THE CATASTROPHE 79
which made Government help necessary—and in the shape of
advances of grain.
But an article published by Pravda on March io3 1934, is
particularly significant. It deals with the necessity of an imme-
diate reorganization of the agricultural apparatus. Dealing with
the position in the Northern Caucasus^ the article said: "Last
year was only the beginning of the recovery. The good harvest
was not gathered in its entirety. The region failed to observe
the dates fixed for the prescribed agricultural work. The
necessary working discipline is lacking on the collective farms.
There was no control of operations.5*
As is always the case with these forced admissions, they were
followed by a demand for the final destruction of the "class
enemies/' who were charged with "pilfering and destruction
of crops, barbarous treatment of horses, non-observance of the
daily standard of work, and deliberate reduction of the amount
of bread delivered—attempts to disorganize the 'collective
farm brigade.5" Here is an open admission of the loss of part of
the 1933 harvest and of the disorganization of agriculture.
A speech by Kalinin delivered on February 16, 1934, and
reported in Pravda of February 273 is an equally frank
^confession. After mentioning the "model collective farms/'
Kalinin said: "If these collective farms [mining those which
had a good harvest] were the majority, the problem of pros-
perity would by now have been solved. But the number of these
collective farms is unhappily very small." Kalinin went on to
declare that the good harvest of the previous year proved that
there were good crops "only in those collective farms where
the work was well done." It is thus admitted in open words that
even the good harvest of 1933 was tmable to improve matters
where bad work was done, or, more exactly, where the state
of agriculture was not what it should have been.
This indirect evidence* was reinforced rather later by an
important direct admission from Moscow relating to the distress
in the Ukraine and the other agricultural districts. On April n,