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ITS ORIGIN AND PURPOSE "NO MORE COMPROMISE WITH CAPITALISM"

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In a series of five articles the first of which is given below, the writer examines Russia's Five-Year Plan of economic recovery which has now been in operation two and half years. Political and economic motives behind the Plan are described in this article. Further articles will be published daily in these columns this week.)

Two men were standing on the roof of a grey, straight-lined skyscraper in Moscow.

One of them was a tall dark Russian Communist with narrow slit eyes of a semi-Asiatic. The other was a Welshman looking just like any other Welshman in the streets of a Glamorgan port or mining town. One of them had been educated in the Communist Academy, Moscow; the other had been to an elementary and to a secondary school in Wales. The Russian had spent thirteen years in a revolutionary State which was Building up Socialism. The Welshman had lived in a capitalist State where the shops and the factories the mines and the railway were run by private enterprise.

The Communist turned to the Welshman and said: "You are a man of the past. I am a man of the future. You belong to the capitalist world which is fast crashing. I belong to the Communist world, which is soon to triumph. Look at Moscow, which lies around us. What you see is symbolic of the trend of world history. I’ll tell you why."

The two men looked at the Red Capital which stretched on every side. They saw some broken-down wooden huts cheek by jowl with a line new electric station. To the south near the river the ancient towers and spires of the Kremlin-the large, closely-guarded citadel in the centre of the town-stood out. On its highest pinnacle floated a large red flag with a yellow sickle and hammer in one corner. A newly built dazzling white skyscraper contrast between the Russian buildings of the Middle Ages and the engineering feat of the twentieth century.

The young Bolshevik continued: "The old and the new are standing side by side and the new is triumphing. Next to the wooden hovels of the past you have the modern skyscraper of the Communist regime. That electric station over there is symbolic of the efforts of the Bolshevik revolution to build a new industrialised Russian where the machine will take the place of God."

He paused and his little Asiatic eyes twinkled with excitement and enthusiasm revealing a glimpse of the fanatic. He went on: "That’s what we are doing to Russia and it’s going to shake the whole world to its foundations. The World Revolution will break out. The globe will become the World Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Mark my words. Not a single man or woman, whether in New Zealand or China or Wales, will be untouched by what is happening to-day in Russia. We are going to prove to the world that Communism can build up a powerful prosperous State.

"Do you know what our weapon is? It’s our FIVE-YEAR PLAN."

The Five-Year Plan begins the third act in the thrilling drama of the Bolshevik Revolution.

The first act opened with the thunder of the guns and the blood of November, 1917, when the Revolution broke out. It was the period of military Communism. There was war on all sides-against the Whites, against the Allies, against the Poles. Ruthless terror sent thousands to their death. The Communists put their principles into practice by abolishing banks, money, private trading, and by preventing the peasants from selling their grain except to the State. The curtain of the first act goes down upon the bodies of millions of Russians dead or dying in the terrible famine of 1921.

Then came the second act, the recovery, 1921-1927. Lenin, the realist, made a compromise with Capitalism and allowed peasants and shopkeepers to sell their goods openly and make a profit. This is called the New Economic Policy (N.E.P.) in the middle of this act there was poignant scene when the great Lenin died in January 1924.

The third act began in 1928, and was the period of re-construction or the Act of the Five-Year Plan. This plan is in reality a new revolution, a revolution lasting over a period of five years.

It is not so dramatic as the show and fighting of 1917, but more far-reaching in its effects. This Revolution of the Five-Year Plan is now stirring every village, every street, every factory to its depths and affecting the life of every man, woman, and child in the Soviet Union.

In 1927 the Communist party considered that, the general level of production was about the same as in 1913. But, to the horror of the Bolsheviks, Capitalism was growing in the country. Private trade, as opposed to the Stalin and co-operative shops, was still powerful. Worst of all, the Revolution had turned the peasants into capitalistic small-holders. The big estates which had produced millions of tons of grain for export had been divided into innumerable tiny patches. The vast stretches of land which used to supply the towns and the Army with food had been split up. The Communist Revolution had led to the increase of Capitalism! It had led to a shortage of grain, for it is difficult to collect grain front 26,000,000 different small proprietors. It had led to the increasing strength of the capitalist class of richer peasants, the Kulaks who hated Communism.

