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p Comrades,

p In recent years, as I have already said, we have increased investments in agriculture in order to strengthen its economic basis and speed up its rate of growth. The Party and the Government will continue firmly along the line of providing liberally the collective farms and state farms with agricultural machinery, mineral fertilisers and transport facilities, will increase investments for land melioration and stimulate the production and purchases of agricultural produce.

p The building of a new big lorry plant and a number of agricultural machinery factories, for example, will be started in the near future. Industry is starting to manufacture more powerful tractors and combines and is expanding production of tractor and lorry trailers.

p Owing to the need for considerably expanding the manufacture of machines for land reclamation and for equipping the livestock sections of the farms we have to specialise a number of enterprises on the manufacture of this equipment and to concentrate the management of them.

p The greatest possible development of agriculture and the strengthening of its material and technical basis will be one of the main objectives of the country’s new five-year plan of economic development which is now being drafted.

p Today, more than ever, we need precision and the smooth working of all links of production and management of agriculture, constant efforts to raise labour productivity and reduce production costs, good organisation, discipline and high sense of moral responsibility of all workers for the job entrusted to them.

p We need concrete deeds in plan fulfilment in every republic, territory and region, in every collective farm and state farm, in all central agencies and ministries. This is a primary condition for the further advance of agriculture. In all our work of advancing agriculture we must bear in mind the country’s annual population increase and the 240 steadily growing needs of our people. I say nothing about the need to have state reserves. We cannot get along without them. This too comes within the compass of our economic plans.

p In the business of developing agriculture’s productive forces a great deal, naturally, depends on you, comrades—on the collective farmers, the collective-farm aktiv, agricultural specialists, executives of collective farms, on all workers in agriculture.

p Out of the wide range of questions concerning agriculture I want particularly to draw your attention to those which are of major importance in advancing this vital sector of the economy.

p First of all, the question of the land, of its effective use and higher fertility. You, tillers of the fields, understand the significance of the land in man’s life as no one does. The land is the source of our strength and our wealth.

p The collective farms have huge tracts of ploughland, meadows, pastures and forests. The land is in your hands, comrades, and the entire collective-farm peasantry must take the greatest care of it, must raise the fertility of every single hectare. This applies in equal measure to state-farm workers who also have millions of hectares at their disposal. Party and Government documents and the Law on the Land passed by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR repeatedly mention the need for a countrywide effort to raise the efficiency of farming, to organise systematic work in protecting the soil from erosion, and achieving, on this basis, high and stable crops.

p Today it is necessary to remind people about this once again because protection of the land and its improved fertility are an indispensable condition for further progress in agriculture. This is a state problem of major importance.

p The collective farms and state farms must carry on dayto-day work to improve the land, otherwise it will yield less produce and feed us worse.

p We all take pride in the fact that the expanses of our Motherland are boundless. But from this some people draw wrong conclusion, thinking that our land resources are unlimited. This is not so by any means. At present we have 0.94 hectare of ploughland per capita in our country. With the growth of the population and the expansion of construction per capita area of ploughland is annually diminishing.

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p We must treat the land with great care, and be strict and thrifty in our approach to the allocation of land for the building of industrial enterprises, with which, cf course, we cannot dispense. At the same time we must see to it that the area of productive land steadily increases and does not shrink.

p Protection of the soil is the job of our whole society. Any damage to the land must be regarded as an anti-social act. He who maltreats the land or treats it improvidently and does not improve its fertility strikes at the roots of the people’s material well-being. (Applause.)

p Comrades, our Party, as you know, has drawn up a programme for large-scale land reclamation and chemisation of agriculture. This is a reliable, true way for raising the productivity of crop husbandry.

p Deliveries of mineral fertilisers to collective farms and state farms increased by 12.7 million tons in the first four years of the current five-year plan. Next year the increase in the deliveries of mineral fertilisers will be still greater— more than 8 million tons. The state and the collective farms invested over 8,000 million rubles in land reclamation in the last three years. Extensive work was accomplished in irrigating and draining considerable areas. Big production facilities are being built for water-economy developments.

