94 HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
the people who have been deprived of their reserves and are
at the mercy of famine, but to save the remaining cattle and
above all to make sure of the spring sowing. A collapse of the
sowing campaign would simply have meant that Moscow
would in future be unable to collect the indispensable quantity
of grain even at the cost of the lives of the agricultural popu-
lation. The swiftest action was necessary, and was taken by
means of the decree of December 26,1934. Compared with the
great importance of these measures to secure the spring sowing,
relief for the famine victims was, from the standpoint of the
Soviet regime, absolutely uninteresting. If it had been Moscow's
intention to ensure for the peasantry the minimum of food
essential to support life, there would have been no need for
this unique military offensive to remove the grain.
In order to prove that all the statements made about the
distress or famine in the agricultural districts are incorrect,
the Government has for some months past been pointing to
the abolition of bread cards at the beginning of 1935. I must,
therefore, briefly point out what the abandonment of this
system really means. The abolition of the system can naturally
have no effect on the position of producers, especially in the
agricultural districts, since the whole system of bread cards
exists only for the distribution of food to consumers, i.e. to the
urban population, etc. Whether the bread forcibly extracted.
from the peasants at dirt prices is distributed to the consumers
by the card system or some other, and whether the Government
gets an even higher price than before in the State shops, can
in no way affect the disastrous position of the peasants—the
overwhelming majority of the population.
It would also be a mistake to see in this measure a proof
that the yield of the harvest in Russia has at all increased or
improved. The amount of grain collected by the Government
depends on the result of the collecting campaign, quite irre-
spective of the yield of the harvest as such.
But even the position of the urban population as a whole has,