khos’es”. As to ‘“sovkhos’es”, these are bureaucratically run official farms 
whose indubitable utility lies in the fact that they have saved from partition 
several large estates, valuable from the point of view of the interests of 
the national economy. According to the Bolshevics themselves, these farms 
are stifling in the clutches of “bureaucratic protection”. “What is our 
sovkhos?” — asks in a leading article of February 17, 1927 the special 
village paper “Biednota”. — “In theory it is something very big and 
advanced, showing the way to Socialism. And in practice the average peasant 
regards himself entitled to laugh and mock at the sovkhos”’. But the 
peasants do not only laugh at the management of sovkhoses which is anec- 
dotically bad, they hate them. It is notorious that during the peasants’ 
risings there was a wholesale destruction of sovkhoses and kolkhoses. The 
attitude of the peasants towards sovkhoses and kolkhoses is worse than their 
former attitude towards landlords”. “Now I will say about the sovkhoses, 
collectives and communes — declared, e. g., at the XIth Congress of the 
Soviets a woman delegate, from the province of Orel Okorokova. — I 
think these sovkhoses bring no good to the State. They let part of their land 
in leasehold to the kulaks... The managers of the sovkhoses have a good 
time at the expense of our labour, give themselves to luxury, drive good 
horses, live at the sovkhoses, have servants, live with their families, and eat 
what landlords and Ministers used to eat at sometime’. (“Izvestia”, January 13, 
1924) “There is no room to let our hens out because of the sovkhos lands. 
The bailiff of the sovkhos misuses our cattle and treats us like the landlord 
did” — complain the peasants (“Biednota”, July 24, 1925). 
In the centre of the Communist front in the villages stand the so called 
'kolkhoses™ (collective farms). They are carefully guarded, and in every 
possible way supported by the Government. Every few months all kinds 
of new privileges, facilities and exemptions are showered upon them as 
if from a cornucopia. And yet, these kolkhoses present a miserable 
sight, and are a laughing stock of the population. It is true that they at 
present show a certain numerical growth after a period of utter decay 
in which they had been during the first years of NEP when the new 
economic policy was being taken more or less in earnest. From 1923 on 
this “rise” is furthered by repeated new privileges. In order to give an idea 
of the real position of the kolkhoses we could adduce innumerable examples 
lavishly supplied by the daily Soviet papers, and by the special literature on 
the subject. We shall confine ourselves here to some data extracted from 
a fairly recently published work about kolkhoses by a certain Kindeiev. The 
first thing which we learn from this work, is that under the name of 
“kolkhos’ (collective farm) are very often concealed things that have nothing 
" M. Kindeiev. Collective farms. Moscow 1927