Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/137

 Rh in a communistic society will be on our side only if we lighten and improve its economic conditions. …

The middle peasant is very practical and values only actual assistance, quite carelessly thrusting aside all commands and instructions from above.

First help him and then you will secure his confidence. If this matter is handled correctly, if each step taken by our group in the village, in the canton, in the food-supply detachment, or in any organization, is carefully made, is carefully verified from this point of view, then we shall win the confidence of the peasant, and only then shall we be able to move forward. Now we must give him assistance. We must give him advice and this must not be the order of a commanding officer, but the advice of a comrade. The peasant then will be absolutely for us.

The measures previously described are, evidently, examples of "comradely advice" and "actual assistance."

Under these methods the peasants hid their products and sowed less grain in order that there should be nothing left for the plunderers. It was then that the Soviets decided to put still more terror into their actions and to give their requisitions a new name. In order to be able to seize plausibly all grain under all circumstances they declared grain and certain other food products the monopoly of the state. They decreed that the peasants should be left only enough to supply their own families with food and that all the "surplus" should go to the Soviet Government.

Instead of making things better the new method made matters worse. Bolshevist statistics in 1920 admitted that the agricultural productivity of the country had fallen to fifty per cent or less. The area under cultivation had fallen to about seventy per cent. The yield as