INDEPENDENCE VERSUS DEPENDENCE 145 



planning board would be called, prove all to be chaste, 

 incorruptible, and without ambition (which I refuse 

 to believe a reasonable expectation), there is no guar- 

 antee that even the most virtuous board will not make 

 mistakes. 



The Russians, in spite of their revolutionary zeal, 

 have made them. Their five-year plan called for the 

 socialization of agriculture. Farming was to be mech- 

 anized. Farming was to be collectivized. The little, 

 inefficient farms of the peasants were to be merged 

 into giant, efficient farms run by machinery, and 

 transformed into wheat factories. 



Within a year and a half from the time they started 

 to carry out their plan, the Russians socialized more 

 of these farms than they expected to take over in 

 five years. The plan was hailed as a tremendous suc- 

 cess, not only by the Russians, but by the advocates 

 of planning everywhere in the world. But, unfortu- 

 nately, something went wrong. The planners miscal- 

 culated. With that sublime indifference to the human 

 equation which they borrowed from engineering, the 

 Gosplan overlooked how the peasants would react to 

 this appropriation of what had been their personal 

 property. During the process of converting the little 

 farms into giant farms, millions of horses and cows 

 and pigs and chickens were slaughtered by the peas- 

 ants who couldn't see eye to eye with the agents of 

 the Soviet. Within a short time, not only was there 

 a shortage of meat for the table, there were no horses 

 for plowing and cultivating and harvesting. The ef- 



