"Never Do We Dance"

When safely out of earshot of Russia's secret police, Russia's patient, long-suffering peasants fitted new words to an ancient singsong tune: If there were no winter,

There would be no freezing--// there were no Soviets Hunger'd not be teasing.

In the cemetery,

Red the poppy borders; Stalin leads us all there,

Says it's Lenin's orders.

Never do we dance now,

Never see much gladness; Five-year-plan production

Drives us all to madness.

Last week Russia's city dwellers, always hungry for better times, drew premature cheer from news of the kolkhozes (collective farms). The bread grain crop of wheat and rye was more than half harvested and it had been a good year. Though the Government had said nothing, plain citizens nourished the hope that the long-deferred end of bread rationing might be in sight.

But a hard look at the always meager Soviet crop statistics belied the bright hope. At the present level of rationing, Soviet citizens annually eat 37,152,500 tons of grain. An end of rationing might increase consumption by half as much again. Best estimates put this year's crop at 43,500,000 tons, which would still not be enough for so large an increase.

But from the Soviet view it was not all bad. Though Russians would have to keep belts tightened, there would be grain to spare for the Soviet Union's eastern European satellites which had spurned the Marshall approach, but, last year, ate 1.7 million tons of imported wheat. Most of that wheat had come from the U.S.

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