.8 people. In terms of the number of labor force in their own family, these 2% (entrepreneurial farms) are significantly inferior to the ordinary peasant farm. This, by the way, refutes the once fashionable rumors that the power of the highest peasant group, probably, due to its multi‐ family and the presence of a more significant stock of living labor in its own family. In fact, it turns out that there are fewer family workers in an entrepreneurial family than in an average peasant family. But more property. And this property is used as capital—for the exploitation of someone elseʹs dependent labor force for the purpose of making a profit. Of course, most of these entrepreneurial enterprises are among the small‐ capitalist ones, but this does not change their social character.

The data (ibid., same page) on the size of the farm clearly confirm this. Thus, in terms of the amount of sowing per consumer, for every hundred consumers in all peasant farms in general, there is an average of 59 desyatina (1.09 hektare equals 1desyatina) sowing, and for every hundred eaters of these 2% of higher farms, there are 236 desyatina crops ‐ exactly four times more. If we take working cattle, then for everyone hundred eaters of all peasant farms there are 15 heads of working cattle, and for every hundred eaters of this top 2 per cent group there are 36 head of draft livestock, i.e., almost two and a half times more. If we take the number of cattle, then for every hundred eaters of all peasant farms, on average, there are 22 heads, and for every hundred eaters of this 2 percent, highest group, 37 heads. The publication of the Peopleʹs Commissariat of Finance of the USSR, published in June 1927, ʺAgriculture of the USSR in 1925/26 according to

tax reports on the unified agricultural tax,ʺ shows that approximately the same relations took place in 1925/26.

Conventionally, we can judge the capitalist (exploiting) group by the highest (ninth) group of agricultural tax (having more than three acres of arable land or crops per consumer, depending on the region, while the average area under crops per consumer for all peasants in the USSR is four times less ). The amount of sowing per consumer in the ninth group by districts almost coincides with the boundary adopted by the collegium of the National Committee of the RCT for determining exploitative farms when discussing errors in the grain‐forage balance. If some part disappears, then it is completely covered by those kulaks (who sell their livestock on indentured conditions, who have an auxiliary trading establishment, etc.) who have a smaller area (or, for example, are tobacco planters, gardeners, etc.). , which requires little land).

In any case, to characterize the difference between the capitalist stratum and the ordinary peasantry, a comparison of the ninth agricultural tax group with agricultural tax data on average for all peasants is quite suitable. According to the mentioned edition of the NKFin in 1925/26, the ninth group accounted for 2.18% of all households in the USSR (in the previous 1924/25 it was 2.1%), and for every hundred consumers in this group there were 240 acres of sowing, then like all peasants, the average is only 65 acres. In total, the ninth group has 78 heads of cattle (working and food together) per hundred eaters, while all peasants have an average of only 39 heads (in the previous year 1924/25 these figures were 73 heads and 37 heads). Like this; Thus, the ratio has been preserved: the highest capitalist group (about 2% of all farms) is four times stronger than the average peasantry per consumer (this is in the USSR without Transcaucasia and Uzbekistan; eight times in Transcaucasia, six

times in Uzbekistan) and twice as much for large working and food livestock. It goes without saying that all these data allow us to expect a significant development in this top 2 percent group and wage labor. And so it turns out, of course.

The number of hired workers (farm laborers) in the peasant economy is not exactly known. There is an estimate by the CSO (pp. 307‐311 of the called ʺReference Bookʺ), the incompleteness of which is stipulated by the CSO itself, and there is an estimate by Vserabotzemles based on the data of its local branches and representatives. The Total working Forest count is much more complete—a difference of more than a million—and has the advantage of reality. These are the living laborers whose existence is known to the local branches of Vserabozemles and their representatives. Meanwhile, the CSO data (for August 1926) includes only those laborers whose presence the village councils informed the CSO in response to its questionnaire. In other words, only those laborers whose existence is officially known to the responding village councils, i.e., obviously, those farm laborers with whom contracts are registered with the village councils. Since the registration of labor contracts with us is just beginning to take root, it is not surprising that Vserabozemles sometimes registers laborers in such numbers and in such places in which and where the existence of their CSB is unknown. For example, Samara provincial statistics for 1926 found that in the Samara province of all farm laborers, only a third, no more than 34%, were covered by labor contracts (article by Comrade Baskin in No. 3 of the magazine ʺOn the Agrarian Frontʺ for 1927, p. 90) .

The entire difference falls on farm laborers on individual peasant farms because farm laborers of state farms and shepherds of rural communities are all employed under registered contracts. However, if we take into account the five reservations of the CSO itself about the incompleteness of its

data (p. 311 of the Handbook) and make an appropriate estimate, then the difference between the testimony of the CSO and the testimony of Vserabozemles almost disappears.

The CSO shows the number of hired workers in individual peasant farms in the USSR as of August 1926 at a total of 989 thousand people. and stipulates that ʺshepherds and shepherdsʺ are not included here. The number of these shepherds and herdsmen is shown there separately at 681,000 people—together for rural communities and for individual peasant farms. Since there are at least 350 thousand rural societies in the USSR, and in the table of the CSB there is a direct reservation that these 681 thousand people. included shepherds and shepherds of individual owners, then at least 100 thousand people should be attributed to the share of the latter. We get about 1,100,000 laborers on individual farms.

The second reservation of the CSO is that the number of laborers ʺin the field and other agricultural workʺ does not include 220 thousand people hired by individual farms as watchmen in vegetable gardens, melons, orchards, domestic workers, etc., ʺpart of who, in view of the absence of a strict division of work in the peasant economy, could also be classified as agricultural workers” (p. 311). I believe that at least nine‐tenths should be attributed. The workers in the kitchen gardens and orchards are just as laborers as those employed in the fields. And the main occupation of the “domestic worker” in the peasant economy is to go after cows, pigs, and poultry, to churn butter, when necessary, to help mow, reap, etc. We already get about 1,300 thousand people.

Further, the Central Statistical Board indicates that ʺaccounting covers from 60% to 90% of village councils in individual provinces included in the reportʺ (p. 311). This means that, on average, only three‐quarters of the village councils responded to the questionnaire sent by the CSO to the village councils.

Making an appropriate estimate, we already get over 1,700 thousand people.

The CSOʹs fourth reservation is that ʺfor the USSR, the calculation was made for a territory covering about 22 million farms, which is 99% of the total number of farms in the USSRʺ (p. 312). Making an appropriate estimate, we get up to 1,900 thousand people.

Finally, the CSO lists only ʺfixed‐termʺ agricultural workers in its table (p. 307). Together with the “permanent” ones, it means that there will be no less than 2 million, i.e., it will come relatively close to the figure of the All‐Works Land. It is possible that the Vserabozemles data is also underestimated (although, since it already has over a million members, it may already have quite complete information). It should be noted that the all‐Union census of December 1926 will not give a complete picture of wage labor in agriculture, for it was taken in the winter when the overwhelming majority of fixed‐term workers are absent. In the Handbook No. 4 of the Statistical Review, which was published later, the CSO, on the basis of more complete calculations, already considers that in August 1926 there were 1,600,000 laborers on individual peasant farms. This is already a significant approximation to the truth, the difference remains only 650 thousand people, and one can hope that with such progress, the CSB will soon catch up with it.

Thus, from now on, we must dwell on the fact that in 1926 at least two and a quarter million laborers were employed in individual peasant farms. The total number of ʺemployees in agricultureʺ reached 3,600,000 people in 1926, according to Vserabozemles; of these, about 1,300,000 work in state farms, among rural communities (shepherds), in forestry, in cooperatives and handicraft processing (Pravda, April 13, 1927, article by Comrade Gindin—ʺWage labor in agricultureʺ) .

As regards the size of the annual increase (from 1926 to 1927), for the increase in 1926 (against 1925) both the CSB and Vserabozemles show very large figures. So large that they must clearly be attributed not to actual growth, but to more complete accounting. According to Vserabozemles, this number increased by two thirds in one year.

And according to the CSB, the growth over the same year turns out to be even more dizzying: the number of peasant farms using hired labor in general has increased over the year; and in the producing region of the RSFSR even four and a quarter times. Obviously, in 1925, Vserabozemles had more complete records than those of the CSO, and therefore the increase in Vserabozemles is less fantastic than that of the CSO. In fact, however, the rate of growth of the All Rabozemles (two‐thirds) far exceeds the actual one and is also explained by incomplete accounting for 1925. For a number of reasons and individual data, which there is no need to cite here, it must be assumed that the actual increase is not from 150% to 325% per year, as for the CSB, and not 65%, as for Vserabozemles, but only about 10%. Then the number of all farm laborers in peasant farms in 1927 can be taken up to 2500 thousand people. (including permanent, fixed‐term, day laborers, shepherds, gardeners, horticulturalists, ʺdomesticʺ, etc.) Most of them are, of course, fixed‐term workers (during summer or autumn work).

It is possible that by the end of the 1927 season, the actual accounting by Vserabotzemles will give a somewhat larger value, because the figure I have given corresponds to the total number of about 4 million people included in the Vserabotzemles jurisdiction. in 1927 (foresters, state farmers, shepherds of village councils, etc. are added), and the chairman of Vserabozemles, Comrade Antselovich, believes that in 1927, thanks to the achievement of completeness of accounting and growth, it will turn out, perhaps, even up to 5 million.

The entrepreneurial group of peasant farms accounts for about

1.5 million farm laborers 7 , i.e., less than 40% of all wage laborers who should be in 1927 in the terms of reference of the Vserabotzemles, with the moderate growth we have adopted in comparison with the CSB and Vserabozemles.

2) This value is obtained by comparing the available data on the percentage of hiring households by groups, on the size of the average hiring by groups, on the average completeness of registration and on local more detailed surveys characterizing questionnaires, etc. center data. The main part of these 1,500 thousand people. are seasonal laborers (partly paid by the day).

In the entire entrepreneurial group, about 2% of all peasant farms (or about 450,000 households by 1927). As we have seen, there should be about 800 thousand people in this group of their own, family workers, i.e., those working on their own farm from among family members. (an average of 1.8 people per farm). Thus, this highest group (2% of all farms) has an average of about 2 hired workers for each of its workers, while in the rest of the peasant farms, on average, there is only an insignificant fraction, something about 0.02 people. for one family worker. Approximately 90 times less than this higher group.

How has the number of these entrepreneurial households been growing lately? Their percentage is not the same in different parts of the country. In the North European and Central European parts of the RSFSR it is less, in Ukraine it is more, in the North Caucasus it is even more, and so on.

