Communists and Ploughshares. Ii: The Soviet Compromise
I
THE agrarian developments in Russia in the last year and a half may be regarded as an effort to digest the experience of the preceding four years, and as a groping for a way out of the situation created by the complex forces of the Revolution. After April 7, 1921, when the Soviet Government, directed by the Communist party, issued the now famous decrees inaugurating the ‘new economic policy,’ abolishing requisitioning and the state monopoly in grain, and allowing the peasants to sell their grain in the market, the Communists began searching for a new policy in the village.
After much discussion in their party press, they took the problem up at their party conference in December, 1921. They likewise made it the central topic of discussion at the ninth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which was held during the same month. The discussion overleaped the boundaries of the Communist press, and attracted all those who are in one way or another active in agricultural work, regardless of political opinions.
A special Congress of representatives of the local land departments was held in January, 1922. An All-Russian Congress of surveyors and agricultural officials was held in February, 1922. Several hundred agricultural experts and agronomists — of whom less than fifty were Communists — met in congress at Moscow, in March, 1922. At all these congresses, the discussion assumed a wide range and was characterized by a remarkable freedom of expression. Finally, the ideas which prevailed as a result of all this talk and writing were embodied in the decrees passed at the special session of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, and are now the law of the land.
The following is a summary of the new principles and methods by which the Soviet Government, under the leadership of the Communist party, expects to reconstruct Russian agriculture: —
In the first place, from now on, each village is free to choose any form of land-holding it pleases. By a simple majority vote of its male and female members over eighteen years of age, a village may decide to remain as a mir, under which the land is subject to periodic redistributions, or to divide the land once for all among its members, or to arrange to cultivate the land as a coöperative enterprise, or to adopt a mixed arrangement for different sections of the land.
But as against this will of the majority, the new law allows more than one opportunity to those who prefer to farm individualistically. Whenever a general redistribution of land takes place, any number of peasant households, and even a single household, may leave the mir against the will of the majority, and demand that their allotments of land be situated all in one place, and be assigned to them for permanent use. During intervals between general redistributions, or wherever no redistributions are made, a number of households equal to twenty per cent of the total number of households in the village may at any time demand the right to leave the mir, and to have their lots assigned to them for individual use. In villages having over two hundred and fifty households, the demand for a division must be made by not less than fifty households. In all cases where such divisions are made, the land must be divided on some common basis — such as: so much per capita, or in accordance with the number of able-bodied adults in the family. Besides, the law requires that care be taken to make the divisions with the utmost consideration for those leaving the mir, so that they may not suffer from too great a scattering of landstrips, or from having their lots of land too far from their homes, or from a lack of water.
This phase of the new Soviet law is a definite abandonment of the old policy of communization. But the law goes even further, in the evident desire to let things that are well enough alone, as much as possible, and to accept the new situation created by the Revolution. Every village, or volost, according to the new law, is confirmed in the possession of whatever lands it now holds as a result of the general divisions which were effected in 1918, and which were then supposed to be provisional. Thus, the law accepts the new status quo, sanctioning the land frontiers that have emerged out of the haphazard land seizures and divisions of the agrarian upheaval. At the expense of ‘justice’ and equality, the law is determined to cut short the consequences of the general land expropriation, and to fix land frontiers in fact, as well as in the minds of the peasants.
To measure the full import of this change in policy, this halt in equalization, it must be remembered that the land divisions in 1917 and 1918 took place chiefly within villages and within volosts. Inevitably, villages and volosts, within the confines of which there were many private and landlords’ estates, increased their holdings considerably. In others there was not much to divide. As it was quite common for one village to hold land within the confines of a neighboring village, or for one volost to own lands in another, it was inevitable that the difficulties created by the unequal divisions should be complicated.
From 1918 on, these conditions gave rise to many quarrels and land disputes between village and village or volost and volost. To solve these difficulties, the land departments of the government were instructed to begin, and to push as rapidly as possible, the work of surveying and delimiting the land. The work, however, proceeded very slowly, in view of the shortage of surveyors and expert land officials. By the end of 1921 only 11,818,497 dessiatins had been surveyed and delimited, out of over 139,000,000, in thirty-nine provinces. Only 977 volosts out of 6147, in thirty-six provinces, have had their land surveyed and allotted, and in only 661 volosts out of 5489, in thirty-one provinces, has the land also been surveyed and allotted among the villages composing the volosts.
