allotted to particular regions (villages, rural districts, or circles), will not be sold to any individual peasant; they will be provided for the temporary use of all who need them, and a definite charge will be made to cover expenses. The depots where such arrangements are effected are known as lending stations. At these the machines and tools are stored, cleaned after use, and (in well-equipped stations) kept in repair. Lending stations already exist and function, although as yet there are very few of them. It behoves the Soviet Power to ensure that, as far as may be, all agricultural machinery, and without exception all the more complicated types of machine, intended for the rural districts, shall be supplied only to lending stations. There is no other way of securing that the machines shall be adequately used throughout their working life — to say nothing of the fact that in this way we shall help the poorer peasants whose means will not suffice for the buying of machines as private property. The machines confiscated from the rich peasants must also be kept at the lending stations. In the long run, a widely organised system for the provision of agricultural machinery through the instrumentality of the lending stations, will lead slowly but surely to the nationalisation of all the most important implements of agricultural production; and will consequently, in addition to giving immediate help to peasant industry, tend to promote its socialisation.
In the agricultural program of the proletarian Power, the improvement of the land must occupy an extremely important place. The Soviet Power has at the present time under its control millions of desyatinas which, although they are not cultivable as yet, might be made cultivable by a moderate amount of work in the way of cleansing, the grubbing-up of roots, drainage (either by open channels or by the laying of underground pipes), irrigation, etc. However strict the limits imposed upon the enlargement of the soviet farms, as far as concerns land already cultivated or immediately susceptible of cultivation, there is unlimited scope for the provision of areas which, by the above-mentioned methods of land improvement, our young socialist agriculture will be able to wrest from nature.