The direct data from the CSO show such a large increase that they are, as stated, clearly not representative, and this

ʺstatisticalʺ increase must be attributed to a greater undercounting of past years than is taking place now. More revealing are the tax statistics of the Peopleʹs Commissariat of

Finance on the so‐called ʺninth groupʺ in terms of agricultural tax, that is, on the highest taxed land. It does not completely coincide with the capitalist‐entrepreneurial group, but is close to it (part of its farms are not managed capitalist, but part of the farms from neighboring groups adjacent to it are managed capitalist).

In any case, this gives a picture closer to reality than the dizzying growth according to the “selective” and “questionnaire” tables of the CSO, because from year to year, when establishing the agricultural tax, a complete accounting of all farms is carried out on the spot, moreover, according to the same criteria.

In order not to clutter up the presentation, I will give a certificate from the same “Collection” of the NKF only for Ukraine (p. 77 of the “Introduction”). The number of farms of the “ninth group” in Ukraine in 1922/23 was 3.2%, in 1923/24 it was already 3.6%, in 1924/25 it was even slightly higher—3.7%. Here you can see a slow but rather persistent growth. This growth began and intensified from the time of the New Economic Policy, i.e., from the time when the top groups of the peasant economy were able to turn their great wealth into an instrument of commodity capitalist growth.

There are about 45,000,000 annual workers in the peasant economy of the USSR, counting only those needed for production, and not taking into account the share of the annual labor of a peasant family that is spent on household chores, cooking, childcare, etc. etc., as well as not taking into account the share that falls on the departure to the side. This calculation was made by Gosplanʹs Control Figures (p. 34). So, the top 2% of households have 1.9% of all annual workers on all peasant farms, except for hired workers. Of all wage workers employed in individual peasant farms, these top 2% households have about 60%. Of all the workers, family and hired together,

generally employed in the peasant economy, the top 2% of households have slightly more than 5%.

On page 74 of the ʺIntroductionʺ to the mentioned edition of the NKF (ʺAgriculture of the USSR in 1924/25ʺ) there is a final calculation of the percentage of taxable land, crops, workers, and cattle belonging to the most prosperous households in the amount of 4% of all peasant households. yards. This group embraces both kulaks and those who are close to kulaks. For each region of the country, families were ranked among this most prosperous group on the basis of special features for each region, developed by the statistician N. Oganovsky. In total, these 4% of households, according to the continuous tax data of the NKF, account for 16.3% of all taxable land, 16.2% of crops, 11.2% of draft animals and 8.2% of cattle. From this group, by appropriate recalculations, I single out the 2% of the most powerful capitalist‐entrepreneurial households and obtain the following results.

Of all the taxable land at the disposal of the peasantry, these 2% of households account for between 10% and 11%. The taxable land includes not only crops, but also arable land and meadows; therefore, I give separately data on all taxable lands and separately on crops.

Of all the crops, the capitalist 2% of households also account for 10 to 11% of all peasant crops in the USSR. Of all working livestock, these 2% of households account for about 7.5%. Of all cattle, the same 2% of households account for up to 5.5%.

Considering that these households have a slightly higher sowing yield than the average yield in a peasant farm in general, we can assume that if they have from 10% to 11% of the sowing, then they have up to about 12% of the total crop. “Cultivation of peasant arable land on farms of different capacities” (No. 3 for 1927, “On the Agrarian Front”, p. 121), the

following data are given on the average yield in pounds per tithe for different groups (according to the area of sowing):

Rye Wheat Barley Millet

On average, all	38	38	48	47
Sowing< 10 desyatina	33	34	46	41
Sowing > 10 desyatina	44	46	53	63

Then it must be taken into account that the top 2 per cent group often has a somewhat higher type of farming than the average peasant mass (more intensive farming, better implements, more valuable crops, etc.), so a real assessment of their harvest is still needed. more boost. But they have a smaller percentage of cattle than crops. If we take into account the monetary expression, on the one hand of their agricultural production, and on the other hand, their livestock production, then on average this gives up to 9% of gross output in monetary terms. In other words, out of all those 7,600,000 pre‐war rubles by which Gosplan estimates the gross output of agriculture, almost 700 million rubles. is concentrated in the economy of these 2% of households, who have, on average, almost two wage workers for each one of their family workers.

This capitalist group, of course, has a somewhat higher percentage of marketable output, because a larger part of its production can be alienated to the market than that of the peasant of the middle peasant type, who by his production satisfies his own needs primarily in kind. We have seen that, according to the State Planning Commission, on average for the entire village, out of all agricultural production, out of all gross agricultural output, 54% is in kind (consumed on oneʹs farm) and 46% in the marketable (sold) part.

If we divide the whole countryside into two groups: 1) into all the peasantry, except for the capitalist 2% of households, 2)

these 2% of capitalist households, it turns out that in the entire peasantry, apart from these 2%, there is 58% natural and 42% marketable products. And the capitalist 2% have only 30% natural, but 70% marketable products. Therefore, it turns out that although the share of the top 2% of households in the gross output is about 9%, in the marketable output, in what goes to the market, their share is up to 14%, i.e., about one seventh. This means that of all that is alienated from the peasant economy, both in the field of agricultural products and in the field of livestock products, agricultural raw materials, etc., only one‐ seventh is supplied directly from their own production by the capitalist entrepreneurial economy (covering 2% of households). An illustration can be provided by the calculations of the Central Statistical Bureau of the number of commodity grain stocks and grain stocks in general, falling on April 1, 1926 for a group of households, each sowing more than 16 acres (“Statistical Review” No. 2 for 1927, article by Comrade Lositsky ‐ “Peasant grain reserves).

It should be noted that this group is somewhat narrower than the one we have, according to the decision of the Board of the Peopleʹs Commissariat of the RCI, referred to as ʺexploitingʺ. This resolution is given in Comrade Yakovlevʹs book ʺOn errors in the grain‐forage balanceʺ (p. 82), and according to it, the exploiting group begins with the following sowing area: in the Ukrainian forest‐steppe ‐ from 10 desyatina, in the steppe Ukraine ‐ from 14 desyatina, in the Central Black Earth region of the RSFSR ‐ from 12 desyatina, in Siberia ‐ from 14 desyatina, in the northeast ‐ from 14 desyatina etc. In stocks for April 1, the CSB includes the consumer fund of the peasants themselves for the remainder of the economic year, and livestock feed for the same period, and all seed stocks, and surpluses for sale on the market, and the internal reserve of the economy. Of all this, more than 16 desyatina accounted for 10.6%, and from commodity stocks alone, even 21% (p. 34 of the Statistical

Review, No. 2). It follows from our examination, among other things, that in some districts, Comrade Yakovlevʹs commission, if one singles out only truly capitalist farms, has taken the limit at which those who are not actually such will fall into the

ʺexploitingʺ ones. This underestimates the relative weight of a narrower, but really capitalist group, because the indicators relating to it blur, decrease when extended to a wider (in fact, non‐capitalist, non‐exploiting) circle of farms.

At first glance, it may seem surprising that we have such a stratum, albeit a thin one—only 2% of the households, which runs its economy mainly by hired workers and is capitalist‐ entrepreneurial in the exact sense of the word. Of course, in most cases these are small capitalist enterprises. But in a number of cases, recent observations show, however, that a number of large‐scale peasant farms have already been created, employing hired workers in comparatively fairly large numbers. First of all, these are plantation farms, such as tobacco plantations, which require up to 5 workers per tithe in the summer, orchards, vineyards, etc. Then gardening. Pravda had a telegram from Saratov stating that 27 workers had gone on strike near a gardener near Sara .Comrade In the same Pravda, in the judicial department, the process of one gardener near Moscow, who employed 15 workers, was printed. Finally, there are areas of large‐scale grain farming and animal husbandry, where hired labor is also widely used. Here are a few examples from the Don and Terek districts of the North Caucasus region.

Recently, at the end of 1926, the Terek District Committee of our Party published a pamphlet, Our Experience. It provides information showing the extent to which the hiring of agricultural workers by large peasants in such areas as the North Caucasus reaches. Here are excerpts from a description of the hiring of farm laborers by peasants in the village of Praskoveya, Terek District in 1926 (p. 28):

“The village of Praskoveya is rich in vineyards. Next to the rich garden owners, who have 3,000 to 12,000 buckets of wine, there are also perfect farm laborers, whose occupation is to work for the kulaks. One can observe in the bazaar how kulaks come to crowds of farm laborers, count out 200‐300 people, give them the price they want, and lead them to their gardens for day labor. And how are they hired! We have witnessed such a picture. A well‐fed and drunk gardener approaches the crowd and shouts: “Come on, barefoot, come out fifty people at eight hryvnias!” Immediately he begins to choose and count, to choose according to the complexion, according to height, he probes with his eyes both in front and behind.

At the very height of the season, the laborers made an attempt to go on strike. The employers were organized, they agreed among themselves and did not even want to add an extra nickel. All the laborers who went on strike were more than 500 people. They didnʹt go to work for two days in a row! On the third day, the owners began to add only a dime, two, but the new laborers could no longer hold on, they had no grubs, they began to be hired.

Some of the local laborers said: “Well, it was our brethren who fought, but our strike turned out to be in the English style. Our praskoveyskys would have held out to the end, but outsiders would have torn off. Yes, and you can’t blame them, people without grubs ”(pp. 28‐29).

In this village of Praskoveya, according to the Tersky Financial Department, there are 65 large peasant farms, which is about 3% of all farms in the village. Of these, 26 owners have more than 20 seasonal laborers each during seasonal work in the gardens, and, in addition, 2‐3 permanent laborers.

Here, for example, is the farm of the peasant Sergey Korneev:

“His family consists of eight people. Sowing farm has 48 desyatina In addition, 5 dec. vineyard. There are 3 horses on the farm, 15 cows, and 91 sheep. From the agricultural inventory there are: 2 bookers, 5 harrows, 1 seeder, 1 winnower, 4 wine presses. In the summer, the farm uses the labor of 18 hired laborers who work for 2‐3 months. In winter, up to 6 hired workers work on the farm, 3 of them all year round, including 2 shepherds. In 1926, the farm paid 442 rubles of agricultural tax. The annual profitability of the farm is approximately 19 thousand rubles, of which about 10 thousand rubles remain to the owner of the net income.

Therefore, the tax is less than 4.5% of net income. The head of the household is 26 years old, literate. He complies with labor legislation, concludes contracts for all farm laborers in a timely manner and fulfills them accurately. He feeds the workers satisfactorily and even often at the common table with the whole family. He subscribes to several newspapers and makes literate farm laborers read. He is not a member of the cooperative. In the field of field cultivation, he does not introduce any innovations and cultural undertakings into the economy.

