A Comment on a Summary of an Article Discussing the Path of Poland’s Agricultural Cooperativization Development
[July 25, 1962]

Comrades Chen Yun, Deng Zihui, and Tian Jiaying, please read. Read the piece on the socialization of Polish agriculture, on page five.
After reading, return to Mao.
Mao Zedong
July 25

This comment was written on Issue No. 1110 of *Materials from the Press of Fraternal Countries and Fraternal Parties*, compiled and printed by the Xinhua News Agency on July 24, 1962. Page 5 of this issue carried a summary of an article recently published by the Polish weekly *Polityka* discussing the path of Poland’s agricultural cooperativization development. The article stated that the agricultural circle is currently the central link in the socialization of Polish agriculture. Membership in agricultural circles has now reached one million households. By 1965, the accumulated funds of the agricultural circles will amount to 25 billion zlotys. On this basis, they will adopt forms of collective operation more broadly. The agricultural circle is a cooperative organization of a semi-socialist nature. By 1970 to 1975, Polish agriculture will be fully electrified and mechanized. To achieve this, the relations of production in the countryside must be changed, and the land of no more than half of the peasants should be socialized within the next 15 to 20 years. It can now be said that there are three types of rural collectivization: (1) Adopting forms of labour cooperation on a large scale; (2) Establishing state farms; (3) Establishing cooperative-state agricultural enterprises. Establishing agricultural producers' cooperatives on a large scale may not require paying a great price at a high level of industrial and agricultural development. Establishing state farms on a large scale means that the state would take over the peasants' land through a form of purchase, granting them land annuities. The most convenient path to establishing cooperative-state agricultural enterprises is through the elevation of agricultural circles into higher forms of cooperative labour.