The cry went, round among the communists: "The time has come for Change! Forward to pure Communism! No more compromise with Capitalism. We must try to introduce Communism within five years. We must build a strong industrial State and turn the millions of peasants patches into vast Socialist farms."

BRINGING IT HOME TO SOUTH WALES -

Exports and scientists hurried from all parts of the Soviet Union. Conferences were held to plan the life of the Communist State for the next five years. This was done under the auspices of the State Planning Commission. They drew up a tremendous plan for the development of the whole life of the Soviet Union.

Imagine a Commission sitting in London with full power to do whatever they liked in transforming the whole of Great Britain. They could say: "Ten new factories must be built at Cardiff within two years. A railway must be constructed between Swansea and Caernarfon by 1932. Eighty-five per cent. of the mines of South Wales must be provided with the latest machinery by March 1, 1933. Carmarthen must produce 46,824 tons of grain within ten months time. Fifty-four thousand Welsh miners must be sent to East Africa by December 1^st this year"

Imagine this Commission working out exactly what must be produced in boots, coal, eggs, matches, butter, steel, ships, and sowing machines for a period of five years! That is what the Five-Year Plan is attempting to do for Russia.

The "Pravda" (the paper of the Communist party describes it thus: "The Five-Year Plan is an important part of the offensive of the proletariat of the world against Capitalism; it is a plan tending to undermine capitalist stabilisation; it a great plan of World Revolution."

That is the political motive of the Plan.

But at present, the economic motive seems far more vital to the majority of the Communists. They want to build up a new Russia. They want to plan the destinies of 153,000,000 people. They want to construct factories here, steel works there. They want to go full speed ahead at turning the Soviet Union into a rich, industrialised Socialist State. They want to transform backward Russia into a Communist version of the United States. We’ll beat America!"

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THE WESTERN MAIL 8.4.31

A VAST SCHEME FOR AGRICULTURE

October 1, 1928, was a Red Letter Day in the history of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It was the day on which the Five-Year Plan was launched. The hopes of the Communists were high. Although they only numbered 1.1/2 millions out of a population of over 150 millions, they were determined to make Russia into an industrialised Communist State.

Wherever one went one saw huge banners stretched from one lamp-post to another across the street with the words, "Let us reply to the furious arming of the capitalists by carrying out the Five-Year Plan," or "God and the drunkard are the enemies of the Five-Year Plan." The cinemas had films explaining what the Five-Year Plan was.

At street corners, in factories, in villages, Communists would harangue the crowds and tell them of the three main aims of the Plan and how its fulfilment would bring them health and happiness and save them from being attacked and murdered by the foreigner who was waiting to pounce on Mother Russia.

This is what the factory workers, the peasants, the teachers, and the miners learned as they listened, open-mouthed, to the Bolshevik orators. They learned that the Five-Year Plan had three great aims. It would first of all convert the Russia of the peasant into the Russia of the mechanic; it would industrialise Russia and set up factories and mines everywhere. It would, secondly, turn the millions of strips the private property of the small peasants into big Socialist farms, where the land would be owned in common and where the tractor and the latest machinery would double or treble the amount of grain produced. It would, thirdly, exterminate all capitalist elements. That meant that by 1933 every hawker, shopkeeper, barber, tailor who worked or sold for his own profit and not for a State shop or co-operative shop would disappear. That meant also that the individual peasant who had his own land would be no more.

With its three aims, the industrialisation of Russia, the socialization of agriculture, and the extermination of the private trader, the Five-Year Plan is the most thorough revolution which has ever been attempted in the history of the world.

What it seeks to achieve in the industrial field is stupendous. The exact figures of what production must be in each year up to 1933 are worked out. Did not the whole daring of the scheme take one's breath away, one might almost be compelled to laugh at some of its stipulations. For example, it was laid down that the average number of eggs eaten per head by the people in the towns between October 1, 1932, and September 30, 1933, was to be 155. The allowance of boots was to increase from .40 of a pair in 1927-8 to .74 of a pair in 1932-3!

