The task of the Communist Party is to increase, wherever possible, the number of the soviet farms, and to enlarge them (as far as may be without interfering with the interests of peasant agriculture). By degrees we must assemble here the best breeding stock in the republic. Here we must organise the most perfect technical elaboration of agricultural produce. We must make an end of bureaucracy, must be careful to avoid the transformation of the soviet farms into something like monasteries, concerned only with the prosperity of their own employees and workers, and caring nothing for the Soviet State. The farms must gather together a staff of highly skilled workers; they must not merely inaugurate workers’ control, but must proceed in due course to the actual management of the estates by the workers. The peasants of the environing regions must be induced to interest themselves in the farms, must be led to examine the agricultural methods and plans of these, until they are gradually induced to regard the soviet farms as the direct concern of the entire working population.
In the autumn of 1919 there were 3536