This is partly explained by the fact that field cultivation has an auxiliary character for the economy and sowing is carried out in order to have grain to feed the workers and to pay their wages in grain. In the field of winemaking, which is the basis of the economy, there are cultural innovations: tools for winemaking, pressing. The owner himself leads a secluded life and eschews social work. (From materials reported by the Terek Committee.)

Another large farm, with a more significant bias towards field cultivation and cattle breeding, belongs to the peasant Ivan Yena. “His farm has 52 desyatina crops, 1 1/2 vineyards, 3 horses, 10 oxen, 26 cows, 350 sheep. From the agricultural

inventory there are: 3 bookers, 10 harrows, 1 winnower, 1 seeder, 1 wine press. Hired force in the economy is used, but without registered contracts. During the season, up to 22 seasonal laborers work on the farm for 2‐6 months and, in addition, 3 annual workers. The farm is not a member of any cooperative organizations. Agricultural tax paid 572 rubles. The head of the family is 36 years old, semi‐literate; his whole family is illiterate, they do not teach children to read and write, they eschew public life. (From the same materials.)

In the same Terek district there are a number of capitalist peasant farms, no longer of the horticultural type, like Sergei Korneev, and not of the field‐animal husbandry type, like Ivan Yena, but specifically cattle‐breeding. Based on the materials collected in March 1927 on behalf of the Terek comrades by Comrade Serebryakyan, I will give an example of one village ‐ Alikui, Naursky district, Tersky district. There are 10 large peasant sheep‐breeding farms here, ranging in size from 1 1/2 thousand to 15 thousand sheep each. Here is a description of one of them, the farm of Yakov Lutsenko, who has up to 7,000 Spanish sheep.

“A year he collects up to 2 thousand poods of wool, and in 1926 the income received by him from the farm is estimated at 73 thousand rubles. Of this income, 51 thousand rubles were spent on the needs of the farm (land rent, payment to shepherds, shearing sheep, fodder), and the remaining 22 thousand rubles. amounted to a surplus and partly went to the issuance of loans to neighboring peasants. This year Lutsenko has such credits for the peasants up to 1 1/2 thousand poods of grain and 5 thousand rubles. money. He assures that no one will deceive him, since the peasants know that once he has deceived, you will not get another time. Lutsenkoʹs son studies, according to him, at the university.

Lutsenkoʹs house differs from the huts of other farmers: it consists of three or four rooms, with furnishings somewhat different from the usual peasant. One of the comrades who visited him at home a few years before our survey, in 1923, says that at that time the farm was not yet so powerful. Yet even then the family already drank tea with jam, silver spoons. In the past, in 1926, Lutsenko spent 3,000 rubles on the treatment of his wife in Mozdok.” (From the same materials.)

Sometimes in the same villages the contrast between capitalist entrepreneurs and the ordinary peasantry is very clearly revealed.

Comrade Lvov (chief inspector of the NKTorg) delivered me a list of 29 owners who were deprived of the right to vote during the re‐election of councils in the village of Vorontsovsky, Yeisk District, Don District, along with information about the property status of these 29 households and the remaining 149 households of the village of Vorontsovsky. Dispossessed people make up only one‐sixth of all households.

They have 3632 desyatina land, or an average of 15 desyatina on the eater. The rest of the yards have an average of 2 desyatina on the eater. The disfranchised have 99 winter laborers, that is, on average, almost 4 winter laborers per yard. I emphasize the word ʺwinterʺ, because in the summer they have several times more fixed‐term, seasonal and daily wage workers. Among the dispossessed come across owners who have 150 dessiatins. and above. Having more than 100 desyatina quite a lot, and in a number of cases the head of the household is a woman who has several young children, but hires 4‐5 winter laborers alone.

Before us is a type of a kind of small new landlords, growing out of large‐scale peasant farms in the conditions of commodity‐market relations.

It is curious that in the Samara province, surveyors from the workers of the Communist Academy, having discovered in the spring of 1927 a similar layer of capitalist peasant farms, established that the local population calls them “new landowners” in this way. The houses of the “new landowners” differ from ordinary peasant houses in size, in the size of the windows (urban type), in the height of the rooms, and in the interior decoration (the investigators saw pianos, gramophones, etc. in them).

Is it possible to call otherwise than the ʺlandownerʺ that peasant who in the village of Essentukskaya alone in 1926 sold from his farm for 32 thousand rubles. wheat and other grains? (From the materials of the Terek regional committee.) After all, this means sowing more than 200 desyatina The area for sowing on such a scale is concentrated in the hands of one farm thanks to the lease of land and due to the absence of intra‐settlement land management in the overwhelming majority of areas of the USSR. Until now, in a number of places (especially where there was no “land pressure”), large peasants use their lands bought before the revolution, as well as lands seized by them during the civil war and the first years of Soviet power, when they “mastered” free land (former landlord and former state) one who had cattle and equipment in cash for this.

As for entrepreneurial leasing, even the very incomplete data of our CSO (based on spring polls) published on pages 74‐77 of the aforementioned ʺReference Bookʺ allow us to judge its significant prevalence.

General data for 1924‐1926 are given here throughout the RSFSR. There are few of them.

There are few of them.

1924 1925 1926

% of farms with crops on leased land 3.6 5.4 7.2

% of sowing on leased land to the total sowing of the RSFSR

2.4 4.1 5.3

For Ukraine, Transcaucasia and Uzbekistan, information is only for 1925. Here, lease relations are even more developed:

% of farms with crops on leased land % of sowing on leased land to the total sowing of the RSFSR

Ukraine	6.9	4.7
Transcaucasia	7.7	6.3
Uzbekistan	8.2	5.1

The reality by 1927 must be considered undoubtedly more impressive than the data of this incomplete accounting of 1925 and 1926. As for the distribution of rent between different groups of households, apart from a few northern provinces, the CSB’s “Reference Book” contains data only for the Ryazan, Tula, Oryol and Saratov provinces, the Ural region, and the Republic of the Volga Germans. Thus, this ʺproducing zoneʺ does not include the main and most characteristic agricultural regions: the Ukraine, the North Caucasian region, Siberia, and Kazakhstan. Transcaucasia and Uzbekistan with their more developed lease relations are also not included. Nevertheless, for this “producing strip” we get the following picture for the spring of 1926, according to the CSB, dividing the farms according to the amount of sowing per yard into three groups:

Sowing less than 6 desyatina from 6 to 10. above 10 .

Number of yards 78.3% 16.5% 5.2%

Rented from all the leased land 24.8% 26.5% 48.7%

For 1 rental yard 1.5 dec. 2.9 dec. 8 dec.

from all surrendered land 87.2% 9.4% 3.4%

It turns out a picture that is completely not amenable to any reinterpretation. It clearly shows that approximately half of the lease is capitalist, entrepreneurial. Such leasing is not aimed at satisfying the consumer needs of the economy, but at the production for additional sale on the market, carried out in addition to the familyʹs own labor forces, by hired workers.

We saw above that the narrow capitalist‐entrepreneurial stratum of the peasants, according to total tax data, owns up to 10% of the entire peasant sown area in the USSR. Now we can add to this that, judging by the dynamics of incomplete accounting of the Central Statistical Office, we can approximately assume that in 1927, including entrepreneurial rent, it accounted for from 2.5% to 3% and about 7% for the rest of the land use of this group.

Some indications of the growth of this group can be taken from the data of the ʺHandbookʺ of the CSB on the growth of the largest farms ‐ those with 4 or more head of working cattle, with 4 or more cows, with more than 10 dess of crops. Of course, in any locality, even a farm with 4 heads of working cattle may not be entrepreneurial, but on average in the RSFSR a farm of this type usually goes far beyond the ordinary. Farms with 4 or more cows in the RSFSR were (p. 81):

1924 г.	2,2%,
1925	2,3%
1926	3,%

Farms with 4 or more heads of working cattle in 1924 were 20/0 and in 1926 ‐ 2.1% (p. 81). Farms with more than 10 desyatina

in 1925 it was 2.7%, and in 1926 it was already 3.2% (p. 78). According to the data of annual censuses of 340,000 households

in the same villages, carried out by the Central Statistical Office in 1922‐1925 in some areas (p. 85), the number of farms sowing more than 16 desyatina to the yard, changed as follows:

	1222 г.	1925 г.
Producing region of the RSFSR. . .	0,1%	0,4%
North Caucasian	1.0 %	4,6%
Siberia	0,4%	0,4%
Ukraine	3%	1,4%

Capitalist surrender of livestock and implements.

The second type of capitalist organization of production in agriculture is the organization of production under the guise of leasing out oneʹs implements and draft animals. This form is described and analyzed in detail in my book, The Soviet Village, and in Comrade Kritzmanʹs book, Class Stratification in the Soviet Village.

Seemingly here, a poor man hires a capitalist entrepreneur as a piece worker with a horse. In fact, the kulak, in order to extract exploitative income for his own benefit, cultivates the land of the poor, legally without renting it. For the use of the land, the kulak pays the poor peasant a smaller part of the harvest from the land thus cultivated. And legally it is considered that the poor ʺhiredʺ by him ʺpiecework workerʺ pays ʺwagesʺ in the form of most of the crop. For plowing, for bringing crops from the field to the countryside, for exporting them for sale to a point, etc., for all “piece‐work” work, the horseless “pays” a fair share of the harvest to the kulak (in the Kiev district, for example, for only one export from the field ‐ up to one sheaf out of every four, etc.). This is a system of ʺproletarianʺ camouflage with the fist of actual capitalist relations (the imaginary

ʺemployerʺ is usually the actual worker of his ʺpiecework

workerʺ). The system of such camouflage is partly a relic of the early years of the NEP (when there was still no clear permission to lease), partly carried out by the kulak to protect oneself from disenfranchisement or from registering an agreement to lease land from the poor or to hire the poor himself, etc. The purpose of the camouflage ‐ depriving the poor of the protection of the law, which the poor would have received in the open discovery of real capitalist relations and in the registration of the corresponding contracts.

Exploitation by masquerade ʺrenting outʺ of oneʹs draft animals and implements is now one of the most widespread forms of capitalist enterprise in the countryside. It is absolutely impossible to accurately calculate its dimensions with available materials. Approximately, it is possible to determine the lower limits of its size in relation to the prevalence of hiring the so‐ called pieceworkers.