In other branches of industry the progress planned is enormous.

Take coal. In 1913 Russia produced 29 million tons of coal. By the year preceding the Five-Year Plan this had increased to 35 million tons. By the end of the Five-Year Plan it is planned to produce 125,000,000 tons of coal! That is almost five times as much as in 1913! This year the figure is to leap up to 83 million tons.

The Donetz Basin takes the first place in the Soviet coal plans. Its output is to increase from 27 million tons in 1927-28 to 70 million tons in 1933. The Donetz Basin has thus undertaken the task of more than doubling its coal production within five years. An immense construction programme is being carried out; seventeen new large shafts have recently been sunk. By the end of the Plan 50 large new mines will be in process of construction. The very face of the Donetz Basin is to be changed. Mechanisation is to go ahead full-speed, and a great housing programme is to be carried out.

Then comes what is known as the sleeping giant of Russia, the Kuznetz Basin in Siberia. Its coal reserve is estimated at the incredible figure of 300 billion tons. Eight new large mines are to be constructed in the Kuznetz Basin. Its output will be small at the end of the Plan, viz., Six million tons, but the Soviet authorities intend to push ahead its development after the Five-Year Plan is over. The Ural coal region is to increase its production from two million tons in 1927-28 to six million tons in 1932-33.

The Moscow district, where there are large reserves of low-grade coal, comes next. Its output is to increase from one million to four or five million tons between the first and the last year of the Plan. Even in the far-off Soviet lands of Central Asia and Transcaucasia coal development plans are to be pushed ahead.

There is going to be a great drive in increasing the production of iron and steel.

The iron and steel mills in the two important metallurgical regions of the country (the Donetz Basin and the Urals) are to be re-built. Many new blast furnaces are to be constructed.

The output of oil is to reach 42,000,000 tons by 1933. This is a tremendous rate of increase compared with the 11,000,000 tons of 1927-28. The production of agricultural machinery, of copper, zinc, lead, aluminium, boilers, textiles-indeed, of all goods, is to be doubled or trebled. This year 1931 is to see the production of Russia increase by 45 per cent!

Wages are to be doubled. New factories of all kinds arc to be built. Electrification is to go ahead rapidly. A network of railways is to be constructed at breakneck speed, opening new regions to industry and trade. Waterways and roads are to be developed to carry the ever-growing amount of goods produced.

The Plan-as a Plan—is, indeed, stupendous.

In the realm of agriculture the Plan is no less ambitious. It is attempting to revolutionise the Russian village. Large collective farms are being set up. The "Kulak" class (the peasants owning three or more cows and employing labour) is to be crushed out of existence. The policy of collectivisation aims at doing away with

the millions of individually owned patches and strips and at establishing large farms run by machinery and owned in common. The peasants are allowed to keep their cottage, one cow chickens, perhaps a pig or two, but the tractors and the land are common property. The Communists are aiming a converting 50 per cent. of the peasants of Russia into members of collective farm by the end of this year. If that succeeds it will be a striking revolution in the lives of the 130,000,000 of Russian peasants. Besides these "collectives," vast State farms, covering hundreds of thousands of acres, are to be set up. These are to produce millions of tons of grain for export. The timber and the fur plans are also exceedingly high.

If the Five-Year Plan were carried out in full, then it would revolutionise the life and the trade of the whole world.

Will it be carried out? This problem is puzzling, worrying and tormenting the men and women in all countries. In following articles an attempt will be made to answer this vital question.

The Western Mail Third article 9.4.31

In the following article—the third of a. series of five- Mr. Gareth Jones examines the factors which promise success to the Russian Communists’ Five-Year Plan of economic recovery.

"We are in a state of war," said a Bolshevik Commissar as he showed a Welsh visitor the latest machinery in his factory. "Russia is fighting a war at construction, the war to build up the Socialist State and to change the whole face of the earth. We are fighting a battle royal for the Five-Year Plan." There are forces in Russia which- will help the Communist to win the war of the Five-Year Plan. There are forces which will tend to defeat them. It is, indeed, a battle roya1.