To complete this work now would not only require funds which Russia cannot spare, but also require many years, during which land-relations would have to remain unsettled. This is what the Soviet Government wants to avoid. It wants security and settlement above everything else. The law, therefore, sweepingly breaks with the policy of the last four years and puts an end to all this official business of ‘land settlement.’ Only in cases where there is excessive scattering of strips and of lands between volosts and villages does it instruct the land departments to go on with the work of surveying and redivision. But in regard to all the other land, systematic and compulsory land-surveying and rearrangement is to be ended. All the lands now in possession of any village or volost are to be recognized as the heritage of that volost and village. If the inhabitants have any claims or complaints, they are to petition the government for a special survey and rearrangement, to be made at their own expense. Otherwise the government will keep its hands off.
In a similar way, each individual peasant is to be assured security and continuity in the use and working of the particular lot of land which is in his possession. The new legislation does not abandon the principle of land nationalization. The land remains the property of the State. Consequently, no one can buy or sell or give away or mortgage it. The only private right in the land which is recognized is the right to use it and to work it for one’s individual profit. But this right is guaranteed in the new law to the fullest possible extent. The cases in which any landholder can be deprived of his lot of land are strictly defined, and are few. Thus, the right to the use of the land is forfeited in case the members of the household voluntarily relinquish such a right; in case the household dies out; in case of migration, or of the abandonment of independent farming; also when the land is taken over under eminent domain, in which case compensation is offered in the form of another allotment. The law is guided by the idea that the peasant should be encouraged as much as possible in the use of his land. Thus, in those districts where the peasants are in the habit of leaving the village in order to ply special trades in the city, the law allows the peasant to retain the right to his land for two periods of crop rotation, which would ordinarily mean six years. And in case a peasant neglects his land, or violates the law of tenancy, he cannot for more than one year be deprived of the use of his land.
The renting of land is allowed under the new law, but it is restricted. Households economically weakened by natural calamity (bad harvest, fire, and the like), or by some social cause (death in the family, mobilization into the army, election to office, and the like), may sublease part or all their land for money, or on shares, for a period not exceeding three years, with the right of renewal for another three years. Only those households may rent land that can work it with their own means and with the help of their own family. No household that intends to quit agriculture may rent its land. The making of all renting contracts is under the jurisdiction of the local rural Soviets.
Hired labor on farms is also allowed, under certain restrictions. A peasant household may hire labor in case it is temporarily deprived of its own family working force by sickness, death, absence, or other cause. In districts where the peasant land-holdings are small, labor may be hired only for the season, for such special purposes as gathering in the harvest, mowing the hay, or threshing. In the districts where the land-holdings are large, labor may also be hired in order to plant the entire area and to carry out all the necessary agricultural work within the briefest possible time.
Under the conditions outlined above, the State is to aid the rebuilding of the peasant economy by a series of appropriate measures. First, as the difficulties of overpopulation still remain, the Government must undertake the amelioration of wild and bad lands, in order to create a surplus land-fund which may be used for the purposes of systematically organized colonization. Secondly, the Government promises to give more attention and apply more resources to the production of agricultural implements and of fertilizers, and to try to develop a network of seed-nurseries and breeding farms. Thirdly, agricultural experiment stations are to be developed, and agricultural schools and colleges encouraged to the fullest possible extent. Fourthly, a central land bank is to be organized, for the purpose of advancing long-time credit to the poorer peasants for the acquisition of farm animals and implements. Fifthly, in order to encourage the peasant in larger production, the tax that he has to pay is simplified. In addition to all these measures, the Government is also to encourage the organization of cooperatives in the villages.
The supervision of all these policies is assigned to the Commissariat of Agriculture. In order to strengthen the administration of this commissariat, the last Congress of Soviets directed that the officials of the local land departments should not be moved about too much — as is the custom now in most governmental offices in Russia. Besides, special land committees are organized in all provincial and county seats, upon which it devolves to carry on a vigorous campaign in behalf of the new programme of agricultural reconstruction. A Federal Land Committee, composed of representatives of several commissariats and of all autonomous republics entering Soviet Russia, is empowered to coordinate the carrying out of the new policies, in coöperation with the Department of Agriculture.
