THE STRUGGLE OF THE NATIONALITIES 121
elsewhere, as soon as murmurs of protest are heard among the
starving masses, when, despite all violent measures of the
Ogpu, the agitation increases, and even local Communists take
up the cudgels for their countrymen's rights, the cry goes up
that the unity and peace of the Soviet Union are threatened by
separatists and saboteurs. The local Communists, however,
resist expulsion by Moscow's "Political Sections," which are
generally controlled by men despatched by Moscow to the local
centres.
The systematic consistency with which the activity of the
Political Sections—as a first and decisive step towards the
suppression of local resistance—was prepared and carried out
by Moscow, is shown by a speech by the recently appointed
Commissary for Agriculture, Jakovliev, at the Moscow Party
Congress. He explained how a special agricultural department,
under the chairmanship of Kaganovitch, had been formed at
the Central Committee of the Communist Party to organize
the special machinery of the Political Sections. Jakovliev
admitted that, with the help of the latter, "tens of thousands"
had been dismissed from the agricultural organizations alone.
The entire system of Political Sections, like the party purge,
was intended to effect a radical reform of the political and
bureaucratic structure within the Soviet Union, substituting
the influence of Moscow for that of the local authorities.
The campaign against the peasants now reached its climax.
The decree about the collection of grain had aroused fiirious
resentment, among not only producers but the whole of th€
local population. Any attempt by the starving peasants tc
take grain from the fields or to hide part of it, every protest bj
Ukrainian Nationalists, was crushed: Postyschev, the Politica
Sections and martial law held the field.
Yet even Postyschev had to admit that the resistance he hac
.alleged to be fomented from abroad was in reality due to th<
"measures taken by the party to force the country's agriculture
into a Socialist channel" j in other words^ to Stalin's genera