The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-01-28

1ective farms the question is no longer
to be or not to be? This question has
been solved positively. The collective
farms are consolidated and the path to
the old individual peasant farm is finally
closed. The present task consists in Or
ganizationally strengthening the collec-
tive farms, in clearing out the sabotagers,
in drawing really tried Bolshevist cadres
into the collective farms, and converting
them into really Bolshevist farms. That
is now the main thing.
That is how the question stands re-
garding the Five-Year Plan in four years
in the sphere of agriculture.
Wherein consist the most important
results of our successes in the sphere of
industry and agriculture from the point
OF view of the fundamental improvement
of the material position of the toilers?
They consist firstly in the abolition of
unemployment and the liquidation of ig-
norance among the workers They con-
sist secondly in the fact that nearly all
the poor peasants have been drawn into
the work of building up collective farms,
in the undermining of the foundation for
the division of the peasantry into ku-
laks and poor peasants, and, in connec-
and poverty in the village.
This is a tremendous achievement of
which no bourgeois State can even
dream, no matter how democratic"
State 1t may be. With us in the Soviet
Union the workers have long forgotten
unemployment. Three years ago we still
had one and half million unemployed.
1t is now already two years since I'M
employment was abolished In this time
the workers have been able to forget
unemployment and it's horrors. Look at
the capitalist countries, what horrors
prevail there as a result of unemploy-
ment. In the capitalist countries there are
no less than 80 to 40 million unemployed
What sort of people are they? They are
generally spoken of as down and OUTS
Day after day they go in quest of work;
they are prepared to accept work under
almost any conditions, but there is no
work for them, because they are Super
fluous." And this at a time when huge
quantities of commodities and products
are rotting, thanks to the whims of the
spoiled and pampered sons of the capt.
talists and big landowners. The unem-
ployed are refused food because they
cannot pay for it, are refused a shelter
because they cannot pay the rent Of
lodgings. How and where do they live?
They live on the miserable crumbs of
charity, by raking in the duStbinS, where
they find rotten remnants of food. They
live in the holes and corners of the big
towns But that is not all. 1t is not only
the unemployed who suffer as a result
Of unemployment. The workers who are
still, in employment suffer, for the ex-
istence of a large number of unemployed
creates for them an unsettled position
in production, uncertainty regarding to-
morrow. Today they are at work, but
they do not know whether tomorrow they
will not learn that they are dismissed.
One OF the most important achieve
ments of the Five-Year Plan in four years
consists in the fact that in the Soviet
Union we have hquidated unemployment
and freed the workers from it's terrors
The same applies to the peasants.
They, too, have forgotten the division OF
the peasantry into kulaks and poor peas
ants, the exploitation Of the poor peas
ants by the kulaks, the ruin which every
year drove hundreds of thousands and
millions from the soil Three or four
years ago, not less than 80 per cent of
the total peasant population consisted
of poor peasants. They numbered more
than 10 million. Still earlier, before the
October revolution, the poor peasants
comprised about 60 per cent of the peas
antry. The poor peasants are people who
led starvation existence, were regularly
enslaved by the kulaks and in the olden
times by the kulaks and the big land
owners as well. Not so long ago ~ mil
lion and sometimes million poor peas
ants went every year to the South, to the
North Caucasus and the Ukrainia to
work as wage laborers for the kulaks,
and formerly for the kulaks and the big
landowners. Still more Of them came
every year to the gates Of the factories,
thereby increasing the ranks of the un-
employed And not. only the poor peas