According to the spring poll of the Central Statistical Bureau in 1926 (pp. 88‐89 of the Handbook), one can see how sharply the division of ʺpiecework workersʺ into groups of employers differs sharply from the division into groups of employers of other wage workers (i.e., fixed‐term, annual and daily ). And in the consuming region of the RSFSR and in the producing region of the RSFSR, the picture is completely the same—the direct opposite of the distribution of ʺpieceworkʺ workers and other workers. Here, for example, is a table showing the percentage of households in each group employing ʺpiecework workersʺ for the consumption band:

Farm groups Of these, hires “piecework workers” (in %%)

Sowing up to 1 des.	39.6
From 1 to 2 dec.	23.9
2 to 3	9.2

3 ‐4	5.0
4‐6	3.1
6‐10	2.9
10‐ 16	5.9
16‐25	1.5
Over 25 dec.	0

Before us is a vivid picture of how ʺpieceworkʺ workers are

ʺhiredʺ mainly by the poor. Of all the farms ʺhiringʺ in general

ʺpiece‐workersʺ according to the consumption band, the share of the smallest farms sowing less than 2 dessiatines, as can be seen from another table on the same page of the Directory, is almost equal to 80% ‐ four‐fifths. Then almost 18% falls on those who sow from 2 to 4 desyatina to the yard. The distribution of households that hire the rest of the workers—permanent, annual, and daily workers—is completely reversed. hire fixed‐ term, annual and daily wages (p. 88). And from the group sowing up to 1 desyatina, only 1.5% are hired for term and annual. Of those sowing from 1 to 2 desyatina—2.6%. Of those who sow from 2 to 3 desyatina—3%. Of those who sow from 3 to 4 desyatina—3.8%. Of those sowing from 4 to 6 desyatina— 4.6%. And so on. The ʺhiringʺ of so‐called ʺpieceworkʺ workers is concentrated in the lower, poorer groups, while the hiring of real laborers (fixed‐term, annual) is concentrated in the higher entrepreneurial groups of the countryside.

The picture is the same for the producing region of the RSFSR. Of all the farms that hired here in the spring of 1926 fixed‐term and annual or ʺpieceworkʺ workers, according to the data of the Central Statistical Bureau (pp. 88‐89), the following percentage fell on individual groups:

Farm groups Term and annual (in %) ʺPieceworkers (in

Sowing up to 2 desyatina 7.5 29.2

From 2 to 4 dec.	19.3	37.2
4‐ 6	19.8	19.3
over 6 dec.	53.4	14.3

At the same time, there are more than 10 desyatina (only about 5% of all households) accounts for about 27% of all households employing temporary and annual workers, and only 2.3% of households employing ʺpiecework workersʺ. The contrast between the distribution of pieceworkers and non‐ pieceworkers is thus quite obvious .

3) In the Voronezh province in 1926, the cultivation of arable land was carried out with hired livestock and implements: from those who sow up to 2 dessiatines, in 75.8% of households; of those sowing from 2 to 6 desyatina—in 25.2% of households; of those who sow from 6 to 10 desyatina—2.7% of households; of those who sow more than 10 desyatina, about 6% of households (p. 118 No. 3 ʺOn the agrarian front ʺ for 1927).

It should also be noted that since in the highest group there are more farm laborers per household employing temporary or annual workers than in the lower groups, the percentage of farm laborers they hire is significantly higher than the 27% that they make up in the total number of employing workers. farms according to the CSO.

The underestimation of actual farm laborers generally affects big employers more than small ones, because the big ones are more interested in evading accounting and registration of contracts than the small ones. This is confirmed not only by individual observations and reports from the field, but also by

special surveys of Vserabozemles. For example, in 1926 Comrade Akhmatov, an employee of the central office of the All‐Employee Lands, examined the Mariupol District of the Ukraine in this respect. It turned out that the kulaks registered contracts for 18% of the laborers they actually have, the middle peasants registered contracts for 45%, and the poor peasants registered contracts for 100%. (Poor families sometimes hire a laborer in case of conscription, death, or prolonged illness of the only worker, etc.) This shows, by the way, the data of the Central Statistical Service cited above on the number of farm laborers among the peasants refer only to temporary farm laborers without ʺpiecework workers.ʺ In other words, only to real farm laborers.

For the first time, the CSOʹs ʺReference Bookʺ tables make it possible for the consumption and production bands of the RSFSR to provide data separately for ʺpieceworkʺ workers and separately for others. It turns out (pp. 86‐89) that out of the total number of peasant households in each lane, according to the data of the CSB, in 1926 the following were hired:

stripes ʺpieceworkʺ workers Term, annual and daily Consuming 16.5% 8.7%

Producing 23.7% 7.8%

In other words, about 8% of all households actually hire farm laborers (of those employing “piecework” households, those households that simultaneously hire others, i.e., fixed‐term, annual or daily, are excluded here). The lionʹs share of those hired falls into the upper 2%, the capitalist‐entrepreneurial group, and is subjected to capitalist exploitation, disguised by the imaginary hiring of ʺpiecework workersʺ, on average, about 20% of all households. This is not surprising, if we recall that the number of those who did not have working livestock in the RSFSR in 1926 was 30% (p. 81 of the Handbook), and five‐sixths

of them (about 25%), however, according to the tables of the Central Statistical Service (p. 78 ) were sown. And this is what “hiring pieceworkers” serves for, i.e., to put it simply, the cultivation of the lands of the horseless poor by their working cattle, predominantly by the highest group, who, moreover, sometimes perform labor duties with this working cattle (and those operations that are not required by livestock, for example sowing with hands, threshing with a flail, etc.).

We would go too far if we began to give here all the calculations necessary to determine what part of the marketable output of peasant agriculture is concentrated in its hands by the capitalist group of peasants through such exploitation of the poor 20% of the households by ʺsurrenderingʺ their working cattle to them in the form of hiring to the poor in ʺpiecework workʺ. I get for this a value of only 4% to 5% of marketable output.

At first glance, this seems surprisingly small with such a large number of people being exploited in this form, as 20% of all peasant households. A more complete account, by the way, would give perhaps a figure closer to 25%, for without working cattle, but sowing, there are 25% of all households. And “spouses” and similar forms of comradely, non‐exploitative combination of forces from different farms are hardly so widespread as to serve as many as 5% of peasant households everywhere, although, for example, in the Voronezh province, 6.7% of households work with “spouses” (p. 118 No. 3 ʺOn the agrarian frontʺ for 1927).

However, the modesty of the value of 4% to 5% of marketable output as a result of this form of capitalist exploitation will be understandable if we take into account: 1) the entire part of the output that is the actual rent and wages of the imaginary

ʺemployerʺ is not counted; 2) the small size of land use of most of these 20% households; 3) partial participation in such exploitation by the upper stratum of the middle peasants of the

countryside, however, limited by the fact that they usually do not have such large surpluses of draft animals as would allow them to expand their participation in this form of exploitation of the horseless poor on an especially wide scale.

Understanding the socio‐economic essence of the phenomenon that, according to the old populist tradition, even in the collections of the Soviet Central Statistical Administration, is also called “leave of piecework workers”, understanding the fundamental difference in the conditions of our village between the actual hiring of laborers (term, annual, daily) and disguised capitalist exploitation, called the cultivation of the land of the poor on a piece‐work basis by the rich with their livestock—all this is absolutely necessary for any complete consideration of the significance of the thin capitalist stratum of the peasants in the very organization of agricultural production.

To the same extent it is necessary to take into account the share of the capitalist elements of the peasantry in the marketable output of the countryside, for they sell, for example, not only the grain that has grown on their lands and on the lands leased by them, but also the grain that has grown on those poor lands, where they performed in the operetta role of ʺpiecework workersʺ.

The poor ʺhiringʺ the rich; the rich, who are ʺproletariansʺ in relation to the poor who are actually exploited by them ‐ only populism, which did not want to know the class meaning of the phenomena described by it, could agree to such terminology (designations), which breaks the record of economic illiteracy. It is well known how the Narodniks lumped together the opening of a tavern or factory with a kulak and the admission of a poor peasant as a worker to this factory or tavern.

It is all the more ridiculous now when our Soviet Central Statistical Administration, having given in its ʺReference Bookʺ

separately information on ʺpiece‐work workersʺ and on actual farm laborers, then, with truly Narodnik ease, puts the workers and their owners together and receives idyllic pictures (p. 87), like almost all groups the peasants of the producing strip almost equally ʺuse hired labor power in generalʺ (in nine groups out of ten, with such an addition, fluctuations are obtained only from 27% to 44% of all households in each group).

In this way, the real opposition between the character of the higher, capitalist, and lower, poor groups is completely obscured, and a fog is thrown in, of course. Instead of some being hired and others being hired, everyone is both hiring and being hired. And the uncritical observer who takes a ready‐ made tablet and does not investigate what parts it is composed of is given reason to think that the Narodniks were right in believing in the ʺspecialʺ character of our peasantry.

There is no class stratification, for even in the productive sector almost all groups use ʺwage labor in generalʺ almost evenly— obviously, when for random reasons this is temporarily necessary (the Narodniks have always pointed to temporary small families, the absence of a worker, etc.). We have seen, however, what actually different social groups are hidden behind this hodgepodge. The capitalist peasant hires a laborer and, moreover, exploits the poor peasant in a barely disguised form—this is how the slovenly arrangement of workers and masters is deciphered by our CSO. It is time to abandon this carelessness, this illiterate populist tradition.

False collective farms.

The next, third, group of capitalist entrepreneurship in agriculture is pseudo‐collective farms, agricultural production pseudo‐cooperatives. Agricultural cooperatives in production have developed fairly well in our country in recent years, but

among these collective farms there are still quite a few false cooperatives. Their typical feature is often the organization of agricultural cooperatives from persons who have never been involved in agriculture.

For example, Pravda of May 27, 1926 published a description of an agricultural cooperative here in Moscow. It is called

ʺMoskoopselkhozʺ and was founded by the artist Valiev, the former collegiate assessor Vorotnikov and the former landowner Makarov. They received various goods from state institutions, received loans, in a word, in eight months they increased their turnover to 2 million rubles. and by the time they were arrested, they had caused losses to the state for 600 thousand rubles, which were never reimbursed.

Another Moscow example. In Izvestia of July 4, 1926, one can read the history of the agricultural cooperative partnership for the public cultivation of land named after the chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR, comrade Kalinin. This ʺcollective farmʺ of the Moscow province from the MOZO (Land Department of the Moscow Council) received 20 thousand rubles. buildings, for 5 thousand rubles. live and dead implements, etc. Cows were sold to a butcher, pigs were sold, etc., in a word, ʺused.ʺ The survey showed that the members of the cooperative themselves came there only to play gorodki, and when during the judicial investigation they were shown a cultivator (agricultural implement) lying in the yard, no one could explain what it was. Their work was carried out by hired workers.

