J.V. Stalin. Collected Works. 1-13 volumes. English edition.

are engaged in the production of industrial crops,
cannot adequately engage in grain growing. And therefore
we must have large stocks of grain for the
people who are producing industrial crops, so that
it may be possible steadily to increase the production
of industrial crops, the cultivation of cotton, flax,
sugar beet, sunflower seed, and so forth. And we
must steadily increase the production of industrial
crops if we want to advance our light industries and
our food industries.
There you have the second reason for the increase
in the demand for grain.
Further, I have already said that in the old days
our country used to produce four or five billion poods
of grain annually, The tsarist ministers at that time
used to say : "We will go short ourselves, but we
will export grain." Who were the people who went
short? Not the tsarist ministers, of course. The
people who went short were the twenty or thirty
million poor peasants, who did indeed go short, and
lived a life of semi-starvation in order that the
tsarist ministers might send grain abroad. Such was
the state of affairs in the old days. But times with
us have entirely changed. The Soviet government cannot
permit the population to go short. For two or
three years now we no longer have any poor, unemployment
has ceased, undernourishment has disappeared,
and we have firmly entered on the path
of prosperity. You will ask, what has become of the
twenty or thirty million hungry poor peasants? They
have joined the collective farms, have established
themselves there, and are successfully building a life
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