By 1927 this proportion had sharply changed in 
favor of the predominance of the small and middle 
peasant holdings. To the share of the large kulak 
holdings fell about 6 per cent of the sown area, 8 per 
cent of the gross production, and 20 per cent of the 
commercial grain crop. The rest of the agricultural 
production was in the hands of the small and middle 
producers, of the poor and middle peasantry. 
The elimination of the landowners, the decided cur- 
tailment of kulak production, the predominance of 
petty individual holdings in the production of grain— 
these were the results of the first years of the revolu- 
tion. This scattered agricultural production the Soviet 
Government has now definitely turned onto the path of 
socialist large-scale production, and in 1930 we have 
in the sector of large-scale socialist grain farms (state 
and collective farms) about 30 per cent of the sown 
area, 30 per cent of the gross yield, and 62 per cent 
of the commercial grain crop, exclusive of local village 
consumption. 
At the same time, during the first years of the revolu- 
tion there took place an uninterrupted growth in the 
number of peasant holdings. Their number showed an 
annual increase of 500,000 holdings, 2 to 3 per cent, 
on the average. The present year is characterized by 
a definite curtailment of the number of small holdings 
and by the replacing of 5,778,000 peasant holdings by 
B2,276 voluntarily organized collective farms. 
The collectivization of the small and middle peasant 
holdings has already, in the first stages of its develop- 
ment, shown the enormous advantages of large-scale 
socialist farming. Small producers who have joined 
the collective farms have been able already in the first 
year of the existence of these farms to lay the founda- 
tion for large-scale farming; they have been able to 
31