The striking feature of the new agrarian policy is the compromise between state interference and laissezfaire. The Soviet Government practically agrees to leave the peasant alone whenever he desires to have his own way, and offers to help in all such cases, in which farmers and peasants have never been known to refuse assistance.
II
The new agrarian measures have created a mixed impression of amusement and consternation. The nonCommunists, who form the vast bulk of the experts and officials in the various Soviet departments, ironically congratulate the Communists on having rediscovered Stolypin. The Revolution, they say, is at last letting-go the anchor. It almost suffered wreck on the waves of Communism, socialization, and other storm-producing isms. It is now seeking safety in the harbor of the pre-Revolutionary programme of the ‘reactionary’ Tsarist minister, Stolypin. On the other hand, the faithful Communists, Anarchists, and Socialists are disconcerted at the individualistic turn of the new programme, and are afraid that the work of the Revolution is being undone.
The Communist party, and its representatives in the Government, are trying to steer safely between the apprehensive taunts of the faithful and the ironical criticisms of the skeptics. The simplest argument — which naturally presents itself and which one group of Communist writers has adopted — is that of regarding the new agrarian policy as a temporary concession to the ‘petty bourgeois’ prejudices of the peasant and one which it will be easy to retract at an early moment. This view finds favor with the rank and file of the Communist party — fanatical revolutionists, who are smarting under the abandonment of what they regard as inviolable principles. This view also has a propagandist appeal in the villages where the poorer peasants, who until now regarded themselves as the allies and special protégés of the government, are totally confounded by the new situation.
‘Has the Soviet Government deserted the poor and allied itself with the rich and strong?’ This question, says Nikulichin, a Communist writer, is agitating the villages now. And in order to calm these suspicious ones, this writer assures them that the Soviet Government is still ‘their own government.’ The new policy, he tells the peasants, is a forced, but temporary retreat. ‘We must sit quietly for a few years in our own land, tolerate hateful speculation, trade, and the moneymaking of greedy people. But, at the same time, we must persistently create big industries and collective farms, in order that we may afterward turn the wheel decidedly in the direction of Socialism, and abolish private economy altogether.’ In the meantime, he advises the poor peasants to organize themselves into agricultural artels and communes, and to fight hard against the encroachments of the richer peasants and the kulaks.
But such is not the view of responsible Communists and leaders of the Soviet Government. Not that they are unaware of the effects of the new policy. On the contrary, the Soviet papers are full of articles about its ‘direful consequences’ to the poorer elements in the villages. In the Izvestia of May 14, 1922, for instance, are several letters from peasants, complaining about the situation. One peasant, from the province of Moscow, writes: ‘Village life has become darkened. Many kulaks and speculators and traders have made their appearance, and undermine the life of the poor and honest people. The life of the peasants — especially of those who have many children — is becoming unbearable. . . . Many of them sell whatever they still have, and buy at very high prices the necessaries of life, and thus become totally impoverished. They and their children go out begging, suffer hunger and cold, and die prematurely.’
Correspondents from different provinces write about the kulak who feels strong again, because he is on friendly terms with the new authorities; and complain that the new village Soviets, and especially the officials of the land departments, are becoming ‘imbued with the kulak spirit.’
Even allowing for the exaggeration that is inevitable in such letters, and for the bias in their selection, the fact of the differentiation in the village is undeniable, and is confirmed by all observers. But this fact, which, from the point of view of the class-struggle, should be welcomed by the Communists, is now frowned upon by them. At the All-Russian Conference of Land Departments, Ossinski, the then Commissar of Agriculture, after admitting the facts said: ‘We must try not to split the village. Our aim must be to maintain the economy of the peasants. Our policy must be oriented toward the middle peasant. In connection with the new economic policy, many are saying we should apply all our energies to organize the village proletariat against the village bourgeoisie. This is not the time for it. In the coming years at least, the work of the Commissariat of Agriculture will have as its aim, not politics, but the reconstruction of agriculture.’
Inspired by such purposes, the more responsible Communists have felt the necessity of reconsidering the whole problem, and have put forward a theory which is an attempt to reconcile ideals with present practice. This theory has been forcibly expressed by Mesiatsev, a leading Soviet expert, in a series of articles, reports, and interviews, which can be summarized as follows: —
Our ideal still is, and will remain, the same, namely a coöperative and Socialist agriculture, which also means large-scale agriculture. But the attainment of this ideal cannot be hurried by force; it involves a long process of education and development; meanwhile, our new agrarian policy is necessary, in order to put Russian agriculture on a productive and profitable basis. But our new policy is in no way a violation of our ideal.
