THE CATASTROPHE 85
competence even the Soviet authorities are not likely to
question, Harold Denny, Walter Duranty's assistant in the
Moscow representation of the New York Times, stated on
July 2631934, that the struggle for the current harvest was of a
character and an intensity probably never witnessed in the
world's history; indeed, the struggle was being organized and
carried through like a military offensive. He described in
detail how the plans were worked out during the preceding
winter in Moscow, where there was an iron will, and how
instructions were then issued to the autonomous republics and
by them in turn to the regional authorities, which he compares
to army corps. By them the orders were passed on through
the further stages of the hierarchy—the tractor stations, the
heads of the collective farms, etc., for execution. He described
how the workers on the State farms were divided into brigades
of one hundred men, and how the whole military apparatus
then moved forward as though to battle. During the summer
decrees were issued by the Kremlin at certain intervals which
gave instructions "like battle orders" for the carrying out of
the attack. Not the slightest deviation from these rigid orders
was permitted. No excuses for failure were accepted, and
deliberate disobedience to an order was punished like a crime.
Against whom was this unparalleled campaign directed?
The object of the struggle was the provision of bread, "this
absolutely necessary foodstuff," as Mr. Denny naively calls it,
without which people remain hungry even when there is a
superfluity of other foodstuffs (as though there were any such
superfluity). The second objective, as appears from Mr. Denny's
account, was the forcible carrying out of the collective system
and with it the destruction of the remaining individual
peasants* Thus on the one side we have a mighty military
apparatus, on the other the starving peasants of the agri-
cultural districts, who are to be deprived of the remnants of
their harvest by the use of an unparalleled military offensive.
Is it possible to characterize in more pregnant terms the