Let us try to sum up the two armies, the army of factors which are on the side of the success of the Five-Year Plan and the army of difficulties and drawbacks which may defeat the Communists.

The first factor which will help the Bolsheviks to win the battle is the vast resources of Russia. Think of the amount of coal untouched stored beneath the soil of the Soviet Union. Her forests cover an area of about 2,000 million acres, by far the largest lumber supplies in the world. Riches untold lie within her boundaries.

Oil? More than one-third of the whole worlds oil reserves are believed to by within her borders. Corn? The south of Russia deserves the name of the granary of the world. Cotton and flax? Gold? Platinum? Iron ore? All these are abundant.

The Five-Year Plan will be helped the stability of the regime. The Bolsheviks seem to have come to stay. A revolution against the Communists seems impossible. Any attempt at by rising is at once nipped in the bud by the O.G.P.U. (the State political police). This feared body has power of life and death and it members have the right to shoot a counter revolutionary without trial. In any case Soviet justice is on the side of the régime and the law courts are used to suppress any enemies of the Five-Year Plan. Law courts," says Krylenko, the Public Prosecutor of the Soviet Government, are organs for disposing of the enemies of the Revolution." Not only the O.G.P.U., which has a well-trained army of about 130,000 men, with the best weapons and aeroplanes, but also the Red Army will probably support the regime.

It is well fed and it is taught Communist doctrine. Recently a decree was issued to the effect that 60 per cent, of the Army must be composed of workers. This will make the Army more Communist and make less likely the repetition of the troubles which arose among the peasants in the Red Army last year. With the O.G.P.U. and the Red Army on their side the Soviet Government can concentrate on the carrying out of the Five-Year Plan.

Modern inventions make the grip over Russia firmer and help the Government to force on the Plan. The wireless, the theatre, the cinema, spread Communist ideals throughout Russia, while the machine-gun, poison-gas, and the aero plane are invaluable in crushing any opposition which may arise.

The next factor which will help the Five-Year Plan is the character of Stalin, the dictator. This ruthless, honest man is just the man to drive a nation. He is brutal and has no mercy. He allows nothing to stand in his way when his mind is made up. This son of a Caucasian shoemaker and of a washerwoman is a brilliant organiser. Without material he has one aim in life - to make the Five-Year Plan a success.

The enthusiasm of youth is going to be force which will help the Plan. For many young people Communism has the power of religion. They would sacrifice their lives willingly for the sake of the Plan. They would obey the command of the Communist party to leave their homes and to work in a mine in the depths of Siberia, just as a missionary would plunge for the sake of Christianity into the savage forests of Africa. They would work nine, ten, eleven, twelve hours, they would give up all their leisure for the success of the Five-Year Plan.

Sitting in a circus in Moscow a Welsh-man made friends with a fair-haired Russian boy aged thirteen. "Would you like to go to Britain?" he asked the boy. The boy was shocked. "No, never," he said; "it must be terrible there in a capitalist country where all the worker are oppressed. I am sorry for them. But they will be Communist one day, because we young people are going to make the Five - Year Plan a success. Won’t it be fine when we’ve turned Russia into a country of factories? I’d do anything to make the Five-Year Plan a success and so would a lot of my schoolfellows.

That is the spirit which is going to push the plan ahead rapidly. The youth of Russia is being trained to devote itself to the Five-Year Plan by the excellent work done for education in Russia. The State is sparing no efforts to set up schools and to teach reading and writing to young and old. "We must give the workers books, but we do not give them boots," said a communist to me.

The command which is the State has over the lives of the worker is also a factor which will weigh in favour of the Plan. If there is a shortage of labour in the forests of the North, then many thousands of workers or peasants can be drafted to fill the gap. In January when the transport was failing, the Commissar of labour issued an order by which all employees who had at any time been engaged in railway work of any kind had to report within five days and take any job offered in whatever part of the country where the Labour Exchange might send them.

