Retreat

One morning last week the Russian state radio canceled its regular programs, and for the next three hours droned out details of a great Moscow retreat. It was a 25,000-word document written by Russia's new No. 2 man, Nikita Khrushchev and it told the hitherto hidden story of Soviet Communism's failure to provide food for its subject peoples. Items:

P: Although industrial output has increased 230% in Russia since 1940, agricultural production has risen only 10%.

P: Under Communism, the people are getting even less meat and dairy foods than under the Czar. Russia's human population has climbed 50% in the past 37 years (to 210 million), but its livestock supply has fallen 2.6%. The hard figures (in millions) as given by Khrushchev:

1916 1953

All cattle 58.4 56.6

Dairy cows 28.8 24.3

Pigs 23 28.5

Sheep & goats 96.3 109.9

Horses 38.2 15.3

Except for bread grains, the report disclosed, farm output "does not fully satisfy the population's increasing need for food, or light industry's need for raw materials."

Almost as astounding as the blunt confession was its authorship. For the last four years Nikita Khrushchev has been the chief architect of the program whose results he now deplored. He masterminded the agrogorod scheme, designed to further collectivize the already collectivized farmers and to drive them off the land and into agricultural cities (agrogoroda). But by their quiet resistance, Russia's millions of muzhiks made the scheme a failure, drove Khrushchev into retreat. Result: the new policy grudgingly gives the peasants the right to own more livestock of their own, promises them big price increases for their requisitioned products: over 550% more for cattle and poultry, 200% more for butter, 25% to 40% more for vegetables. "Increase the material interest of the peasant," Khrushchev ordered.

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