Author: V. V. KABANOV

Chisinau. Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the Moldavian SSR. 1971. 372 p. The print run is 1000. Price 2 rubles. 27 kopecks.

The conversion of small - scale individual peasant farming to large-scale socialized farming is one of the important and at the same time complex tasks of socialist construction. Therefore, the experience of implementing the Leninist cooperative plan in the U.S.S.R.-the plan to introduce the peasant masses to socialism - is becoming increasingly important for countries that have entered or are entering the path of socialism. In reconstructing the history of the implementation of this plan in the USSR, a special place is occupied by works on the formation and development of the collective farm system in the Baltic republics, in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus, in right-bank Moldavia, which became part of the Soviet Union when the collective farm system in our country had already completely won. However, there are no generalizing works on this topic yet. Therefore, it is very valuable research, which for the first time (apart from a brief essay and several articles ¹ ) summarizes the long-term work of Moldovan historians in this direction ² . They have made considerable progress in the formulation and resolution of a number of questions of agrarian history (the problem of the general and special aspects of the socialist transformation of agriculture, the question of the correlation between social and technical reconstruction, the transition period in the post-war years, etc.).

The book covers the history of the first collective farms in Moldova, the formation and victory of the collective farm-

¹ E. A. Chebotarskaya. Implementation of the Lenin cooperative plan in the Moldavian countryside. "Scientific Notes" of Kishinev University, Vol. XI, 1959; S. Aftenyuk, K. Stratievsky, V. Tsaranov. Implementation of the Lenin cooperative plan in the Moldavian countryside. Chisinau. 1963; S. Ya. Aftenyuk, K. V. Stratievsky. From small-scale individual farming to large-scale collective farming. "Essays on the history of collectivization of agriculture in the Union Republics", Moscow, 1963.

² The authors ' team consists of employees of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Moldavian SSR and Kishinev University: S. Ya. Aftenyuk, P. A. Boyko, B. K. Vizer, A. I. Muntyan, K. V. Stratievsky, M. K. Sytnik (supervisor), V. I. Tsaranov. Editorial Board: S. Ya. Aftenyuk, S. K. Brysyakin (editor-in-chief), B. K. Vizer, K. V. Stratievsky, M. K. Sytnik.

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in the 1930s, the implementation of collectivization in right-bank Moldavia in the post-war period, the development of collective farms in the republic during the years of completion of the construction of socialism and at the present stage. A large amount of factual material shows the historical conditionality of collectivization of agriculture in the late 1920s and early 30s in the left-bank part of the republic, the prerequisites and course of continuous collectivization, the elimination of the kulaks as a class, the completion of collectivization and the consolidation of the collective farm system in the MASSR. The authors describe the complexity of this process, highlight the struggle of the Moldovan people under the leadership of the Communist Party to overcome difficulties, investigate the causes of errors and distortions of the party line in the collective farm movement, and the struggle of party organizations to eliminate leftist excesses.

The authors make a significant clarification of such an important issue as the dynamics of the collective farm movement in 1930. Until recently, it was believed (and this point of view was also shared by Moldavian historians3) that the peasants ' withdrawal from collective farms, which was a consequence of excesses, stopped in ^the spring of 1930. Moldovan historians have shown that the final boundary of this process was autumn, not spring (p. 58). By the summer of 1931, the Moldavian people had basically completed collectivization and put an end to the last exploitative class, the kulaks, forever. Unfortunately, the time of the beginning of the mass collective-farm movement in the MASSR has not yet been fully clarified. In the preface to the book, a reservation is made that the authors do not agree on this issue and want to express their point of view on its pages (p.10). This option is acceptable in principle, but it would still be advisable to provide the relevant factual material of late 1929 and early 1930 in the book, so that the reader can analyze it independently.

Collectivization in right-bank Moldavia, carried out in the post-war years, was of great importance for the fate of the Moldovan people, because this part of the republic, reunited with the USSR in June 1940, accounted for 9/10 of its territory and population. Moldovan historians attach great importance to the socio-economic transformations that began in the villages of the right-bank regions in the period from June 1940 to June 1941, considering that they "represented the first step, the beginning of a great creative work for the revival of agriculture, its radical socialist reconstruction" (p.111). Interrupted in 1941 by the attack of Nazi Germany, socialist construction in Moldavia was resumed in the spring of 1944-after its liberation. The book shows that the workers of the republic carried out the elimination of the severe consequences of the occupation with the help of the fraternal peoples of the USSR for 3.5 years.

