SOVIET’S BID

Hokitika Guardian, 13 June 1931, Page 6

SOVIET’S BID

CRUCIAL TEST YEAR FOR FIVE-YEAR PLAN. RUSSIA OF TO-DAY. An informative and analytical review of the Russia of to-day, and a story of the “Five-Year Plan,” that threatens the world with its low-living standards, was given recently in Canada by Professor F. H. Soward, of the University of British Columbia. Hc.w this great Soviet experiment will end no one can yet prophesy, he said. Even the success of the plan would not be the end of it. The present year will se© the crucial test, and the present question is whether the workers and agriculturists can stand the ,strain forced upon them, by a ruthless minority vested with absolute power. The burden on the workers this year will be greater than ever, with little, if any, improvement in standards of living, with scarcity and poor quality of food, and lack of decent necessities of life as these are known to other people.

INURED TO HARDSHIP. But the Russians are a patient, enduring people, and inured to hardship and privation. “No other nation we know would submit to the privations dictated by a few powerful men. The Communists are only one .per c eß t- of the population of Russia, hut tliey ar© able to enforce their will,” lie said. It is quite clear that Russia is not “dumping” wheat or lumber or canned salmon ior any other product for the pupose of smashing capitalism in oth e r countries. That may be done later, but for the present Russia must sell at any price she can get in order to finance the Five-year Plan and secure the imports necessary to Its success. Three great questions, not one of which can yet be answered, arise from the Five-year Plan.

(1) Will the higher standards of living which its success would bring, tend to make the succeeding generations “softer” towards the drastic tenets of Communism ?

(2) If the plan succeeds and Russia works her way to a plane of productive efficiency comparable Hvith that of other nations, will she co-operate with the rest of the world, or will she try to impress her policies on other peoples by means of propaganda? (She will not try to do it by force, Professor Soward believes).

(3) How will the rest of the world meet the problem of competition ? As to the latter question, Professor Soward suggested that there are but two alternatives: To meet it by some improvement of our own systems of production and distribution, or to enter on a war of extermination. This question was now being discussed by many of the great minds of. the world. If war is the answer it will be a pitiless struggle in which the horrors of the late world war will sink int o insignificance-

AIMS OF THE PLAN. 'ln leading up to these declarations. Professor So war cl gave a vivid and compact history of the aims and results to date of the. Five-year Plan fathered by Stalin, but which he said was a natural 1 , working out of the original plans of Lenin, who had always envisaged raising Russia to the competitive efficiency of other nations. Leading Russians had admitted that as a nation they were 50 years behind the world. In the first years aiter the revolution the drastic ideas of Communism had found full sway. From 1921 to 1928, when the plan was initiated, therd hatd been considerable compromise with capitalism, with the result that ruined production in industry and agriculture had recovered so much as to encourage Stalin to embark on his ruthless programme. Trotsky had been banished been use he predicted failure from any compromise, but many of Ills suggestions were now being adopted by ;Stalin.

DOUBLED OUTPUT. Stalin’s objective was to double indujstrial output!, to .increase agriculture. by 50 par cent., wages by 35 per dent., and to juoUeahe profits while lessening the terrific load of taxation on the producer of every class. Russian workers are inefficient, lazy a,nd ignorant, but they are improving under the whip of force and necessity. All sorts of new industries have bo e n brought }nto being, some 290 n©w factories being opened in 1930. A strong effort is being made to enlist the co-operation of the driven workmen and to make a success of the seven-hour day and the five-day week. When the Five-year Plan started Russia bad only 60,000 export technicians left in the whole country, but this number had been increased by training. At the end of 1930 there were approximately 4500 foreign in the factories and other industries, oi whom 1000 were Americans. It is proposed to. have 13,000 foreign experts helping this year in the supreme effort to complete the plan by December 1932.

The most important [and perhaps the most significant change in the whole Russian situation, Professor Sowar d declared, has been the ‘‘revolution” in agriculture, doing away with all • landlordism, 'aind substituting State-owned farms, collective farm operations, co-operatives, and community farms.