The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-06-30
Peasant Correspondence
BY JOSEPH FREEMAN

COMRADES THROUGHOUT the world-Europe, Asia,
Africa, Australia North and South America
permit us to address you; we are not
please writers; we are peasants; workers on the
collective farms served by the Bezenchuk
Machine Tractor Station; collective farms
called for instance, Lenin, Chapayev, lskra,
Comntern Excuse, if you must, our style;
we want to tell you in our way about
the gifts the great October brought us; perhaps
you may be interested; and why not be
these days when you are dying OF starvation
with wives and children in the lands of pain,
the countries of the landlords and the bankers.
NOW, COMRADES, LET us tell you to begin with
what we were in the olden days. so you
might better understand what now.
Once we were Russia's pariahs, poor peasants
who groveled in poverty, furrowed the earth
with wooden plows, and harvested the grain
with scythe and SICKLE threshed the corn with falls
and we were bondsrnen of the kuak, cunning
and greedy neighbor with horse who titled
our little plots long after his were done,
taking all from us as his reward;
we never knew the taste of chaffless bread
our children starved for food and clothes and knowledge
and over all the car, landlord, priest
rode our backs kept our heads in darkness,
put our eyes out" since we could not read,
hurled us into battefields to die.
THE GREAT OCTOBER, comrades as you know,
kicked cars, mobiles, bankers landlords, priests
into historys ashcan; gave us land
put the workers at the helm of power;
and after the wars, after things cleared up,
now, comrades, propose to tell you something
about farming shall tell you now
little of our lives on the collectives.
THE VILLAGE POOR who lived in homeless squalor
now live in decent houses; who had
no animals to call own, have
COWS, calves lambs, horses, pigs and fowl;
we have and our children have good bread;
our future is assured; we are not slaves.
How we sweated without horses in old days,
with our naked hands, wooden plows;
today we have tractors machines;
work together; and comrades working so
is pleasant work. more joyful than the grunting
by yourself lonely barren plot
Now we have time to study; the dark people
has learned to read the light of thought and wisdom
comes to And look at
what beast of burden they were once; today
public kitchens, nurseries and creches
free them from the stove and from the cradle.
And, comrades, look at children; they
who starved for food, who shivered in the cold
today have milk and bread and shoes and coats;
and they have schools to which they go in winter
collective horses; and they work
Pioneers who do their share to build
world of wealth and freedom for us ALL
DID WE IN old days ever dream such life?
No, comrades; we admit we never did
and growing; not so long ago
our Leader said let's put the muzhik on
tractor and the country auto
then let the capitalists try to overtake u.s.
Well, comrades, would you believe it, we who never
had horses in the oden days, can now
ride and use the tractor. Of course we need
self-cr1ticism frankly say
we're still poor hands at it. but we shall strain
our knuckles, heads and hearts to master tractors
and even today, permit us to assure you,
we've got the kuaks and the wreckers licked
NOW LOOK AT our villages Have you read of
or seen their former filth and darkness? You
would never know them, comrades for the twenty
collectves of the Bezenchuk Machine
Tractor Station bloom with new.1ut houses;
our villages ars Ike estates an