p As you know, we have launched big water-economy projects of countrywide importance such as the Kakhovka, Krasnodar, Karshin and the Big Stavropol canals, and a number of others.

p The Political Bureau recently took up questions of irrigating the lands in the Volga Area. This major region of grain production often suffers from bad droughts. In such years the collective farms and state farms sustain heavy losses. The state, in turn, is not only the loser of substantial quantities of produce but is compelled to supply the farms in these districts with seed, feedstuffs and food and render them financial assistance.

p The only way to put an end to this age-old scourge is to irrigate these lands. The Central Committee of the CPSU and the USSR Council of Ministers have passed a decision which initiates extensive irrigation works in the Volga Area. (Applause.) As we have often pointed out before, there are big 242 prospects for increasing agricultural output on the basis ot land improvement in the non-chernozem districts.

p We will continue to pay greater attention to land improvement and chemisation of agriculture and strictly implement the programme we have adopted.

p Comrades, although this is no new presentation of the question, we have to repeat that grain production is the foundation of agriculture. Its condition and the scale of grain production decisively influence all other sectors and especially such an important one as animal husbandry.

p We must continue to keep grain farming in the centre of our attention and do everything necessary to increase the yields and the gross harvests and purchases of grain from year to year.

p Important tasks face us in the business of developing animal husbandry. The work of the food and light industries has a close bearing on this sector. The most important thing is to satisfy the daily needs of the working people.

p Changes for the better have taken place in recent years in animal husbandry, of which I have already spoken. In animal production we have not been marking time. But this sector so far does not fully satisfy the needs of the population and these needs will continue to grow as the standard of living improves. At the same time there are quite a few unsolved problems in animal husbandry: the level of mechanisation of the livestock units is low, the industry which produces machinery and equipment for animal husbandry is insufficiently developed, and not enough attention is paid to building up feed resources in many farms. We must take all this into account and apply the necessary measures.

p The Central Committee of the Party considers that not all collective farms and state farms utilise the available potentialities for increasing animal production, improving its quality and reducing costs. This shortcoming must be rectified.

p I would like specifically to draw attention to some questions of our work in animal husbandry.

p To this day many farms deliver to meat-packing plants stock which is insufficiently fattened and is of very low weight. A simple calculation by our specialists shows that if the delivery weight of cattle were raised to an average of 350-400 kg for the country we could, given the present livestock population, increase meat purchases in the country 243 by about 2 million tons. Advanced farms are already delivering stock of even bigger weight.

p You all understand that to raise the productivity of livestock it is necessary first of all greatly to improve feed production.

p As a result of the measures drafted by the March Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee, collective farms and state farms were already able to increase the use of grain for feedstuffs by 35 per cent. This has played a big part in increasing the productivity of livestock and poultry.

p But, comrades, at this same March Plenary Meeting attention was also drawn to increasing the production of crops for stockfeed. However, no serious improvement in this respect has been made. The stocking of hay for the sociallyowned livestock increased only 9 per cent, while silage even decreased. These figures speak of serious omissions in the work of providing feed for livestock on the part of the collective farms and state farms.

p We must carefully examine the situation as regards the livestock population as a whole. In some farms little attention is given to increasing the livestock population and it is allowed to decrease. This is an unsound, wrong tendency. In present-day conditions we need to increase in every way both the productivity and the population of livestock and poultry.

p Neither can we regard as normal a situation when some of the farms, specialising in one type of animal product, are curtailing production of other types, although they have every means for developing two and even three sectors. Such farms quite often become consumers instead of producers and buy animal products outside.

p Our future line, of course, is specialisation of the farms, the utmost development of production on an industrial basis. But in questions of specialisation we must not run to extremes or skip stages.

p We expect the collective farms and state farms to take more effective measures, with the assistance of the state, to eliminate the shortcomings in animal husbandry and increase the output of produce.

p Taking advantage of the presence here of Secretaries of the Central Committees of the Communist Parties of Republics, of regional and territorial Party committees, secretaries of district Party committees and primary Party 244 organisations of collective farms, chairmen of the Councils of Ministers of Republics, Ministers of Agriculture, chairmen of regional and territorial executive committees, I would like to say that they too must draw serious conclusions and take the necessary measures for increasing the livestock population and raising its productivity.