All we are really giving up is universal land-equalization, which is both impracticable and economically unjustifiable. We do not want the ‘equalizing socialization’ of the populists, but nationalization in the spirit of Lenin. But for this purpose all forms of land-holding are equally good. For Socialism depends, not on forms of landholding, but on the development of technique and on electrification. Even homesteads may be but a step toward collectivism; for homesteading peasants take to coöperation. And as, generally, only the richer peasants prefer to settle in homesteads, there wall remain in the villagecommune only the poorer elements, which, under the influence of the government, may prove susceptible to collective ideas.
What we must hold to is the principle of nationalization. As long as that remains, there will be little opportunity for the excessive development of capitalistic relations in the village. Under a system of nationalization, there can be no accumulation of large tracts of land in a few hands; for there can be no purchase or sale of land, no mortgaging, and no abusive system of tenancy. The small and middle peasant will remain the predominant element in the country, and will develop his economy by the means of his labor and of state aid. The government will continue to encourage coöperation, and in time the peasant population will be won over to the coöperative idea. The present agrarian policy is but another road to the same goal.
While the Communists feel that they have made a great détour from their original path, there persists in Russia a group of writers and public servants, to whom even the new agrarian measures have too many traces of Communism in them. At the Agronomists’ Congress, this extreme individualistic view found free expression. Its chief exponent was Professor Brutskus, a well-known writer on agricultural economics. He welcomed the change in policy on the part of the Communists, but he accused the Soviet Government of not going far enough. In his opinion, the agrarian revolution in Russia was not caused by the fact that the nobility had held twenty per cent of the land. The real cause was that the nobility had interfered with the productive development of peasant economy by artificially maintaining the ‘village-commune,’ which had long since become a hindrance to progress, because it concealed the correlation of land area to population, and prevented the peasants from seeing that the betterment of their condition was dependent on the control of the birth rate, on proper regulation of overpopulation by migration, and on the use of more intensive methods in agricultural work.
Professor Brutskus teased the Communists for not realizing that Stolypin had been a ‘revolutionist,’ and for not having the courage to accept his programme fully and break up the ‘villagecommune.’ The Soviet Government, he claimed, by a policy of neutrality, will only encourage the antiquated mir. He also advocated allowing the mortgaging of land, as well as the bequeathing of land to one member of the family in order to prevent extreme parceling. He claimed that such arrangements could be harmonized with the principle of nationalization, through a system of leases for nine-hundred-andninety-nine years, such as exist in New Zealand. This view was supported by others, who urged the Soviet Government to develop an ‘American type of life,’ by improving the waste lands and organizing a system of homesteading on the American plan. That, however, the Communists still refuse to follow, and they continue to occupy their intermediate position.
There is a difference between Stolypin and the Communists [said Mesiatsev]: Stolypin was determined to break up the ‘village-commune,’ and to create a class of peasant proprietors. The Soviet Government will be neutral. It will leave the peasants free to make their own choice. It will try neither to maintain the mir nor to destroy it.
Our attitude toward the mir, or homesteads, or segregated land-holding, will depend on what is more productive. For instance, we will try to prevent the excessive parceling of land, because it is unproductive. We shall not allow redistribution of land if it hurts production. On the other hand, we shall do everything in our power to free the initiative of the careful and diligent peasants. Wherever the ‘diligent minority’ wishes to go its own way, in order to raise production, it will have our unquestioning support.
We Communists realize that Russia is large and that different tendencies will manifest themselves in different sections of the country. We do not expect that there will be a universal movement to break up into homesteads. More likely, the movement will follow the old lines. In the west and northwest, homesteads and individual farms will become more general. In the central districts there will prevail the tendency to divide the land into continuous allotments, and to form coöperative land associations. In the southeast, the large villages will break up into smaller ones, retaining the communal forms of land-holding. We shall watch all these movements, and apply our policies accordingly.
Such is the present position of the Communists. My observations in Russia lead me to believe that they are sincerely endeavoring to hold to their new line. Nevertheless, if necessary, they will make further concessions.
