Letter to L.M. Kaganovich, 17 July 1932

Source: Tom 17

Greetings, Comrade Kaganovich!

1) I have read the memorandum on Munzenberg and the Reichsbanner members. The Comintern should not be dragged into this matter. Local combat agreements by the GCP [German Communist Party] should be permitted, without officially involving the CC of the GCP. This is on the condition that effective leadership of the GCP organization is ensured. One must not get involved with Otto Bauer: whatever kind of "communist" he pretends to be, this individual was and remains a social-chauvinist. If he wants to undermine the Second International, let him do so on his own, by his own efforts.

2) It would be good to publish in Pravda the resolution of the Second International on the threat of war in the Far East. The resolution is vile (against other people's imperialists while keeping silent about one's own imperialists, for "peace" but not for the direct defense of the USSR, etc., etc.), but its thrust is directed against the Japanese imperialists -- and this is advantageous to us, i.e., to the USSR, in every respect. The resolution should be criticized (if published) as a social-reformist evasion from the question, but insofar as it takes a step from preaching intervention (the position of Kautsky!) to preaching favorable neutrality and moral defense of the USSR, it should be characterized as the result of pressure by the social-democratic working masses on the Second International (fear of losing the masses forced the Second International to somewhat change its position).

3) I have read the resolution of the All-Union cotton conference. I disagree with the orientation of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture toward expanding sown areas, especially state farm areas during the Second Five-Year Plan. The Commissariat wants to expand the state farm cotton area from 168 thousand hectares this year to 415 thousand hectares in 1937. This is madness and a schoolboyish infatuation of the Commissariat's bureaucrats with figures. This expansion means the expenditure of billions of rubles given the colossal unprofitability of the cotton state farms (fantastic production costs!) and the more than probable shortage of labor (not only at present, but even more so in the future) at state farms. Who needs this vile schoolboyish scheme? Would it not be better to expand the area of the collective farms, where there are plenty of workers, state investment is less, and cotton is many times cheaper?

I think we need to expand the state farm area by the end of the Second Five-Year Plan to (at most!) 250 thousand hectares. This will suffice in order to have technically equipped and model state farm centers capable of providing models of a new, higher cotton culture for the collective farms. The remaining area should be transferred to the collective farms.

I also think that the overall plan for expanding cotton areas (including collective farm areas) for the Second Five-Year Plan should also be reduced from 3,400 thousand hectares to at least 3 million hectares. The task now is not the expansion of areas under cotton, but raising yields, improving cultivation, and training cadres. The center of gravity must now be shifted here. We need not areas in themselves, even expanded ones, but cotton -- more cotton.

4) In general, I must say that the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, as an economic commissariat, has failed the test. Local workers mock the Commissariat as completely incompetent from the standpoint of economic management. To expand areas indiscriminately and crudely (as indiscriminately as possible, as crudely as possible!) across all crops, to wheedle as much money as possible out of the government (as much money as possible!) -- that is all that now appears on the Commissariat's banner. As for questions of raising yields, improving cultivation, reducing costs, and introducing cost-accounting -- the Commissariat deals with these only incidentally, for the sake of clearing its conscience. Moreover, the Commissariat does not understand that with indiscriminate expansion of areas and uncontrolled disbursement of enormous sums, workers can have neither the desire nor the time not only to improve their work and raise yields, but even to think seriously about it. Furthermore, the Commissariat so underestimates the problems of work quality and raising yields that it has still not gotten around to determining what fertilizer is needed for what crop from the standpoint of experience and science, and how to use the given fertilizer, etc. (fact!). The result of all this is, on the one hand, large expenditures and much equipment, and on the other, deteriorating field cultivation and negligible economic results.

These shortcomings represent a major economic (and political!) danger for us. They can ruin our grain-growing state farms. They can discredit our collective farms and compel peasants to leave the collective farms as unprofitable organizations.

What is needed:

1) To abandon the policy of indiscriminate expansion of areas with regard to both collective farms and (especially!) state farms (especially along the lines of labor-intensive crops);

2) To immediately and sharply redirect all the attention of the Commissariat and its workers to questions of improving field cultivation, raising yields, training and improving cadres, and providing operational management of the day-to-day work of the MTS, etc.;

3) To train and retrain, systematically and thoroughly, the leadership and workers of all our MTS, making them permanent employees of the MTS;

4) To decentralize the management of our MTS, ensuring that our oblast organs have a certain share in this management;

5) To relieve the Commissariat of Agriculture and separate out all grain and livestock state farms into a separate commissariat, leaving the Commissariat of Agriculture with everything relating to collective farms, everything produced on collective farm fields, and making the MTS system the axis of the Commissariat's work -- the backbone of collective farm, i.e., peasant (non-state) agriculture.

I think that these and similar measures are absolutely necessary in order to lead agriculture out of its present organizational impasse.

That is all for now. Greetings!

I. Stalin

17/VII-32

P.S. I have just received Vareikis's letter on improving the work of the MTS. The letter is good. Vareikis's proposals are correct.

Vareikis's report on peasants leaving the collective farms need not be circulated to our oblast officials for now. These departures are a temporary phenomenon. There is no need to make a fuss about them.

I. St.

Give the letter to Molotov to read.

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Source: Stalin and Kaganovich. Correspondence. 1931-1936, pp. 231-233.

RGASPI. F. 81. Op. 3. D. 99. L. 91-104.