The authors thoroughly cover the history of restoring and strengthening the material and technical base of agriculture and preparing conditions for its collectivization in the right-bank regions. Until recently, Moldovan historians had different points of view about the beginning of the mass collective farm movement here ^.4 They now agree that in the southern regions of the republic the collective-farm movement became widespread in the spring of 1947; by the end of the year, the first areas of complete collectivization appeared on the Right Bank, and in mid-1949 a decisive turning point in the collectivization of agriculture throughout right-bank Moldavia occurred, the mass movement developed into complete collectivization (see p. 162, 180). Solid collectivization was mostly completed here by the fall of 1949. Serious research work in the field of agricultural history of Soviet society, organization of discussions, as well as careful attention to the search and publication of sources contributed to the elimination of disagreements and the establishment of a unified point of view on agricultural issues.

³ See "Essays on the history of collectivization of agriculture in the Union Republics", pp. 47, 348.

⁴ V. I. Tsaranov. From the history of collectivization of agriculture in the western regions of Moldova. "History of the USSR", 1959, N 5, p. 98; M. Sytnik. On the peculiarities of the dynamics and zones of collective farm movement in right-bank Moldavia before the beginning of mass collectivization. "Proceedings" of the Central State Archive of the Moldavian SSR. Vol. I. 1962, pp. 268, 269; his. About the time of the beginning of mass collectivization in the right-bank regions of Moldova. "Scientific Notes" of Chisinau University, vol. 65, 1963, pp. 27-39; S. Ya. Aftenyuk. Characteristic features of collectivization of agriculture in right-bank Moldova. "History of the Soviet peasantry and collective farm construction in the USSR", Moscow, 1963, p. 340; " History of collectivization of agriculture and strengthening of collective farms in Moldova. Materials of the scientific session held on January 25, 1966". Kishinev, 1967, et al.

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the process of socialist transformation of the republic's agriculture.

Moldovan agricultural historians are among those who successfully pose and solve the problems of modern village development. This is evidenced by the well-written section of the book on the development of collective farms in the Moldavian SSR during the years of completion of the construction of socialism and the transition to the extensive construction of communism (1951-1965). The authors show how collectivization improved the structure of acreage, increased yields, and increased agricultural production; the book describes the measures taken by the party and the government to further raise collective farm production since the September (1953) Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU. As early as 1958, the book emphasizes, collective farms played a leading role in the republic's agricultural production (p.266). At the same time, the authors show that in 1958, that is, in a very short period of time, collective farms could not overcome all the difficulties of growth. Collective farm construction continued to face difficulties of both an objective and subjective nature. The October (1964) Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU played a major role in overcoming them. The March (1965) Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party took decisive measures to eliminate the backlog of agriculture. This interesting book ends with a demonstration of the implementation of its solutions.

Like almost any great work, the study of Moldovan historians is not without its drawbacks. The historiographical review is too cursory and superficial. To date, Moldova has accumulated an extensive literature on this topic, which fully deserves a more attentive attitude. The attempt to present in the introduction the essence of Lenin's cooperative plan in the form of brief theses seems unsuccessful, and in some points even erroneous. It is incorrect, for example, to attribute the multi-stage nature of the cooperative-collective-farm movement to the general laws of the cooperative plan: "from the cooperation of the peasant commodity turnover to the creation of the simplest production associations, and from them to the cooperation of the peasant economy with the socialization of fixed assets and production processes" (p. 11). This provision impoverishes the cooperative plan, since it denies the possibility of a direct transition to production cooperation, bypassing the intermediate stages, that is, the path that was the main one for introducing the overwhelming majority of peasants to the socialist economy in our country in the late 1920s and early 30s. It was also the main one for the peasants of right-bank Moldavia, where the cooperative movement was poorly developed, and production cooperation began immediately with the artel, bypassing the simplest forms. Consequently, this is not so much a feature of collectivization in Moldova, but rather a feature of the cooperative plan as a whole, which assumes the use of all types of cooperation, but highlights certain forms of it depending on the level of development of the cooperative movement.

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