Letter to L.M. Kaganovich and V.M. Molotov, June 18, 1932

Source: Tom 17

For Kaganovich.

To Kaganovich and Molotov (for members of the Politburo).

I urgently ask you to pay attention to the following circumstance. As you will recall, in connection with the resolutions of the CC and the Council of People's Commissars reducing the grain procurement plan, local authorities appealed to the CC for permission to bring the grain procurement plan down to the village level. We refused, telling the localities that the reduction of the plan should be used for the time being exclusively to stimulate the sowing campaign.

It is now clear to everyone that we were right to concentrate workers' attention on the sowing campaign.

But we were right not only in this respect. We were also right in that we did not allow the localities to mechanically apportion the grain procurement plan among districts and villages (collective farms) according to the "principle" of egalitarianism, thereby undermining both the grain procurement effort and the economic position of the collective farms.

The main error of our grain procurement work in the past year, especially in Ukraine and the Urals, was that the grain procurement plan was apportioned among districts and collective farms and carried out not in an organized fashion but spontaneously, according to the "principle" of egalitarianism -- carried out mechanically, without regard for the situation in each individual district or each individual collective farm. As a result of this mechanical-egalitarian approach, a glaring absurdity occurred, whereby in Ukraine, despite a decent harvest, a number of high-yield districts found themselves in a state of ruin and hunger, while in the Urals the obkom deprived itself of the possibility of assisting low-yield districts at the expense of high-yield districts of the oblast. I need not even mention that a number of first secretaries (Ukraine, the Urals, and partly Nizhny Novgorod Krai) became engrossed in industrial giants and failed to devote proper attention to agriculture, forgetting that without a systematic improvement of agriculture there can be no improvement of industry either. In this, among other things, the detachment of the secretaries from the countryside was revealed. The results of these errors are now making themselves felt in the sowing campaign, especially in Ukraine, where several tens of thousands of Ukrainian collective farmers are still traveling all over the European part of the USSR, demoralizing our collective farms with their complaints and whimpering.

What must be done to avoid repeating last year's mistakes? The plan must be brought down to the district and collective farm level, but not mechanically or in an egalitarian fashion -- rather with due regard for the peculiarities of each district and each collective farm. Since, given the present state of our organizations, we cannot have an absolutely precise accounting of these peculiarities, a supplement of 4-5% must be allowed in order to provide the means to offset the inevitable errors in accounting and to fulfill the plan at all costs.

I propose:

1) To convene no later than June 26-27 a conference of secretaries and chairmen of executive committees (chairmen of councils of people's commissars) of Ukraine, the North Caucasus, the Central Black Earth Oblast, the Lower Volga, the Middle Volga, Nizhny Novgorod, Moscow, Tataria, Bashkiria, the Urals, Kazakhstan, Western Siberia, the Western Oblast, and Byelorussia on the question of organizing grain procurement and the unconditional fulfillment of the grain procurement plan.

2) To criticize at the conference the errors in our grain procurement practice of the past year and to outline ways of organizing grain procurement with the plan brought down to the district and collective farm level, taking into account the situation in each district and each collective farm.

3) To place personal responsibility for the state of agriculture (of the krai, oblast, or republic) and for the successes and shortcomings of this year's grain procurement on the first secretaries of the North Caucasus, Ukraine, the Central Black Earth Oblast, the Lower Volga, the Middle Volga, Moscow Oblast, the Western Oblast, Byelorussia, Tataria, Bashkiria, Nizhny Novgorod Krai, the Urals, Kazakhstan, Western Siberia, Eastern Siberia, and the Far Eastern Krai -- which should in no way, of course, relieve the corresponding chairmen of executive committees and chairmen of councils of people's commissars of their responsibility.

4) To circulate the corresponding CC decisions to the bureaus of obkoms, kraikoms, and national CCs.

I. Stalin.

June 18, 1932

Source: Stalin i Kaganovich. Perepiska. 1931-1936 gg. [Stalin and Kaganovich. Correspondence. 1931-1936], pp. 179-180.

RGASPI, f. 81, op. 3, d. 99, ll. 65-68; f. 558, op. 11, d. 740, ll. 69-72.