p We also propose in the near future to examine a number of questions bearing on the advance of this sector, among them, first of all, such matters as expanding the manufacture of machinery and equipment, placing the production of animal products on an industrial basis and further developing the compound feedingstuffs industry.

p Evidently it is also necessary to consider the economic aspect of questions bearing on the problem of increasing the livestock population and animal production, with due regard, of course, for the interests of the collective farms, state farms and the state.

p A primary condition for speeding up development in agriculture is scientific and technological progress in this sector. Technical re-equipment of agriculture is not only the concern of the people working in agriculture. The role of science and industry in the development of the productive forces of the collective and state farms has risen immeasurably. The industries manufacturing tractors, agricultural and land-improvement machinery, the chemical, building and processing industries largely determine the level and efficiency of production in crop and animal farming. That is why the demands made on the industries working for the needs of agriculture must be substantially raised.

p Agricultural science too is faced with big tasks. The collective and state farms need high-yield varieties and good breeds of livestock, effective means of combating plant and animal diseases, progressive technologies of production and improved methods of its organisation. Greater attention should be paid to the economics of collective- and statefarm production.

p Soviet scientists, including those working in the field of crop and animal husbandry, have outstanding achievements to their credit. And we are confident that our scientists will work with still greater energy in accomplishing the tasks of advancing agriculture.

p Scientific and technological progress in agriculture should not be reduced merely to an increase in the supply of new 245 machines, chemical fertilisers and other means of production. An integral, active part of this process is the ability efficiently to utilise the land and fertilisers, every machine and every ruble invested in production so that they yield the biggest return. And here everything depends above all on you, comrades, on the labour activity and organisation of all who work in agriculture.

p An analysis of the activity of collective farms and state farms shows that in many districts already at the present level of provision of the farms with materials and equipment the yields of grain, cotton, sugar beet, potatoes, vegetables, feed and other crops can and must be considerably higher than the ones we get now.

p Not all the farms by far employ modern technology of production, or make effective use of machines, fertilisers, and the achievements of science and advanced practice. The work of the collective farmers and state-farm employees is not everywhere organised properly.

p The training of personnel in the mass vocations capable of competently performing all jobs connected with the operation of new equipment, the wide use of chemicals and the development of land reclamation demands serious attention. Important work in training personnel for agriculture has been accomplished in recent years. But in a number of farms there is a shortage and a considerable part of the machinery is operated only in one shift. You ask for the delivery of equipment to be increased and this request is quite legitimate. But for this new equipment it is necessary to train new skilled personnel.

p Every collective farm and state farm must train machine operators and other specialists in good time and in a planned way, must have a definite reserve of this personnel and take care to create the necessary working and living conditions for them.

p We must aim for a situation in which equipment will not stand idle, waiting to be manned, and in which chemisation and land improvement will be handled by well-trained people.

p The Komsomol can and must play an important part in accomplishing this task of general state importance. More than once the Komsomol pioneered good undertakings and warmly responded to the calls of the Party. It will render the collective and state farms inestimable help if it launches 246 a movement of young people for mastering agricultural technical trades.

p We may rest assured that the Komsomol will tackle this job, and in the very near future thousands of Komsomol members and other young people will begin to drive tractors, combines and lorries, will become land improvement workers, electricians and operators of equipment at livestock units. By this, comrades of the Komsomol, you will be rendering great help to our Party and the people. (Applause.)

p The USSR Ministry of Education, jointly with the USSR Ministry of Agriculture and other bodies should also give thought to how to help collective and state farms train machine operators and other specialists from among seniorform pupils of secondary schools.

p In connection with scientific and technological progress in agriculture, the problem of cooperation between agricultural and industrial enterprises is now acquiring ever greater practical significance. This question, I would remind you, was dealt with in the Party Programme which states: " Agrarian-industrial associations will gradually emerge wherever economically expedient, in which, given appropriate specialisation and cooperation of agricultural and industrial enterprises, agriculture will combine organically with the industrial processing of its produce.”

