"The Alchemist's Retort" is not my own expression; I have borrowed it from Pravda. [Translator's note: Pravda is the official organ of the communist party, published in Moscow.]. It is socialism, not in jest but in earnest. In an article headed "The True Flourishing of a Truly Popular Husbandry" its author, Mr. Vareikis, secretary of the Stalingrad region, writes:

"Socialism with unusual speed raises the cultural level of our people by remelting as if in an alchemist's magic retort the human conscience and all the human material inherited by us from the capitalist past".....

Further on we shall see by a very clear example what this remelting process really is, and just now we shall only note that things are not quite right in the party and government affairs of Soviet Russia, for the proponents of the 2Marxian-Leninist-Stalinist "scientific" socialism have to resort to the methods and the retorts of mediaeval alchemy. From the example cited by Mr. Vareikis one can see very clearly the cleavage which exists between the processes of life in the country on the one hand and the exertions of the authorities and of the party to save their faces by proving that "socialism is being built" on the other.

In "the true flourishing of a truly popular people's husbandry" the point at issue is whether it is collective or individual farming that prospers. Allegedly it is the former type of husbandry which flourishes and serves as a basis for the peasants' prosperity, and the second form, therefore, is only a necessary helpful complement to the first. The prosperous state of individual farming, according to Vareikis, is possible only because it rests on and has the support of collective farming. In order to prove his thesis, the author of the article informs us that in the Stalingrad region peasant households that have no cows, sheep, swine, or horses have been entirely liquidated.

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"These," he states, "are remnants of the old village of petty individual farm ownership." As a matter of fact, says he there are 365,500 horned cattle on the collective farms, and 463,000 privately owned by the individual peasants in the region; one million sheep on collective farms, and 152,000 in individual hands; 167,000 swine on collective farms, and 172,000 privately owned. There are no comparative figures for horses, for it is against the law for private persons to own horses.

From the three categories of animals we shall exclude sheep, for figures for these animals are not indicative of the real situation, since breeding sheep privately is impossible without pasture, and the pasture everywhere belongs only to the collective farms. Let us then examine the situation with reference to cows and swine. Particularly revealing are the figures concerning horned cattle.

It is a well-known fact that during the collectivization the horned cattle either were slaughtered by the peasant owners or were surrendered to the 4collective farms. Collectivization in this respect has "bled the peasant white". Some time later, in order to improve the catastrophic situation created on the farms with respect to livestock breeding, the peasants were permitted to buy back and privately to own the horned cattle which had been confiscated from them not long before. And so in the five-year period which has elapsed since the promulgation of the law permitting peasants to buy back their own cattle, they have been clever enough to "overtake and surpass" not America but the Soviet authority and the Communist party, far from the figures exhibited by Vareikis we see that at present there are more horned cattle in individual hands than on the collective farms in the Stalingrad region. The same ratio is apparent in the figures on the number of swine.

The question arises: What is the nature of "the remelting process" in the Soviet's "alchemic retort"? Does the peasantry follow the path of collectivization after duly appraising the munificence of collective ownership? Or, perhaps, does the peasant with all his might still defend his personal liberty and personal initiative and his private household? In this connection one 5recalls the testimony of another regional secretary, Mr. Scheboldaev, who says that in those cases in which peasant villages received collective titles to the land the peasants on receiving the papers remarked:

"Now we shall put the land to work!"

Obviously neither Vareikis nor the Communist party will be able to put the peasant to the work involved in "building socialism in a single country". One may shout appeals even from the walls of the Kremlin calling on the peasants to put their shoulders to the wheel, but the country undergoes a quite different process, the results of which begin to tell in partial concessions and in the general improvement of the peasant husbandry which is noticeable in its private sector.

It really is an alchemist's retort, for it works with reverse results.