The State deprives the population of most commodities in order to get money to invest in industry and to buy machinery from abroad. Foreign trade is a Government monopoly. Thus no luxuries are imported, and butter, eggs, grain, and bacon, badly needed at home, are exported to get currency wherewith to buy tractors, textile-making machinery, and engines necessary to carry out the Plan.

The character of the peoples who form the Soviet Unions is another force which enables the Communists to press forward in industrialising. The average Russian is long-suffering, and having been a serf up to 1861 he has never tasted liberty. A British worker would never allow himself to be commandeered and deprived of his food and of his liberty as the Russian does. Bill Smith or John Jones would very soon stand up for his rights! But the Russian is submissive and lets the rulers go on ruling.

In agriculture there are very many forces which will help the Communists to carry out their Plan. Last year’s wonderful harvest was a great stroke of good fortune for their policy of collectivisation. The use of machines which the Communists advocate is bound to increase the production of grain in the flat stretches of fertile land in South Russia. A great deal, however, will depend upon the number and the quality of the tractors which can be produced under the Five-Year Plan, modern methods and excellent research Russian scientists will campaign for turning the into modern farms run by machinery. Tremendous State farms (covering hundreds of thousands of acres), where the workers are wage-earners, have been set up in the virgin steppes. These will be able to provide grain for the Red Army and for export. Large State pig and cattle farms are to be to make up for the terrible shortage of meat which was caused by the peasants massacring their cattle a year ago, when being forced to join the Communist collective farms.

Those are the forces on Stalin’s side. It is a formidable army. Surely, you will say with all those factors fighting for the Communists they will make a resounding success of the Plan. This is, however, but one side of the picture. The army of difficulties and drawbacks is also powerful. What the forces are which are fighting against the Five-Year Plan will be shown in the next article.

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FORCES AGAINST THE FIVE-YEAR PLAN.

SCARCITY OF FOOD AND CLOTHING.

There was no meat to be had in the Co-operative Restaurant in Rostoff. The sausages had been sold out since nine o’clock in the morning. There were a few bars of chocolate (about a 6d. size ) at 12s. per bar. There was no butter to be had except in the private market at 10s. per lb. There was a long queue of nervy people in the restaurant. "Anybody got any silver - there’s no small change?’’ each other asked. There were grumblings and cursings. A young worker, slightly drunk, sidled up to me and said: "That’s what they are doing to us in Soviet Russia. The Communists are killing us workers and peasants. Everything’s bad, bad, bad. We can’t get boots and we can’t get clothes. We can’t get food, except bread. How can we work all day with our bellies empty. There’s nothing in Russia. The Five-Year Plan? It’s all lies, lies, lies !"

Two peasants, in their rough sheepskin coats, were furious. The train rattled along across the North Caucasian steppes. We were talking about the Soviet policy of making the peasants give up their land and join collective farms. "It’s a dog’s life," they said. " It would be better to be under the earth than to live now. They force us to join collective farms. The very best, those who worked day and night, were sent to Siberia and the Urals and their houses were taken from them. They won’t let us keep more than one cow. What’s the use of working? It’s terrible."

These glimpses of life in Soviet Russia show that the Communists are not having all their own way with the Five-Year Plan. The difficulties are formidable and they are putting a serious brake on the progress of the Plan. There are industrial difficulties, there are agricultural difficulties and there are human difficulties.

What are the industrial difficulties? The first is the weakness of workers from lack of nearly all foods except bread. Meat is exceedingly scarce. All fats are almost impossible to obtain unless one is a manual worker or a member of the Communist party. Even a manual worker is rarely able to get enough. The bad quality of the goods produced under the Five-Year Plan is another drawback. The Soviet press publishes frank letters stating that clothes often fall to pieces in not much more than a month after purchase. Tractors often break within a few hours of use. This is easily understood. A factory is told to produce 1,000 tractors by a certain date under the Five-Year Plan. The manager may be arrested, perhaps shot or his bread-card may be taken away from him if the order is not carried out. Hence those 1,000 tractors are turned out regardless of quality.