An example of the ʺplannedʺ organization of a large number of fictitious artels is the Hukon case. There was such an organization under the Peopleʹs Commissariat of Agriculture, which cared about horses, etc. Some of its employees organized a whole series of false artels called ʺSelectʺ, ʺPrometheusʺ,

ʺProgressʺ, ʺOchakovʺ, ʺPlemrassadnikʺ to get state farms. For

these organizations, 300 breeding cows, 22 bulls, 200 breeding horses were received from the Peopleʹs Commissariat of Agriculture, including the most famous trotters of the pre‐ revolutionary time ‐ ʺKrepyshʺ and others who took prizes at the races. All this was sold out to no one knows where, ʺwent from hand to hand,ʺ as Comrade Kondurushkin writes in his book.

In the Kiev district, several kulaks owning mills formed the

ʺcommuneʺ ʺSelpromʺ. Forms, printing. Loan in Rybsindicate, Tea Department, Sugar Trust, AztabakTrest for 40 thousand rubles. Sale to the private market. (ʺRed evening newspaperʺ of January 26, 1926)

Near Moscow there is a suburban area Malakhovka. In 1925, citizen Malakhov organized an agricultural cooperative there, and in Moscow, the Moscow Representative Office of the Malakhov Agricultural Cooperation, a representative office for the sale of hay. Of course, this representative office opened an office in Moscow, purchased a telephone and established a manufacturing department. They received manufactories from trusts at wholesale prices worth 62,000 rubles, in view of the fact that this is a peasant agricultural cooperative. I strongly doubt that in Malakhovka the peasants have ever seen manufactories for 62 thousand rubles at once. at wholesale prices. Manufactory went to the private market in Moscow and the provinces. The son of one of the employees of the Moscow representative office was even accepted into the school of the Tsentrosoyuz as the son of a cooperative worker. As for the hay they bought hay for sale through counterparties in the Saratov province and transported it from there to Moscow, because they did not extract any hay in Malakhovka. In the end, they slipped on trifles and ended up on trial.

Interesting, of course, are not individual examples, but what is interesting is that they are indicative. Namely, the NK RCT

carried out surveys of almost 7,000 collective farms in the RSFSR according to the data of the provincial land departments and according to the data of the provincial RCTs. This makes up about a third of all collective farms in the USSR. When establishing which part of these collective farms are pseudo‐ collective farms, the following signs were used: 1) the economy, legally being a collective farm, is actually run not by the hands of members, but by hired workers; 2) under the legal guise of a collective farm, each member actually runs his own separate individual farm, i.e., the collective farm is organized only for the use of tax, credit and other benefits; 3) the collective farm is made up of a small well‐to‐do group, which refuses to accept middle and poor peasants into its composition, that is, it represents a kind of ʺjoint‐stock companyʺ; 4) within the collective farm, some members exploit other members, hire them, etc., moreover, some of the members contributed a lot of property to the collective farm, while another part of the members contributed little; 6956 collective farms were surveyed.

The results were evaluated in the resolution of the board of the NC RCT of July 10, 1926 and published in No. 2 of the journal

ʺOn the Agrarian Frontʺ for 1927 by Volodkovich and Kulikov (p. 32). It turned out that of all the collective farms in the Saratov province, 22% were pseudo‐collective farms. In the Tatar Republic there are 29% of pseudo‐collective farms, in the Middle Volga region ‐ 30%, in the North Caucasus ‐ 10% in Siberia ‐ 30%, in the Moscow province, so to speak, directly at hand near the center ‐ 35%. On average, out of all 6,956 collective farms, 1,717, or 25%, turned out to be pseudo‐ collective farms. Thus, according to this survey—and it embraces one‐third of all collective farms in the USSR—an entire quarter belongs to pseudo‐collective farms. Some authors suggest that these data are exaggerated. But since the NC RCT survey has not been discredited, I see no reason for

this. And the RCT NC could not have been interested in exaggerating the unfavorable results. In addition, according to the data of the Selskosoyuz, much more than half of the collective farms have not entered the network of the cooperative system at all and prefer to remain ʺwildʺ, uncontrolled. And from the experience of urban industrial co‐ operation, which lends itself to more systematic observation, we know that ʺsavageryʺ for the most part serves as a sign of the masking of capitalist exploitation by the cooperative form. The survey of the NK RCT is the only mass official material on the issue of interest to us, and it should be adhered to. more systematically observable, we know that ʺsavageryʺ is for the most part a sign of the masking of capitalist exploitation by the cooperative form. The survey of the NK RCT is the only mass official material on the issue of interest to us, and it should be adhered to. more systematically observable, we know that

ʺsavageryʺ is for the most part a sign of the masking of capitalist exploitation by the cooperative form. The survey of the NK RCT is the only mass official material on the issue of interest to us, and it should be adhered to.

Therefore, we can safely assume that out of the total marketable output of all collective farms, at least one quarter is in fact capitalist production, disguised only by a pseudo‐cooperative form. In the RSFSR, out of all grain marketable products, the products of collective farms for 1925‐26 accounted for up to 4%, according to data published in the same issue of On the Agrarian Front (p. 31). Consequently, the share of capitalist production in the form of pseudo‐collective farms accounts for approximately 1% of marketable output.

The results were evaluated in the resolution of the Board of the Peopleʹs Commissariat of the RCT of July 10, 1926 and published in No. 2 of the journal ʺOn the Agrarian Frontʺ for 1927 by Volodkovich and Kulikov. It turned out that of all the

collective farms in the Saratov province, 22% were pseudo‐ collective farms. In the Tatar Republic there are 29% of pseudo‐ collective farms, in the Middle Volga region ‐ 30%, in the North Caucasus ‐ 10% in Siberia ‐ 30%, in the Moscow province, so to speak, directly at hand near the center ‐ 35%. On average, out of all 6,956 collective farms, 1,717 or 25% turned out to be pseudo‐collective farms.

Thus, according to this survey—and it embraces one‐third of all collective farms in the USSR—an entire quarter belongs to pseudo‐collective farms. Some authors suggest that these data are exaggerated. But since the NC RCT survey has not been discredited, I see no reason for this. And the RCT NC could not have been interested in exaggerating the unfavorable results. In addition, according to the data of the Selskosoyuz, much more than half of the collective farms have not entered the network of the cooperative system at all and prefer to remain ʺwildʺ, uncontrolled.

And from the experience of urban industrial co‐operation, which lends itself to more systematic observation, we know that ʺsavageryʺ for the most part serves as a sign of the masking of capitalist exploitation by the cooperative form. The survey of the NK RCT is the only mass official material on the issue of interest to us, and it should be adhered to.

If we combine, firstly, that part of the marketable output which is produced in the economy of the capitalist‐entrepreneurial elite (2% of all households), about 14%; secondly, the 4% that this elite is concentrating in its hands by capitalist exploitation under the formal guise of a poor peasant farm, ʺhiringʺ the kulak piece by piece with his working cattle; thirdly, and finally, that almost 1% that goes through the collective farms— in general, we get that almost 19% of marketable output is concentrated in the hands of 2% of the entrepreneurial capitalist households. And in 1925/26, 19% of the marketable output of agriculture amounted to about 700 million rubles. pre‐war, or, according to the index of 1.4 (adopted by the State Planning Commission for assessing agricultural production for 1925/26), about 1 billion red rubles. On average, per yard (450 thousand yards) this gives about 2,200 rubles. except for the natural part remaining on the farm, which must be valued at least 800 rubles. Together, this gives an average gross income per peasant farm of a clearly expressed capitalist‐entrepreneurial type of about 3,000 rubles. (red) per year. The net accumulation of this group (450,000 households), taking it even as only 10%, should be about 125 million rubles. per year, i.e., about one‐fifth of what the ʺControl Figuresʺ of the State Planning Commission generally accept for peasant farming (625 million rubles). This roughly corresponds to the share in the marketable output of the peasant economy that this group of peasants has. Together, this gives an average gross income per peasant farm of a clearly expressed capitalist‐entrepreneurial type of about 3,000 rubles. (red) per year. The net accumulation of this group (450,000 households), taking it even as only 10%, should be about 125 million rubles. per year, i.e., about one‐fifth of what the

ʺControl Figuresʺ of the State Planning Commission generally accept for peasant farming (625 million rubles). This roughly corresponds to the share in the marketable output of the peasant economy that this group of peasants has. Together, this

gives an average gross income per peasant farm of a clearly expressed capitalist‐entrepreneurial type of about 3,000 rubles. (red) per year. The net accumulation of this group (450,000 households), taking it even as only 10%, should be about 125 million rubles. per year, i.e., about one‐fifth of what the

When applied to the farms of this group, the signs of a regular agricultural tax turn out to be insufficient. It is necessary to work out the issue of extending income tax to such yards. The above is an example, as with a net income of 10 thousand rubles. the agricultural tax is only about 4%. For comparison, I quote from No. 17 of the organ of the NKF “Finances and the National Economy” (for April 1927) a table showing how large the percentage of withdrawal of income tax at the present time with an annual income of 10 thousand chervonny rubles from non‐labor sources in the USSR and from any sources in England and France:

USSR	18.6%
England	10.5%
France	14.7%

In other words, even in arch‐capitalist England and France, a capitalist with an equal income is taxed several times more heavily than our Terek agricultural entrepreneur with a couple of dozen seasonal laborers is taxed with agricultural tax, I will add more, the agricultural tax does not take into account such income of the exploiter as derived by him through his the so‐ called ʺpieceworkʺ with their working cattle from the poor. In this case, the poor pay the agricultural tax. To some extent, this also applies to explicitly leased lands. For the narrow upper,

capitalist stratum of the peasants, it is time to raise the question of replacing the agricultural tax with an income tax on the same grounds as for the representatives of urban private capital. We are now losing at least 25 million rubles on this underpayment. in year. by a modest estimate.

In the same way, these capitalist entrepreneurs in agriculture must be equated with capitalist entrepreneurs in urban industry and with regard to obligations in the field of wage labor. Now, for example, with social insurance, with payment for unused vacation, etc., things are rather unimportant for them. There is a law on easing the requirements of the Code of Labor Laws as applied to the middle peasants and the poor who are forced by some reason to temporarily have a farm laborer (illness, conscription, etc.). This law is often used in practice by agricultural entrepreneurs who systematically (as a rule) resort to hiring temporary, seasonal, daily, and permanent workers. Here it will be necessary to carry out. a sharper and more distinct boundary and more firmly establish full observance of the Code of Labor Laws by capitalist agricultural entrepreneurs, small and large. Not a single poor peasant, not a single middle peasant can have, for example, three wage‐ workers at once, permanent, or temporary—that is no longer a middle peasant or a poor peasant then. So itʹs not hard to find the border.