III
Few people in Russia, outside of small partisan groups, are banking on a violent political change, or on the ‘fall of the Bolsheviki.’ The masses of the people have become politically indifferent, and ask only one question: ‘Where will bread and aid come from ?’ The educated classes and the city population, which are not communistic or friendly to the Communists, have adjusted themselves to the new conditions. They place their hopes in the evelution of the government, and in the gradual transformation of the present dictatorship into some sort of democracy.
But, even assuming that a violent change is both possible and likely, it would not seriously affect the economic condition of the village. The misfortunes of Kolchak and the misadventures of Denikin and Wrangel have shown that no government which is suspected of sympathies for the old landlord and tchinovnik (bureaucrat) can win the peasant to its side; and without the active support or passive consent of the peasant, no government can last long in Russia at the present time. The Bolsheviki grasped that fact fully when the Kronstadt uprising came upon them, in the winter of 1921, and made haste to gratify the demands of the peasants by the ’new policy,’and by the agrarian measures already described. The Communists have repeatedly said since the Kronstadt uprising that they could not have maintained themselves in power, had they not made these concessions and embarked at once upon their new path.
This fact has a double significance. It means that, should the Bolsheviki be overthrown by an unexpected turn of events, any government which replaced them would have to follow in their footsteps in the village. It is also a guaranty that the Bolsheviki will have to carry out their new policies in good faith and in earnest. Thus, under any conditions, reconstruction must proceed on the lines laid down. This is why the new agrarian legislation may be justly regarded, not as a party measure, but as something approaching a national policy. The very criticisms directed against it prove the point. Laws which are passed by Communists, and winch have so much in common with the pre-Revolutionary reforms of Stolypin, are evidently not far removed from the trend of economic life. The spirit of compromise that inspires the new legislation is another proof of the same point. For extreme individualism in the Russian village, with its traditions of the mir and its recent equalizing experience, would be just as doctrinaire to-day as extreme Communism was the day before. The new legislation prepares the ground for political relaxation, and room for the working of economic forces. Progress for the time being means moving further in the same direction.
The Russians themselves, and the outside world, will measure this progress by the same yardstick, namely, how quickly the agricultural resources are made to yield their utmost.
But even attainment of pre-war production presents enormous difficulties. The very first step — the reconquest of the area of cultivated land — is beset with complexities, which were clearly stated in the official report presented to the ninth All-Russian Congress of Soviets by Krizhanovski, a leading engineer, and chairman of the General State-Planning Commission. According to Krizhanovski, who is otherwise optimistic, there is even danger of further regression, because ‘as a result of the three-field system, in which the same grains are monotonously cultivated, and of the extremely superficial ploughing, the upper layer of soil is losing its clotty structure and turning into dust.’
The distribution of rainfall has been seriously affected by the wholesale and indiscriminate destruction of forests, which has taken place in the last few years because wood was practically the only fuel for railroads, factories, and domestic use. As a result of these and other conditions, says Krizhanovski, Russia ‘is in danger of going through a prolonged period of drought,’ and of losing entirely large parts of the blackearth districts of the Volga and the southeast. On the other hand, to bring under cultivation the waste and marshy lands, in order to make up for this loss, would require extensive ameliorations, — drainage in the north, irrigation in the south, reforestation, and so on, — all of which involve outlays far beyond the country’s means.
The importation of machinery and implements, cut off in 1917, has not been restored to any considerable extent, and the prospects of filling the gap from Russia’s own production are not brilliant. In 1913, within the confines of the present territory of Russia, 8,500,000pieces of machinery and implements were produced; in 1920, only 2,000,000. In 1921, the production of ploughs was only thirteen per cent of that of 1913— 100,000pieces against 700,000; the production of sowers, less than one per cent; that of threshers, less than two per cent. Only scythes and sickles are still produced in appreciable quantities, because their production is largely in the hands of petty artisans and kustars, who manage to keep going with imperfect tools, though the quantity is now maintained at the expense of quality.
The rebuilding of this industry, regardless of the best intentions, cannot be rapid. The trouble is aggravated by the fact that the Ukraine, which used to be the principal field for the production of agricultural implements, shows less capacity for recovery. According to the plan for rebuilding the industry, which the Bureau of Agricultural Machinery (Glavselmash) of the Supreme Council of National Economy has mapped out, it will take ten years to bring the industry up to eighty per cent of the pre-war output.