The ever-growing lack of engineers and of skilled labour is going to be a serious barrier to the success of the Plan. It is impossible to train engineers and mechanics in a year. Often a generation or more is needed to provide a trained body of workers. A South Wales collier cannot be made in six months. He is the skilled result of generations of experience. The Soviet Government is setting up industrial and engineering schools everywhere but they will find out that they can not run an industrialised State on unskilled and untrained engineers mechanics, and workers.

The railways of the U.S.S.R. are now in a state of confusion. Terrible mistakes have been made. Men have been shot for muddling the transport organisation. A millions tons of coal was left standing idle in the Donetz Basin this year because there were not enough wagons and locomotives to carry it away. Unless transport is improved and unless the railways planned a are built in time, and, what is more, in built well, then Five-Year Plan will be in grave danger of failing.

It has been difficult for the Soviet authorities recently to keep the workers in the factories. They have been leaving one district for another or returning hungry from the towns to their villages where they have parents or brothers or cousins. The flight of workers was most marked in the Donetz Basin, the coal, iron and steel district where 93,000 workers fled last summer. The Soviet Government has had to make regulations which amount to the tying of workers to their factories or mines and to the tightening of the grip of the State over the life of each citizen.

Failure in supplying factories with raw material such as cotton or flax, &c., the famine in fuel which caused so much suffering this winter, the disappointing results of the co-operative movement all these have put a brake on the fulfilment of the Plan. In agriculture the Government have had to face the opposition of masses of the peasants. There are probably at this moment many Communists being murdered in the villages by peasants want to at stick to their land. The wholesale massacre of cattle and pigs which followed upon the violent campaign of collectivisation a year ago has caused a shortage of live-stock which will affect Russia for several years. By the class-warfare in the villages and extermination of the richer peasants (the Kulaks) by exile, confiscation, or sometimes by shooting, the Communists are depriving Russian agriculture of its hardest workers.

There are, finally, serious human drawbacks which will prevent the five-Year Plan making Russia into a happy prosperous country. There is, first, the clinging of average human being to property. Secondly, managers of factories and directors of trusts and many people in good positions are afraid of taking responsibility. It has been dangerous. During the last winter hundreds of men have been shot for failures in the branches of industry in which they had leading posts. When your actions are dictated according to a set plan and when failure may bring about death, your feeling of initiative is sure to suffer. Another human drawback is the stress which is laid upon political keenness and on orthodoxy rather than on practical ability. If you are a Communist then you have a far better chance of becoming the director of a factory than a non-Communist. A good street-corner orator is not necessarily a good organiser. There is thus waste of brain-power.

The building up of an ideal State is going to be handicapped by the lack of freedom of expression which is an obstacle to the thinker, the artist, the writer, the politician, and to the man in the street. Finally the disillusionment which is spreading through the ranks of workers and peasants and which contrasts so violently with the optimism of the Communists and of youth has shattered the first fine careless rapture of the Plan

Such are the forces fighting against the success of the Plan. What have been the results so far? And what are the prospects for the future? These will be dealt with in the next and final article.

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The Soviet Five-Year Plan has been working for two and a half years.

What have been the achievements?

There is no doubt that great progress has been made in some branches of industry. The electrical power developments have been tremendous and the output is five times that of 1913.

Air-lines now penetrate into the distant solitudes of Siberia. A Trans-Siberian air-line will soon revolutionise the postal and passenger services between Europe and Japan. A Welshman who flew from the South of Russia to Moscow last summer was struck by the excellent arrangements of the Soviet Aviation Company. Under the Five-Year Plan the book trade is to develop quickly, and masses of books are now offered to the peoples of Russia at low prices. The export of grain last year astonished the world although it was only one-half of the average pre-war exports. The export of oil is jumping up, and the output in 1930 was almost double that of 1913. Education is provided for under the Five-Year Plan and is progressing favourably as is the excellent propaganda for health and temperance. New technical colleges are being established, and this part of the Plan is also succeeding.

