Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/139

 Rh fantastic scheme of compelling them to do so. He was not in the least alarmed by the crisis, but frankly expressed satisfaction that the terrible miscarriage of previous schemes for socializing agriculture and the obstinate refusal of the peasants to fall into line justified the state in intervening.

Unfortunately, Ossinsky's ideas aroused the sympathy of the heads of the Food Administration, who were sure their enormous programme of food requisitioning during this famine year would fail unless they were permitted to apply more force than usual. In a few weeks Ossinsky and the Food Administration were able to convince the Communist Party that this new scheme was a necessity. The All-Russian Congress of Soviets last December sanctioned Ossinsky's ideas, adopting a decree "In Aid of Agriculture." The main provisions of this embodied the scheme of compulsory sowing of the fields and established seed funds.

The giving to this decree the title "In Aid of Agriculture" is typical. Lenin also repeated his beneficent phrases at this Congress: "We shall not advance a step in our program without the peasants," and he again said that the law should "assist" peasant farming.

By March the food reserve was almost completely exhausted, the prospects for agriculture were still worse, and the peasant revolts, especially in the grain producing districts, South Russia, Siberia and the Caucasus, were more frequent and menacing than ever before. The Communists, led by Lenin, now decided once more to change the name of their requisitions, reverting from the "grain monoplymonopoly [sic]" back to "taxation in kind." The Moscow wireless of March 16, 1921, thus reports Lenin's speech indicating this second change in method: