214 HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
Yet after the expiration of the period at the end of which,
according to the words of Comrade Merz, every collective farm
peasant was to be the owner of a cow (May I,1934)5 Comrade
Postyschev had made the following admission (he had just been
pointing out that in the district of Kharkov the decline in the
number of cattle amounted to 60 per cent and that of pigs to
75 to 80 per cent): "What conclusion are we to draw from the
figures given for the Kharkov district? The enemy, of course,
will say that they mean the breakdown of the collective farm
ideology; but we know that these figures only show the victims
of the struggle with the class enemy—the victims of our
apprentice period in the organization of the collective farms."
Thus, according to Postyschev, the plan is not by any means
being fulfilled; on the contrary, it is not being fulfilled. None
the less, Moscow continues its propaganda by wireless and in
other ways to show that the collective farm peasants are in a
state of prosperity and the industrial workers in a satisfactory
position. The same applies to other of Stalin's slogans. Thus
he says: "It is our task to double and treble the workers*
standard of living and to make prosperous people of all the
collective farm peasants. The collective farm peasant should
have not only a cow but also a hen, a pig, a sheep and a goat."
These slogans were spread abroad at a time when the one care
of the peasants of the Ukraine, the Northern Caucasus, etc.,
was not to die of starvation.
Particularly important among the Moscow slogans is that
which speaks of the unique solution of the social problem
achieved in the Soviet State. For many years this claim has
been the pride of Russia's foreign propaganda. Its exploitation
is one of the main tasks of Moscow's court poets—those
eminent Russian writers who have placed themselves at the
service of Moscow and its aims. They are headed by Maxim
Gorki, who is the darling of the Kremlin, These bards adopt a
varying technique. Some follow the master and indulge in
unrestricted praises of Stalin and the Soviet regime, while