In spite of these achievements there have been very serious breakdowns in the Plan. Coal production dropped rapidly last summer, and while the output in March was 4,700,000 tons, it was only 2,900,000 tons in August. There has been a severe shortage of fuel this winter. The coal position is gradually improving, but it will be impossible at the present rate to reach anywhere near the 83 million - tons aimed at this year. Nevertheless, the output will develop, and the figure for 1930 (47,000,000 tons) was a two-thirds increase ever the 1913 figure.

The Moscow Trial showed that the Five-Year Plan was doing badly in many branches. While the first year of the Plan was a success, the second was disappointing to the Communists. Production did increase, but it was at the expense of quality and at the expense of the standard of living of the workers. Transport was disorganised throughout the country. The lack of skilled labour was felt keenly. These difficulties are going to increase with the extra burdens which the Plan places on the country.

The rapid speed at which Stalin is trying to industrialise Russia has led to great hunger and suffering. Food is scarce. The health of the nation may be affected by the present privations. The discontent of the masses has been tremendous, and there has been talk of revolution against the Communists. There has been a wave of hatred against Stalin which has spread into the Communist party. The anti-Stalin group is called the Right Wing Opposition, and it is strong in the rank and file of the party and in the country.

As I walked past the Kremlin, the citadel where Stalin lives, I saw sentries everywhere, and in one place where the rampart was broken a Red soldier walked up and down with his pointed bayonet ready.

Stories are whispered about Stalin in corners of trains.

Here is a typical story told me in the Donetz Basin:- Stalin had a dream in which Lenin appeared to him.

"Hallo, Stalin! How are you?" asks Lenin.

"Oh, I’m fine," replies Stalin.

" How is Russia?"

" Oh, splendid, "says Stalin. "You know, we have our Five-Year Plan now and our achievements are amazing."

" Really." says Lenin. "And what are you going to do when the Five-Year Plan is over?"

" Oh, we’ll have another Five-Year Plan."

Then Lenin crushes Stalin by saying:

"By that time every man, woman, and child in Russia will have died and joined me, and you’ll be the only man left to carry out your second Five-Year Plan."

Stalin has disgraced the leaders of the Right Wing Opposition, Rykoff, Tomsky, and Bukharin, and has placed his own men in key positions. The Right Wing Communists want to slow down the Plan and pay more attention to the happiness of the working class. Stalin is at present supreme, but if there is much more hunger and suffering his position will be weakened. This would not mean, however, the breakdown of the Communist regime, but the victory of the moderates in the party.

What of the future? He would be a daring man who would venture to prophesy the future of Russia. The figures at which the Bolsheviks aim are fantastic and can never be carried out by 1933. But as far as one is able to judge Soviet Russia will in time be able to increase her exports of coal, grain, oil, and timber.

Her shipments of coal abroad are at present small, but she is trying to get a foothold in several British markets and such as Italy. Her exports of grain will depend on the harvest, but if her crop is as good this year as it was last year, then Canada is going to suffer still further and the grain market will be seriously disturbed. Russia’s oil supplies are vast and she will continue to increase her oil exports. Her timber will also continue to hit Canada, the Scandinavian States and the Baltic States, and France.

Soviet Russia will probably, therefore, be a competitor in such natural products as coal, grain, oil, timber, and furs. Where manufactured goods are concerned, however, it will be a. long time before she will gain the experience and the skill and the organisation of the Western countries. Moreover, Russia herself will be a market absorbing vast quantities of manufactured goods and her need for machinery from abroad to make the goods will be great for a long time yet.

Soviet Russia’s trade system, by which export and import are a State monopoly, enables her to sell at any price. If she makes a large profit on oil, then she can afford to sell grain or coal far below cost price. The Soviet Union has become one vast centralised business concern controlling 158,000,000 people with a miserable standard of living. So far the Five-Year Plan has been a mixture of successes and failures. It is increasing the production of Russia, but at the expense of quality and human happiness. Difficulties galore lie in its path, but if these difficulties are overcome, then Soviet Russia will be a powerful competitor.

The success of the Plan would strengthen the hands of the Communists throughout the world. It might make the twentieth century a century of struggle between Capitalism and Communism.