Further, it is necessary to create some kind of guarantee for the horseless poor, who is forced to resort to the so‐called ʺhiringʺ of his exploiter for ʺpiecework workʺ with his cattle. The prevalence of this system of exploitation is now beyond doubt. Finally, measures are needed to protect the interests of the poor who explicitly lease their land to an entrepreneur (prohibition of paying less than a certain amount by district, etc.), and measures to deprive pseudo‐cooperatives of benefits (limitation of benefits to the “wild”, deprivation of benefits for

those who use hired labor, raising the mandatory minimum number of members, etc.).

Entrepreneurial organization of waste. Construction.

Even before the revolution, we had an annual departure of part of the peasants from the countryside to work. A book by Comrade Mintz has recently been published, which is specially devoted to this question. It summarizes pre‐war data, as well as data from the latest surveys that were already carried out under Soviet rule. From all these reports it is clear that in the last years before the revolution, approximately from 1900 to 1913, the average number of otkhodniks annually was about 6

½ million people. Moreover, of these, about 3 million were spent on agricultural earnings and about 3 1/2 million ‐ on non‐ agricultural, including 2 1/2million people construction and road workers (of which 1,750,000 laborers) and 1 million engaged in various other seasonal trades, in particular, logging, etc. (Mints, pp. 38‐39). During the World War, under the influence of mobilization, the departure was reduced and in 1917 amounted to only 2,700 thousand people. (ibid.). In the first years after the revolution, the retreat completely stopped. The counter‐revolutionary armies of Denikin, Kolchak and others separated from the center by military fronts those areas where a fair portion of otkhodniks usually went—the south of the Ukraine, the North Caucasus, and the Trans‐Volga region. In the very center, the landlord economy was destroyed, and the kulak economy was almost destroyed. As for the departure to the city, under the influence of the famine of 1918‐1919, on the contrary, people left the cities for the countryside. But then, after the end of the war and the new unification of the country, gradually, the retreat began to recover from about 1921‐1922, when the new economic policy made it easier to increase the use of wage labor in the restored non‐agricultural economy and in agriculture. According to Gosplanʹs Control Figures (p. 286),

over the past three years, from 1923/24 to 1926/27, we have added 3 million people. of the proletariat—an average of 1 million in year. This increase was mainly due to the migration from the villages to the cities, both returning and finally moving for the first time. we have added 3 million people. of the proletariat—an average of 1 million. in year. This increase was mainly due to the migration from the villages to the cities, both returning and finally moving for the first time. we have added 3 million people. of the proletariat—an average of 1 million. in year. This increase was mainly due to the migration from the villages to the cities, both returning and finally moving for the first time.

In addition, the annual seasonal departure from the countryside began to gradually increase, similar to the pre‐ revolutionary one. At present, it reaches about 3 million people. per year (for 1926). Of these 3 million people. at least a million are construction workers, about 500,000 are forest workers, i.e., such workers who go to the forest to cut firewood, and so on. Further, approximately 1 million is the mass of laborers who are unemployed in our cities, then 500 thousand go to various other industries ‐ water transport, etc., including agriculture (for seasonal work in state farms Sugar trust, tobacco and vineyards in the Crimea, the North Caucasus, etc.). I must make a reservation about this figure—1 million unemployed laborers. In the statistics of our labor exchanges, one cannot find such a figure, there the number of unemployed unskilled workers is much less. This is due to the extreme incompleteness of the statistics of unemployment through labor exchanges, which we have. Labor exchanges registered unemployment before October 1, 1926, only in 256 cities, and after October 1, 1926, only in 283 cities. Meanwhile, the unemployed are not only there. At the suggestion of the All‐Union Central Council of Trade Unions, the trade unions made a calculation as of April 1, 1926, of how many members of the trade unions are

unemployed and how many of them are registered with the labor exchanges (these data were published in the report of the All‐Union Central Council of Trade Unions to the recent 7th Congress of Trade Unions on p. 247). There were 1,182,000 unemployed members of the trade unions, but meanwhile, only 509,000 of them, i.e., 43%—about half, were registered at the labor exchanges in these 256 cities. The other, larger half, almost 700 thousand people. obviously has to that part of the country where there is no registration of the unemployed by labor exchanges. It must be assumed that among the unemployed who are not members of trade unions, there are also quite a few in places where there are no labor exchanges and therefore no registration of the unemployed is carried out. At the end of December 1926, there were 1,310,000 unemployed at the labor exchanges (according to the ʺReference Bookʺ of the CSB, p. 302). So, in general, we actually have at least two million unemployed. As for their percentage distribution by category, the latest data was published (according to labor exchanges) as of October 1, 1926: skilled workers of all types ‐ 25%, Soviet employees of all types ‐ 20% and Deskilled ‐ 55% (p. 303

ʺHandbookʺ). From here we get up to a million unskilled workers who somehow manage to get by (help from relatives, hand‐selling without a patent, standing in lines for hire, etc. ‐ few of the unskilled workers receive state benefits).

Of all the waste that comes from the villages, a part is organized by entrepreneurs. The main types of waste now are for construction and forestry. There are many construction artels. Some building artels, or rather most of them, are really labor associations, but some are organized by the entrepreneur under the guise of a senior worker, headman, etc., in relation to whom the rest of the members of the artel are in fact hired workers. To determine what part of construction waste is organized in this way, one has to dwell on the question of the role of private

capital in the production of construction work in the USSR in general.

The cost of repairing and building residential premises in the USSR is greater than is often assumed. The role of private construction in this case is also much more significant than is sometimes estimated ʺtentativelyʺ.

According to the Peopleʹs Commissariat of Internal Affairs (certificate dated February 22, 1927, No. 33/064/10), private owners own 83% of buildings, 66% of apartments and 50% of the living space of the cities of the RSFSR; in the rest of the USSR this percentage is higher (because the largest areas are municipalized precisely in Moscow and Leningrad); therefore, we can assume that private owners now own at least 17 1/2 million square meters. soot living space (calculation of the State Planning Commission). According to the December 1926 census, the entire urban population of the USSR is about 25 million people, which, with an average actual number of about 10 1/2 sq. arch. per capita gives only about 29 1/2 million square meters. soot housing in cities.

The cooperation currently manages almost 6 million square meters. soot living space, and for the 1925/26 financial year the cooperatives spent almost 37 million rubles, or more than 50 kopecks, on repairs. per month for 1 sq. soot living space on average (according to the reporting1 data of the Allied Council of Housing Cooperation, No. 4 of the Housing Cooperation for 1927, p. 14). In terms of living space administered by government agencies, this expenditure is about 20% less per sazhen (judging by survey data in both capitals, etc.) and, consequently, the government agencies have a total of about 30 million rubles. Finally, in private houses it is even less (about 30 kopecks per sazhen per month), and in total it should reach 63 million rubles in them.

The entire cost of repairing urban residential buildings, therefore, amounted to at least 130 million rubles for the year. At least half of the repairs are carried out by private owners through private contractors and entrepreneurial artels. As regards the repair of cooperative houses, data are available for Leningrad, which accounts for 40% of all cooperative expenditures on repairs (and the same percentage of the cooperative living space in the cities of the USSR). According to these data (leading in No. 1 for 1927 of the Leningrad magazine Zhilischnoe delo), work through private contractors of the total amount of repairs of cooperative houses in Leningrad amounted to about 25% (for the 1925/26 financial year), including about half by direct orders to a private contractor, and just as many ʺhiddenʺ, that is, in the form of false artels (which are just a cover for the same private contractor). There is no reason to think that this percentage is lower in other cities (in the provinces, even, undoubtedly, much higher) and in the houses of government agencies (data for Moscow, etc.). Together with the amount of repair of residential buildings of government agencies and cooperation (67 million rubles), this will amount to about 17 million rubles, and in total, out of the entire amount of the annual repair of urban residential buildings, about 47 million rubles will have to be worked through an explicit and hidden private contractor. and through state construction offices and labor artels, about 38 million rubles. (including the economic hiring of individual workers). and in total, out of the entire amount of the annual repair of urban residential buildings, about 47 million rubles will have to be worked through an explicit and hidden private contractor. and through state construction offices and labor artels, about 38 million rubles. (including the economic hiring of individual workers). and in total, out of the entire amount of the annual repair of urban residential buildings, about 47 million rubles will have to be worked through an explicit and hidden private

contractor. and through state construction offices and labor artels, about 38 million rubles. (including the economic hiring of individual workers).

As for the construction of new residential buildings in cities, according to the NKVD (certificate dated February 22, 1927 No. 33/061/10), in 1925 the construction of private homeowners amounted to 49.9%, or almost exactly half of all new living space in the cities of the RSFSR. For every thousand urban residents of the RSFSR, according to the NKVD, this amounted to 80 m 2 of living space, and in the next year, 1926, according to the approximate calculation of the NKVD, it already reached 100 m 2 , or 22 sq. m. soot, per thousand inhabitants. Extending this to the rest of the USSR, we get for 1926 all new private construction of 550 thousand square meters. soot living space per year.

New private houses are almost entirely small wooden or stone (often of a simplified type) buildings, designed on average for no more than two families each. Due to the simplification of the type and the advantages of working through private contractors and private artels (the forest is bought from the peasants, which they harvest under the law on labor allotments without a penalty fee, they do not pay for members of social insurance artels, etc.), these private houses (more than 90 % wooden, according to the NKVD) are much cheaper than state and cooperative construction.

Stone houses in Moscow in 1926 cost an average of 802 rubles. for 1 sq. soot living area. Wooden houses of cooperation (in the RSFSR, according to the NKVD, wooden construction still accounts for almost 89% of the living space in the cooperation) on average in the state cost 480 rubles. for 1 sq. soot living space (data from cooperation according to the brochure of engineer Glagolev ‐ ʺConditions for housing constructionʺ, M., 1927).

The price of private construction in cities should be taken on average another 25% cheaper, or about 360 rubles. for 1 sq. soot. living area. This gives the price of all new urban private housing construction to about 200 million rubles. in year. All of it is carried out by private contractors, private labor artels and individual stove‐makers, roofers, etc. hired in an economic way (including false artels). The role of contractors and pseudo‐ artels is estimated by experts to a quarter.

