...nuds; if three kulaks have 30 desyatinas of land, then this means that the additional levy, in addition to the 90 puds of the base tax, cannot exceed 30 puds. Within the limits of these 30 puds there can occur a reduction of the tax for 5 poor peasant households.

Unfortunately, the authors of the law did not introduce these real guarantees for the poor peasantry into the law, and thereby brought about the situation that our committees of the poor peasants are beginning to dissolve themselves without waiting for the promised detailed regulations for the Committees of the poor peasants.

4. The question of the role of cooperatives in connection with commodity-exchange tasks arising from the new relations created by the product tax.

Our state apparatus—the Supreme Council of the National Economy, the People's Commissariat of Food—continues to stand by the viewpoint of exclusive concentration in the hands of the state of all commodity-exchange operations. And yet for all of us it is clear that our state is not in a position to encompass the entire sum of commodity-exchange operations. Economic life will again slip out from under its regulation and will be governed by its own laws. And is it advantageous for the Workers' and Peasants' State, given the existence of a commodity market, to take the position of a buyer and seller at "free prices"? Given the insignificant commodity fund at our disposal, it is advantageous for us to utilize the growing demand for articles in our commodity fund, so that in commodity-exchange operations we can raise their "prices." The shortage of the commodity fund on the one hand, acute need for provisions on the other—will compel us to speculate with salt, matches, kerosene, manufactured goods in our commodity-exchange operations with the countryside. The state cannot take this path; but cooperatives, which have a seeming fictitious independence and are a private organization, can.

A second consideration in favor of utilizing cooperatives for commodity-exchange purposes is the mistrust that exists among the peasant masses toward the organs of the People's Commissariat of Food. Overcoming this mistrust will take the coming months, that is, precisely those months when the food crisis will make itself felt most acutely. And since with a shortage of the commodity fund we will not be able to develop commodity exchange on a broad scale, from our very first steps we will find ourselves in the position of a bankrupt unable to pay bills of exchange. It is more advantageous for us, therefore, that the wave of peasant discontent be directed against the cooperatives rather than the People's Commissariat of Food.

The objection that by restoring the role of cooperatives we are restoring the "third estate," that we may particularly in Ukraine increase the weight of the economic and political influence of Petlurism, is refuted by the fact that our entire Soviet apparatus is filled in Ukraine with those very elements that also fill the cooperatives. We need, in order to protect ourselves from cooperative dominance, to do with cooperatives what we have done with the People's Commissariat of Food, that is, to infuse communist forces into them. The seizure of cooperatives with the aid of our cadres while maintaining their external independence should constitute the immediate combat task of our party. Communist cooperation should become a kind of Commissariat of Internal Trade.

In conclusion we consider it necessary to draw your attention to the fact that the habits and methods that have been instilled in a whole series of our responsible comrades over the course of three years of revolution have become so deeply embedded in the practice of their work that they involuntarily are reflected in their attitude toward the new course of policy. Particularly does this manifest itself acutely in the practice of our economic organs. The People's Commissariat of Food officials, the Supreme Council of the National Economy officials—all attempt in every way to circumvent the resolution of the Tenth Congress. If one listens to them, the impression is created that the Moscow comrades simply succumbed to panic and made those concessions that were in no way dictated by necessity. The Party Soviet worker, the middle peasant, still lives under the sway of old conservative ideas and instinctively sabotages the implementation of the resolutions of the Tenth Congress. On this basis a series of abnormalities arises. The new decisions of the Congress and the All-Russian Central Executive Committee percolate through to the non-Party masses, which draw their own conclusions, assess them as an announcement of free trade, while we with our legislative creativity arrive too late. We believe that on the part of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party a corresponding pressure should be applied in the matter of eradicating this conservative psychology, which gives rise, as a reaction, in the raw Party masses, to an assessment of the new course as a manifestation of the "authentic communist line" and a rejection of the past as the embodiment of nothing but mistakes. Our Party is beginning to split into two groups: one representing the old course and the other—a sharpened "peasant course." Only a decisive and consistent policy in the implementation of the resolution of the Tenth Congress can protect us from both these deviations.

With communist greetings, Secretary of the Kharkov Gubernia Committee, Ivanov

¹ On Tuesday, April 19, the Politburo discussed the question of the natural tax on grain, potatoes, and oil-bearing seeds.