ABSTRACT
Nine years ago, Khrushchev addressed the first ‘agricultural’ plenum of the Central Committee since Stalin’s death. His frank exposure of the poor state of Soviet agriculture was followed by action along a wide front. Prices paid by the state for farm produce were substantially raised, investments in agriculture increased, peasant incomes showed a much needed and rapid rise from very low levels. Tax and other burdens on the private activities of peasants were eased, to the benefit of all concerned; for example, in five years the number of privately-owned cows increased 25 per cent. In 1958 a major organizational weakness was corrected: Tractors and other machinery formerly owned and operated by the Machine Tractor Stations (MTS) were sold to the collective farms which the MTS had previously ‘serviced’ (and also supervised). In 1958, too, the Government dropped its complex multiple-price system, under which farms received a low price for a quota of produce and a higher one for deliveries in excess of their quota; this was replaced by a single price for each product, with zonal variations.