p It should be said that a number of specialised state and collective farms in Krasnodar Territory, the Ukraine and Moldavia are beginning to operate on the principles of agrarian-industrial complexes.

p Agrarian-industrial associations undoubtedly have a great future. This is not only a new organisational form, but also an important socio-economic phenomenon. We must tackle this job in a practical manner, and guard against mistakes and hasty decisions that have not been sufficiently considered. Questions concerning the development of social, cultural and other services in the countryside have a direct bearing on the fulfilment of the programme mapped out for agriculture. We spoke about this at the 23rd Congress and at plenary meetings of the Party’s Central Committee and quite a lot has been done in this respect in recent years. Many houses, schools, cultural centres, hospitals, trading and service establishments have been built in the countryside. The work of bringing gas to the villages and completing rural electrification has made considerable headway.

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p But rural development so far is not being conducted on the scale we should like it to be. The demands of rural dwellers in this respect are growing from year to year, and it is therefore our common duty to explore resources and provide rural construction projects more fully with everything necessary, to improve the supply of the village with cement, metal, timber, roofing, and glass, to make more equipment available for the production of bricks and other local building materials.

p The collective farms themselves must also work more energetically in this direction. We should then be able considerably to speed up the organisation of cultural services in the village.

p As you see, the country’s collective and state farms are faced with big and very important tasks. There is no doubt that the collective farmers and all other workers in agriculture will do their best to achieve an increase in the production of agricultural produce. (Applause.}

p Comrades, today over 5 million Communists, over 8 million Komsomol members and 15 million trade union members are living and working in the country. There is not a single collective farm or state farm today that does not have a Party organisation. The Communists are the recognised vanguard of the rural working people; they set an example in the work of advancing collective- and statefarm production.

p This entire vast army of Communists, Komsomol and trade union members are united and headed by rural primary Party organisations and district Party committees. They energetically apply the Party line and are militant organisers of the masses.

p The Central Committee hopes that Party, trade union and Komsomol organisations by their political and organisational work will ensure the successful fulfilment of the great programme for the development of our agriculture. (Applause.)

p Comrades, I would like to dwell on two questions which were raised at many meetings of collective farmers.

p You know that in recent years we have effected a number of important social measures such as the provision of pensions to collective farmers, guaranteed payment for work, and other measures. Now proposals are made to introduce a unified system of social insurance for collective farmers 248 from farm contributions. This proposal, in our opinion, merits the attention of the Congress. It concerns millions of collective farmers. (Applause.}

p In the course of the discussion of the new draft Model Rules wishes were also expressed that collective-farm councils, elected from the bottom up, be formed for the purpose of further developing collective-farm democracy, for collectively discussing the more important questions of their activity, summing up experience in organising production and formulating recommendations for the fuller use of the farm’s growth potential.

p Collective-farm councils, elected from among the most experienced collective-farm chairmen, frontrankers in production and agricultural specialists, could play a big part in solving the problems facing the collective farms.

p If the Congress finds it advisable for such councils to be set up, a USSR Council of Collective Farms could be elected right here. (Applause.}

p Comrades,

p The new Model Rules of the Collective Farm which you have before you are called upon to play a tremendous part in the further advance of agriculture and the development of the collective-farm system.

p I will not go into the details of the new Rules. This will be done in his report by Comrade D. S. Polyansky, member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

p I merely want to emphasise that the adoption of the new Rules, drafted with the collective participation of our country’s public at large, and above all the collective farmers themselves, will open up new possibilities for advancing agricultural production and stimulating the activity of the collective-farm masses.

p The new Rules are a matter of great political significance. It is a question—and this can be said with full grounds—of a new stage in the development of the collective farms. The adoption of the Rules will also be an important landmark in the development of our entire socialist democracy, fresh evidence of its profoundly popular character and its indisputable advantages.

p The old Model Rules of the Collective Farm were a source of inspiration and a guide for the activities of the collective farms during the years of socialism’s establishment and 249 development in our country. The new Model Rules will become the law of life and work for the collective-farm peasantry during the period of construction of communist society in the USSR.