The new cooperative construction of dwellings in urban‐type settlements (including factory settlements) in 1926 amounted to only 42 million rubles. (according to Tsentrozhilsoyuz). According to the certificate of the Tsentrozhilsoyuz (dated February 19, 1927, No. 2/411/10), construction through private contractors accounts for only about 2%, i.e. no more than 1 million rubles. The difference from repair work is clear. During repair work, often small sums are involved, which do not justify the creation of their own economic apparatus and which are insufficient to obtain consent to undertake these works from state construction offices. Since most housing unions do not yet have cooperative repair and construction offices for minor repairs, it is often necessary to turn to a private trader for repairs (as we have seen, 25% of the total repair amount). When building new houses, however, it almost always pays off either the organization of its own apparatus, or, perhaps, consent to the construction is obtained from state construction offices— because the role of private contractors is insignificant here (2%). No more and the role of false artels.

The new construction of residential buildings by government agencies (executive committees, trusts, peopleʹs commissariats, etc.) for 1925/26 gave an amount of about 200 million rubles. Accurate, or at least approximate data, including how much was done by private contractors and through private artels, is not available. But the certificate of the Central Committee of the

Union of Builders (dated February 10, 1927, No. 527/133/11) makes it possible to make a rough estimate based on the number of hired workers employed by private contractors.

The same estimate, on the same basis, has to be limited to the construction of non‐residential buildings by government agencies (factories, warehouses, railway water pumps, etc.). According to the report book of the Supreme Economic Council of the USSR ʺConsolidated production and financial plan of state industry for 1926/27ʺ (pp. 304‐305), all capital work in the industry of the Supreme Economic Council for the 1925/26 business year was actually carried out for 781 million rubles. Of these, equipment accounts for 213 million rubles. and for buildings 568 million rubles. (counting together new buildings and renovations of existing ones). Including: almost 95 million rubles were spent on housing construction, which are already included in the price of housing construction of government agencies. Remains for all construction and repair of non‐ residential buildings in the industry of the Supreme Council of National Economy 473 million rubles. Adding the construction and repair of non‐residential buildings by other government agencies (schools, hospitals, transport,9 according to the

ʺcontrol figuresʺ of the State Planning Commission, the amount of all construction (including repairs) in transport, communications, trade, utilities, education, health care and general administration in 1925/26 amounted to about 500 million rubles (in including transportation, almost 300 million rubles.) Discarding, however, from here the price of rails and other equipment, etc., we get about 250 million rubles .

Together with the cost of 200 million rubles. government agencies for the construction of dwellings receive a total amount of up to 900 million rubles, for which the share of a private trader can only be determined roughly, using

information from the Central Committee of the Trade Union of Builders on the distribution of construction workers.

Some part of this work is carried out by artels, whose members are not accepted as members of the trade union at all and therefore are not taken into account by them. Many of them are real comradely craft organizations of people from the same village. But often in the form of an artel, under the guise of a

ʺseniorʺ, etc., the contractor acts. At least in the mentioned reference, the Central Committee of Builders writes that artels

ʺin a number of cases are a hidden organization of private capital.ʺ What share of the total amount of work worth 900 million rubles is generally accounted for by such false artels is not known; in repair work, cooperation, as we have seen, is about 12% (and the same amount is rented to undisguised contractors). If for government agencies in general, out of caution, we assume a lower value ‐ up to 5%, then we will get about 45 million rubles for the share of artel‐camouflaged work through a contractor ‐ hardly less.

The rest of the work is carried out by hired workers, including the hiring of labor (non‐fictitious) artels. According to the Central Committee of the Trade Union of Builders from workers, members of the union, as of October 1, 1926, almost 7% were employed by private entrepreneurs, and on average,

27 workers hired by him accounted for one private entrepreneur. The Central Committee considers (mentioned reference) that, together with non‐members of the union, the total number of construction workers in private entrepreneurs will be up to 10% of their total number, no more. Therefore, we can assume that, excluding construction, false artels, the open work through contractors from government agencies in total accounts for about 85 million rubles.

To this must be added the construction work in the peasant village. Every year, up to 500,000 households are completely

rebuilt in our country (counting the rebuilding part of the population growth and the restoring part of those that burn down). The average price of the buildings of one peasant household in 1926, on average throughout the state, according to a special survey of the Peopleʹs Commissariat of Land of the RSFSR, is 406 rubles at pre‐war prices (collection ʺOn the Ways of Socialist Developmentʺ, M., 1927, article by Comrade Svidersky, p. 109). At current prices, this amounts to about 800 rubles, and in total, about 400 million rubles.10

10 ʺControl figuresʺ of the State Planning Commission are supposedly 769 million rubles, but it seems to me that this does not correspond to the number of new huts under construction.

It is generally assumed that at least half the peasant contributes his own labor and his own material. Artels or individual workers are hired only for furnace, carpentry, roofing, etc. in some places for the assembly and installation of log cabins, wall‐beaters (in the south), etc. Thus, no more than 200 million rubles will remain for work through artels, small contractors, etc. What part is accounted for, including by explicit and hidden contractors together, is unknown, but one can think that it is less than in the city, presumably up to 10%, or about 20 million rubles.

Thus, not counting their own labor and their own (non‐ purchasable) material of small builders, the entire cost of repair and new construction of residential and non‐residential buildings in the 1925/26 business year in the USSR amounted to about one and a half billion red rubles. Including about 450 million rubles. accounts for work through labor artels, about

250 million rubles for construction through private capital (counting together open orders to the contractor and work through false labor, essentially entrepreneurial artels), and about 800 million rubles for the work of state construction organizations. The share of private capital accounts for such;

Thus, about one‐sixth of the performance of all paid construction work in the USSR. At the same time, it is possible that out of the materials counted for the absence of materials, 800 million rubles are completely constructed by the state apparatus.

The large role of the private sector in the market of building materials is thus based, first of all, on the large role of construction not through the state apparatus (nearly half, almost 700 million rubles ʺprivate sectorʺ and about 800 million rubles ‐ state), partly — the lack of inclusion in the plan of bank lending of the supply of housing cooperation funds for the cooperative procurement of handicraft building materials necessary for repairs and partly for new construction. In addition, state construction offices generally do not undertake minor repairs, and the organization of cooperative offices for minor repairs encounters an obstacle in the indicated absence of special credit for this matter.

The large role played by false artels and artels in the very production of buildings is additionally explained by the still greater advantages which, according to the laws in force, they have in supplying timber and other expenses (social insurance, etc.) over cooperative and executive committee construction. The equalization of conditions, by reducing the cost of cooperative, executive committee and industrial construction of dwellings, can bring about essential changes in this matter.

The amount of circulating capital of private capital in construction, excluding work through labor artels, is approximately 50 million rubles, judging by the usual percentage of advances in construction (the amount of entrepreneurial construction, including through false artels, amounted, as we have seen, to about 250 million rubles for the last year). The amount of net profit should be up to 20 million rubles. (i.e. up to 8% of turnover by analogy with known

calculations), which is up to 40% of capital, i.e. approximately corresponds to the net return on private capital in wholesale and semi‐wholesale trade.

One of the forms of inconspicuous favoring of private capital in the field of construction is the habitation of non‐working elements in ready‐made municipal apartments (with the investment of their new savings in the growth of speculative operations), while the state and the workers take from themselves the most necessary funds for the construction of new dwellings, moreover in insufficient quantity.

It is necessary to oblige the Nepmen within two years to build new apartments for themselves at their own expense without a state loan, freeing up all the large living space they occupy. People subject to income tax of at least 5 thousand rubles. per year are able to do so.

It is necessary to enable state‐cooperative construction offices to work at the same prices as private‐enterprise artels: a) by establishing an equally reduced percentage of social insurance for artels and state construction companies when building one‐ story and two‐story houses; b) by equalizing the building workersʹ cooperatives in the stumped payment for timber with the peasants who pay for the timber according to the labor norm, from where the private trader feeds on cheaper timber;

c) by developing the state‐cooperative procurement of handicraft building materials by including it in the bank lending plan; d) setting the task of creating state cooperative offices for minor repairs; e) limiting the profit in the calculation of state construction offices to no more than 2%.

Thus, it can be considered that private capital occupies about 15‐20% of all migrant construction workers, yet private construction accounts for an even larger share.

Similarly, of the peasants who go to work in the forests, of these 500,000 forest workers, about 15‐20% are also employed by large private lumberjacks. These large private procurements (sometimes even now in a ʺpseudo‐stateʺ or ʺpseudo‐ cooperativeʺ form) are the main base for private trade in firewood and forest products. Private timber trade, including wholesale, is currently very large. For example, in Moscow it makes up about one third of the total timber and firewood turnover, in some places it is even larger in the provinces. It is based on two sources: firstly, on the fact that private capital itself harvests timber with the help of hired workers and peasant artels, and, secondly, on the fact that individual big buyers buy timber from the peasants, who have the right to cut it without foam payment on especially favorable terms within the limits of the so‐called labor norm from the forests allotted to them. Thanks to this, private loggers get the opportunity to have timber for construction and for sale, including firewood, partly cheaper than the cooperatives and government agencies that pay the foam fee.

Thus, of the two main types of current peasant non‐agricultural waste—construction and timber—at least 15 percent is exploited (and partly organized) by private capital. Incidentally, this roughly corresponds to the share of marketable output that capitalist entrepreneurship has in agricultural production itself. As for the unemployed unemployed laborers from the countryside, who are in the cities, some of them also fall into the hands of private capital as dummy agents in ʺqueuesʺ at retail stores, as manual salesmen without patents, etc. thisʺ to the remaining share of long‐ distance departure for agricultural earnings (to the Kuban, to the Crimea, etc.)

Overgrowth and ideology.

We have already shown above the present limits of the growth of definitely capitalist production out of simple (labor) commodity production in our agriculture. But growing into a capitalist entrepreneur is, of course, not limited to the very process of agricultural production. Having established itself here, the agricultural production entrepreneur begins to use the accumulated funds to organize a local rural capitalist industry for processing agricultural products. He begins to operate with the provision of credit, acting as a mercilessly enslaving usurer. Selling the goods of his own farm, he at the same time begins to buy goods from smaller producers for resale.

Below, in the section on trade, we will touch upon the question of what proportion private capitalist procurement constitutes in the total procurement in the countryside, and what part of the industrial products received by the countryside in general passes through private merchant hands. The support and agent for both is primarily the same thin upper capitalist stratum of the peasantry, whose role in agricultural and livestock production and in their marketable products was discussed above. Here I want to note only the incorrectness and superficiality of a fairly common method of considering a private village merchant as some kind of abstract category of

ʺpure tradeʺ.

