The Farmer Goes West

When the Soviet army came rolling to the village of Morawice, near Cracow, in World War II, the Russians grandly parceled out the big estates (formerly owned by Count Potocki and the Duke of Radziwill) among the local peasants. But before the peasants could quite get used to their happy new condition, the Communist Party workers moved into Morawice, urged that they merge their holdings into Soviet-type collective farms. When the .peasants hesitated, the Communists turned the economic screws, demanded larger deliverfes of corn, milk and potatoes. More in the spirit of Poland's traditional agricultural "circles" than from socialist leanings, one group of 13 families pooled their 100 acres of land and formed a collective called Victoria.

In the beginning, results were good, but then the Communists began to take a bigger share of the farm's produce. There were interminable, time-consuming party discussions, but little fertilizer, no tractors. Because they had collaborated with the Communists, the farmers of Victoria were ostracized by their neighbors. "They called us Soviet pigs," says Zofia Szczygiel, president of the Victoria collective.

Down Tools & Vodka. In the next six years, Victoria fell into neglect, 15% of the cultivatable land was not used, farmers spent more time on their tiny home plots, and debts accumulated.

One day last October the quiet revolution came to Morawice. The people of the village heard newly appointed Party Secretary Wladyslaw Gomulka say on the radio that no more money would be spent subsidizing collectives. Says Zofia Szczygiel: "Everybody out in the fields threw down their tools and went home for a drink of vodka. Then they went and got their tools again and started marking out their claims to private property." A village committee soon ironed out the boundary disputes, and by the time Gomulka got around to acknowledging the end of forced collectivization, Victoria had ceased to exist.

Morawice has become a new village since that day. Neighbors speak to each other again, freely participate in village affairs. Production is up. Where only five cows grazed eight months ago, 35 may be seen. Because there are no forced milk deliveries, the farmers are producing as many calves as they can, and every yard of arable land is heavily planted. Said an old peasant: "Today if we waste land, it is money out of our own pockets." The geese and hogs that waddle across Mora-wice's bumpy main street are 100% capitalist-owned.

My Own Boss. All that remains to remind people of the hated era of collectivization, reported TIME Correspondent Edward Hughes from Morawice last week, is a little signboard in the center of the village square, which .bears faded posters of another government, with pictures of Warsaw's Russian-built "Palace of Culture." The new attitude towards the party was summed up by an ancient pitchfork-brandishing farmer: "I'm my own boss now and when some party man comes out to tell me to go out to rake hay for the nation, I have a big needle for his back end."

The return to private farming has almost doubled Poland's meat supply in one year. This and increased supplies of potatoes, eggs and milk have removed the dangerous famine threat of this spring. To boost the trend, the government is cutting up and selling thousands of acres of farmland previously owned outright by the state. Says Polish Agronomist Lech Rosciszewski: "Communism in Polish agriculture is dead . . . finished." Experts, however, are aware that in the long run many private farms may prove too small for efficient farming, and a move is afoot to persuade farmers voluntarily to merge their holdings, not as collectives, but in the old "circle" tradition. Says Rosciszewski: "We are thinking in terms of Scandinavian-style cooperatives."

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