Evening star., 1950-02-05
| Rich Ukraine
| kks Moscow
By Edword Cronkshow

kharkOv and Odessa show that
the Ukraine. with its rich grain
lands and highly developed in
dustries, continues to provide a
major worry for the Moscow
government.
Not even the great purges
carried out by the Politburo
bosses Kaganovitch and Krus-
chev have been sufficient to
wipe out the unorganized but
stubborn resistance of a popu-
lation shot through with ma
tionalism, and which has never
taken kindly to Soviet rule.
Throughout December of last
year a strong party of Ukrainian
ministers and high party off,.
cials found it necessary to tour
the republic and sit in judg-
ment over innumerable local
party conferences.
Reports of large-scale dis
missals Of minor party bosses
as the direct outcome of this
quasi-royal progress are now
confirmed by official diatribes
on the rotten state of regional
and local party organizations.
There have also been issued a
revealing series of special = in
structions for the guidance of
their replacements. the new To-
cal secretaries, many of whom,
according to a broadcast from
Kiev, lack sufficient expert
ence."
Rule Resisted
The trouble with their prede-
cessors seems to have been pre-
cisely the reverse - too much
experience In ways of defeating
rigid Moscow directives, and Sc
curing for their own people
more than their permitted share
of locally produced food and
consumer goods.
But more important than the
delinquency of local Communist
authorities, which is met with
increasingly all over the Soviet
Union, is the particular resist
ance of the Ukraines to Moscow
rule.
This resistance has been forti-
fed by the example of what was
previously the Polish Ukraine,
where the population is very far
from being assimilated into the
Soviet way of life.
Here the party organizations
are constantly being exhorted,
in terms reminiscent of the late
'20s, to intensity their educa-
ton of the workers Sin the
spirit of fidelity to the party
and of class-hatred toward the
kulaks and their agents, the
Ukraine bourgeois nationalists.
It is in this area that until
very recently irregular forces of
Ukrainian nationalists, rebels
against Moscow, and escaped
prisoners OF war were engaging
large formations of the Soviet
Army.
While large scale fighting
seems to have died down dur
ing the past year, reports of con-
tinued resistance in the hilly
country south of Lvov continue
to trickle in.
Agricultural Failures
The situation in the old
Soviet Ukraine is not dramatic
but it is still extremely serious.
Summing up the results of the
December conferences, Kiev
radio gave long list of agri-
cultural failures - failure in
many provinces to complete the
preparations for spring sowing
before the snow fell, almost
total failure in others to tackle
the plan for tractor repairs, and
a serious failure throughout the
whole republic to fulfill the
special livestock breeding plan.
# this is added to earlier re-
ports showing a similar state
Of affairs in industry we get, at
least for the Ukraine, a pic
ture very different from the
optimistic statement of almost
unqualified success all the way
down the line in the fourth year
of the five-year plan.
tCopyright, London Observer Foreign
News Service.)