p Dear comrades, our Party and people are dedicating all their energies to the creation of the material and technical basis of communism, to the further development of social relations, to the communist education of people, in a word, to the tasks of building communist society. How swiftly and successfully we shall be able to cope with these tasks largely depends, among others, on the external conditions in which we have to live and work, on the international situation. Therefore it is natural that questions of international politics constantly command great attention.

p In international affairs the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, its Central Committee and our Soviet Government are steadfastly and unswervingly following the course which the great Lenin bequeathed to us. We are persistently working to implement the foreign-policy programme approved by the 23rd CPSU Congress.

p Our foreign policy is always and invariably aimed at strengthening and developing fraternal friendship and allround cooperation among the socialist countries, their militant alliance, their joint struggle for consolidating the positions of socialism and ensuring peaceful conditions for the development of our countries.

p Our foreign policy is always and invariably a policy of solidarity and alliance with the revolutionary, anti- imperialist, liberation, progressive and peace-loving forces throughout the world.

p Our foreign policy is always and invariably a policy of struggle for a lasting peace, for peaceful coexistence and mutually advantageous cooperation between all states, irrespective of their social systems. The Soviet Union’s persistent efforts towards concluding a Treaty on the Non- Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which was yesterday ratified by the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, also promotes the aims of achieving a lasting peace and reducing the threat of a world nuclear-missile war. (Applause.}

p It is because our foreign policy is a policy of peace that it is at the same time, always and invariably, a policy of determined struggle against aggression, a policy of exposing and frustrating the dangerous schemes and adventurism of 250 the imperialist war-makers, the stranglers of the peoples’ freedom.

p Working for peace and friendship among the peoples, we never forget the danger presented by the adventurist policy of the enemies of peace.

p The Central Committee of the Party and the Government of our country are doing everything to make our defences always powerful and reliable, so that the glorious Armed Forces of the Soviet Union should have everything necessary for reliably safeguarding the security of our country, so that, jointly with our brothers and allies, other socialist states, we should always reliably defend the interests of the great socialist community of nations. (Stormy applause)

p Such in brief outline is the meaning and purpose of the course we are following in international affairs. This course of our Party and the Soviet Government enjoys the wholehearted warm support of the entire Soviet people. (Prolonged applause.)

p Our policy is supported and shared by our allies, the fraternal socialist countries. It is actively supported and approved by our like-minded comrades and associates in the revolutionary struggle—the Communists of foreign countries.

p This has most convincingly been demonstrated by the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties held in Moscow this summer; its participants spoke warmly and cordially about the tremendous role played by the peoples of the Soviet Union and its Leninist Communist Party in the worldwide revolutionary liberation struggle of the peoples. (Applause.)

p All upright men and women in the world, all to whom the cause of peace and mankind’s progress is dear, approve the policy of the USSR as a primary factor in the maintenance of world peace.

p Our country’s international position is strong and reliable, comrades. (Stormy applause.) We have registered quite a few successes in foreign policy. The positions of the forces of socialism, freedom and peace are steadily growing stronger the world over. The Party and the Government are doing everything to enable the Soviet people to work in peace and confidence, performing their historic mission of builders of communism. (Applause.)

p Comrades, the Communist Party and the Soviet people 251 are proud of the magnificent deeds of the working men and women in the countryside. The collective-farm peasantry, state-farm workers and agricultural specialists have always displayed lofty patriotism, political maturity, selflessness and unexampled industry.

p We have many new and big tasks ahead of us. We are building communist society and are moving unswervingly towards the set goal. The Communist Party is well aware that the working people of the countryside, together with the working class and the intelligentsia will give all their energies, experience and knowledge and their revolutionary enthusiasm to accomplishing the grandiose tasks of communist construction. (Stormy applause.)

p Allow me, on behalf of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, once again to express firm confidence that the work and decisions of the Third USSR Congress of Collective Farmers will contribute to the further strengthening of the collective-farm system and the advance of our entire socialist economy. (Prolonged applause)

I wish your Congress great success in its work! I wish you great personal happiness, dear comrades! (Stormy, prolonged applause)