At the same time, they usually take the entire turnover of private village trade, divide it equally among all merchants, not even separating the manual peddlers from the rest, and joyfully conclude: this is how insignificant the average turnover and, consequently, the “capital” of the village merchant. There are two wrongs here. First, there are a lot of manual traders, and their turnover is insignificant. Their mere selection already gives a different picture for judging the village shopkeeper.

Secondly, and most importantly, this shop cannot be considered in isolation from the rest of its ownerʹs economy.

In reasoning divorced from reality, it is possible to create in the village a category of “pure merchants” who do nothing but their shop, but in fact, in most cases, the shop is only a part of the owner’s economy. Growing out of the production process of simple (labor) commercial agriculture and turning into a capitalist entrepreneur, the representative of the top 2% of peasant households complicates and expands his entrepreneurial operations. He is at the same time a farmer, and a usurer, and a shopkeeper, and a buyer, and a tenant, and an industrial entrepreneur, and even an agricultural ʺpiecework worker.ʺ But all this is only different forms of application of one and the same capital. The connecting thread of all parts of his economy is the non‐labor nature, that is, the use of his own resources for the exploitation of the labor of others. Individually, the ʺtrading partʺ of his capital is often small, but it is not a stable value either. The owner now directs his capital more into usury, then into trade, then into buying, etc., depending on the profitability under the given circumstances. It has its own “planned economy”, its own maneuvering. A correct idea of this capitalist elite in the countryside can only be obtained by taking its economy as a whole, and not by isolated (isolated) pieces, with each piece considered as an independent magnitude. Individually, the owner may have a small handicraft enterprise, only two or three workers, and in agriculture there are only two or three seasonal laborers, and the shop does not turn over thousands, and the debts of neighboring yards to him are absolutely not so great, etc. But for a correct idea about the ʺspiderʺ and about the reasons for the hatred of the ordinary peasantry towards him, we must take all this together. Otherwise, the result is not a real picture, but an unconscious or deliberate “statistical” sweetening of the rural capitalist as a very, very small kulak, downright “poor

kulak”, which, in fact, would not be worth talking about if they didn’t raise a “noise” about him.

As applied to rural handicraft industry, we have the opportunity to illustrate on a mass basis how the gradual growth of the capitalist entrepreneur from a simple commodity producer proceeds in the countryside on the basis of the processing of agricultural products. The material is a survey of the small rural industry of the USSR, carried out by the CSO in 1925, published on pages 250‐272 of the ʺHandbook of the CSO for 1927ʺ. True, here we have the result of the development of only the first four years of NEP, meanwhile, according to all reviews and individual available materials, (precisely the two years following this survey (1925‐1927) were a time of especially strong growth of this phenomenon in rural industry.

By the beginning of the NEP, it can be said that there was no capitalistically organized rural handicraft industry. Wage labor began to appear in it only gradually. Moreover, first of all and most of all, it appears precisely in those branches of rural industry that consist in the direct processing of agricultural products (flour and cereals, oil, and leather industries). This is reflected in the connection with the growth of capitalist elements in the process of agricultural production.

If we divide the entire rural industry into two parts—the indicated three branches (purely processing from peasant raw materials) and all the others (production of footwear, clothing, wood, metal, and pottery, etc.), then we get the following result. The first three branches account for about 60% of all agricultural products; (not counting the price of raw materials, auxiliary materials, and fuel, and with them even about 75%).

Of all the people employed in these three industries, wage workers in 1925 were already 14.5%. And in the rest of the small rural industry, only 4% of the persons employed in it were

wage workers, a share that was three and a half times smaller. Thus, by 1925, no less than a seventh of the three main branches of rural industry were organized capitalistically, or rather, more than a seventh, because in some cases minor members of the owner’s family also participate in production (11.5% of those employed in the entire small rural industry ) and the owners themselves; moreover, the output per average worker in these larger enterprises is greater than in the others. It must also be borne in mind that the data on wage‐workers do not cover the type of capitalist organization of handicraft industry which is carried out by the so‐called distributing offices.

But what is of interest to us here is not a complete idea of the scope of capitalist processes in handicraft industries (more on this in the section on industry), but a characterization of the fact that in small rural industry in general, it is precisely those three branches that began to be put on the capitalist footing most of all and most quickly. which are associated with the direct (primary) processing of products of the peasant economy. These three branches in 1925 accounted for about half of the wage‐workers in all small‐scale rural industry. These three industries (mills, tanneries, and vegetable oil factories) are exactly the three industries where the state recognizes the role of private capital as definitely harmful and seeks to reduce it.

The capitalist entrepreneurship of large peasants in agriculture under Soviet conditions had already by 1927 worked out a peculiar ideology. Its originality lies in the manner of the usual bourgeois aspirations to serve in Soviet attire. The demand for private ownership of land is presented in a modest form, spoofing the Soviet wish for ʺsustainability of land use.ʺ The demand for the abolition of the right of workers to land appears under the guise of the need to ʺinterest the producer in improving production.ʺ The desire to put an end to the dangers of collectivization and to provide agriculture more widely with

cheap laborers acts as an attempt to slip bourgeois content under the Soviet line to overcome the adverse consequences of the unlimited fragmentation of the economy under its current system. And all this, of course, in the name of the greater triumph of ʺnationalizationʺ and even for the sake of the ʺpoorʺ.

The upper stratum of the peasantry, being the most economically active, literate, and cultured, also shows great social activity in preaching its own ideological orientation with the means available to it. Rising from below, at the top, these sentiments are generalized and more clearly formulated by such epigones of populism as prof. Kondratiev, bluntly formulating: too much industrialization. But the “village elite” itself is bombarding the “city” with its appeals for the introduction of an extended system of bourgeois relations in the countryside, with the actual throwing overboard of our course of the outgrowth of socialist elements in agricultural production.

11) Of course, this meets with full support in the foreign Socialist‐ Revolutionary White Guard literature. The hatred with which they cannot stand the very words ʺstate farmsʺ and ʺcollective farmsʺ is characteristic. Here, for example, is what the Paris organ of Avksentiev, Bunakov and other prominent Socialist‐Revolutionaries writes about me on this subject. “Modern Notes” in No. 28 for 1926: “Yu. Larin adjoins the left wing of the ruling Bolshevik group. It is to him that the primacy belongs in the ill‐fated idea of creating state farms; he is still a fierce defender of the plan for the collectivization of peasant farms ... His tactics are calculated on the political split actively organized in the countryside ... (with fists.—Yu. L.). Reading (my writings.—Yu. JI.) is especially unpleasant,” etc. (pp. 521‐522).

In connection with the discussion of the question of a new law on labor land tenure and the commune, various press organs, which concentrate the discussion of these questions in Moscow, receive a great many letters of this nature and even articles from

the countryside. Here is a typical work of this kind by a real peasant. He writes: “At present, there is no definite owner of the land. On the one hand, the land has been nationalized, on the other hand, the landed society disposes of it, and, thirdly, the individual peasant thinks of it as his own. These contradictions stick out more and more strongly.

Further: ʺThe cultural growth of agriculture is closely, inseparably connected with the transfer of oneʹs labor into monetary calculation ... Without understanding this, progress in agricultural culture is not conceivable at all.ʺ And for this, in the opinion of our author, ʺother land ordersʺ are needed, such orders are needed when ʺpeasants on a contractual basis with the state own the land, that is, on a lease basis.ʺ

He calls this ʺsustainability of land useʺ and says: ʺ... such land use lays the foundationʺ for money economy in the countryside. This is the whole essence, which we will not bypass and will not bypass, no matter how much we would like to.” If there is no mediastination between the state and the peasant in the form of a landed society, if the peasant receives directly from the state what he has on rent, then no one will encroach on this. He will pay rent for this land, and it will be his land. “It will be clearer for every peasant where his interests are and how he can protect them.”

“How can this reform be carried out in practice, how concretely can the approach itself be thought of?” the author asks and answers: “Competition for the possession of this or that piece will be the opportunity to achieve a correct assessment of the land”—a correct assessment. And he concludes: “... there will no longer be a reason for splitting farms into small ones ...”, etc.

Another peasant author puts the same demands on the full and open involvement of the land in bourgeois circulation in the form, as he puts it, of ʺthe right to sow.ʺ Just as in cities there is

the right to build, when some plot of land with the right to build is allotted, so in the countryside it can be introduced so that the land ʺalthough not sold, but so that the right to sow on it is sold to other persons.ʺ

It goes without saying that the endless fragmentation of the economy into smaller and smaller pieces, while the intensity of the economy remains unchanged, is unprofitable. But we point out a way out of this situation in the combination of small farms, in collectivization, in the growth of labor intensity and intensity of farming. And the ideology of personal capitalist entrepreneurship points out the way out in the forced indivisibility of individual farms, thereby creating a brake on collectivization and the very right to land, but on the other hand it provides the current user with the opportunity to preserve the current backward system without switching to more intensive farming.

Compulsory indivisibility, as put forward by the capitalist circles of the peasantry, is essentially a cover for private ownership of land and serves the purpose, as indicated, to dispense with the transition to more intensive forms that allow a painless lowering of the average land norm per capita and eliminate the growth of agrarian overpopulation. .

This is not only socially reactive, but also productive and of the aspirations to nullify the governing rights of the landed society. The ordinary laboring peasant economy, relying on the labor force of its family and not on capital, cannot support the introduction of this order and the abolition of the regulation of the use of land by rural society. To fight against the disadvantages of the reduction of the land area of individual farms, ʺʺ in order to remain in line with the class interests of the ordinary middle peasantry, the poor, and the proletariat, it is possible and necessary by intensifying, collectivization n and cooperating.

The strengthening of measures directed in this direction is absolutely necessary,1 and in this direction, and are directed primarily by the resolutions of the IV, Congress of Soviets of the SS R on the question of the division of allotments. (See the resolution of the IV Congress of the USSR on the report of Comrade Kalinin.)

What has been said above about the role of capitalist entrepreneurs in agricultural production and peasant waste does not completely exhaust the influence of private capital on agriculture. There still remains a vast and important field of capitalist procurements in the countryside, organized from the city; the role of urban private capital in supplying the countryside with industrial products; attempts by non‐agricultural capitalists to subjugate the rural peasant handicraft industry by advancing it, supplying it, and organizing sales. We will deal with all this in the sections on> industry and trade. At the same time, the mediation of urban private capital in the matter of accommodating so‐called ʺpeasant loansʺ in the countryside, which were later accepted in payment of the agricultural tax, is also left unaccounted for—albeit a very modest one.