Neither has the government the resources, or the experts, to push the promised aid to the peasants by teaching them more intensive methods, or scientific systems of crop-rotation. The Soviet Government has fallen heir, in this as in other respects, to a sad condition, for the Tsarist Government never paid much attention to agricultural education. The agronomist experts are without shoes, without proper clothes, and ‘look like plain peasants.’ According to the delegate from Ekaterinburg, the agronomists in his district have to walk seventy and eighty versts in sandals, to attend meetings.
The greatest difficulties, however, are those of finance. It has been estimated that the minimum needs for the restoration of Russian agriculture are from two to three billion gold roubles. Considering also the needs for the rebuilding of elevators, railroads, and other enterprises connected with agriculture— the total would come to about ten billion gold roubles. These are sums which Russia cannot hope to muster from her own resources, for many years to come.
All these difficulties are complicated by the interdependence that exists between agriculture and other branches of the national economy. The peasant in Turkestan, for instance, who during the last few years has been planting wheat instead of cotton, will not. be induced to resume the cultivation of cotton, so long as the cotton factories make no demand for the raw material; and transportation is so broken down as to make reliance on outside sources of food risky. It is claimed that the peasants in the northern districts, who are now planting potatoes and rye where they formerly sowed flax and hemp, are unwilling to change back to their special crops, because the Government, which retains a monopoly of foreign trade, is fixing too low a price on those products.
The very process of reforming and transforming, in which all industrial life in Russia is involved to-day, affects the agricultural situation unfavorably. For instance, there is now a considerable supply of agricultural implements in the warehouses of the appropriate bureaus (Glavselmash, Gosselskland), but they are lying idle because, under the new economic policy, every bureau is supposed to do business on commercial principles, in order to show a favorable balance sheet. The bureaus possessing the implements claim that they have not the funds to advance credits to the peasants, who need the implements but who have no money. At the meetings held by the various bureaus, it was decided to request state credits to the amount of four million gold roubles. After negotiations dragged along for over a month the sum was successfully cut to a few hundred thousand gold roubles, and at the time of this writing the money had not yet been advanced.
The fiscal policy also continues to retard the efforts of the peasants. The Soviet statisticians may be right in their computations showing that the peasant to-day pays less to the Soviet Government than he paid to the Tsar in the old days. But the natural form of the tax — so many poods of grain, so many eggs, et cetera — is irksome to the peasant, who never was a good and prompt taxpayer. The Soviet Government is aware of this, but it cannot help itself so long as the rouble remains little more than a scrap of paper, and the whole mechanism of exchange between city and village is disarranged.
In view of all this, the reconstruction of Russian agriculture cannot but be slow and painful. For the time being, efforts are still directed toward stopping further disintegration. From the information presented at the agricultural conference of the central provinces, held in June, it seems clear that for 1022-23 there will be a further decrease in planted area, as compared with last year, estimated at sixteen per cent, exclusive of the Ukraine. From the Volga and other districts come reports that it will be impossible to gather in the harvest, because of the lack of men and machinery and farm animals. Seeds for the winter sowing will not be sufficient; and though the harvest this year may be fair, the upward march may not begin for some time.
The deus ex machina on whom much reliance has been placed is ‘foreign capital.’ Though agricultural concessions are rather unusual, they would be comparatively simple in Russia, under present conditions. Both the government and the peasants would welcome arrangements by which large tracts of land might be cultivated by machinery, under proper supervision, either on sharing terms, or on ordinary commercial terms. Such arrangements are not affected by the land-relations, though the new conditions in the village would make them easier. Offers to take land on such terms have been made to Germans. Arrangements with the peasants in the northern provinces to plant flax — by advancing capital and wages — could also be made. Of course, all such arrangements involve the consent of the Soviet Government as to exploitation of resources and exports; but I believe that could be treated independently of the general question of ‘foreign investments.’
No one who has observed the Russian people can doubt the great future which is still before them. Their very stolidity in the face of famine, and the fatalism with which they philosophize about the millions who must die of hunger and the new millions who will take their place, are a striking expression of their elemental vitality and epic faith in the future. And if the alluring figure of the foreign investor recedes more and more beyond the political horizon, the Russians turn their eves with the greater expectation to their own dispenser of hope and plenty — the good, old, erratic but ever-returning, ‘Lord Harvest.’