The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-03-25

(The Opening of the First Congress
of Collective Farmers IN Moscow.
BY NATHANIEL BUCHWALD
q. heroes of the fields! am
speaking to you very simple words,
but you know yourselves that real
wisdom, the wisdom of Lenin and
his disciples, Is always simple"
From M. Gorky's message of
greetings to the Farm Congress in
Moscow.
FARMERS and workers the world
over should know of the First
Congress of the Collective Farmers
held recently in Moscow. For weeks
the entire country had been excited
by the preparations for the opening
of the Congress. A most unusual
election campaign stirred the Soviet
farmers from the White Sea to the
Caucasus and from the Western bord-
ers to the Pacific. The election rules
were the simplest in the world: only
the best workers of the best collec-
tive farms could go to Moscow. Votes
we're obtained and seats won not
through electioneering, not through
political oratory, but through evidence
of best effort for the community. If
a collective farm in a given district
showed the best yield per hectare,
the most efficient management of its
affairs, the earliest fulfilment of its
obligations to the workers and peas
ants State, the best condition Of its
cattle and its inventory and the
highest income for its members
that collective farm Cor Kolhoz as
the Russians call it, was entitled to
represent the entire district at the
Congress.
The same principle applied to the
election of individual delegates. Only
the best of the best were entitled to
a seat. The voting was prompted by
deeds, not words. The record of
every good worker lay open before
the entire electorate of the Kolhoz.
His work for the past season was
tabulated, entered in the books and
certified. 1t was really like in an
athletic contest: the one who made
the best mark was declared cham
pion,
1880 CHAMPIONS
And here they were-f1fteen hun
dred champions of model farming
and of Socialism. They have a
special name for champions of work:
they call them udarn' ks, which is
sometimes translated as Shock
workers" But perhaps champion
comes near to the real meaning of
udarnik.
Call them champions or udarniks
fifteen hundred Of the best farmers
representing the best KOlhozes gath
cred in the Great Opera House of
Moscow on the memorable evening
of February IS, 1888, as the accredited
delegates to the First All-Union Con-
greSs of Kolhoz Udarniks. It was
an unusual sight even for the Red
Capital which had witnessed many
q gathering of workers and farmers
representatives. This was not con-
gress of the Soviets (local self-gov-
eminent bodies, nor of the powerful
Trade Unions, embracing nearly 20
million workers. For the first time
since the Soviet regime had been es-
tablished in 1917, a Congress of COL
lective farmers, Congress of success
full collective farms gathered in Mos
COW to lay before the country and,
indeed, before the farmers and work
ers Of the entire world, the results
Of the socialist method applied to
farming. Here in the Soviet Union
where so much effort has been ex-
erted and so many successes scored
in building up large-scale industry
along socialist lines, the very fact
that so many crack farmers gathered
in one place as representatives of
model socialist farms was a historic
event and demonstration of triumph
on behalf of collective farming, on
behalf Of the socialist principle in
agriculture. When we bear in mind