That there are still rich and poor peasants in the country is traceable to the circumstance that the richer ones have rescued a larger stock of cattle and agricultural implements for their own part from pre-revolutionary times. The "kulaks" were the rich peasants who generally had a store in the village and became more well-to-do than their neighbors. But the cattle was not confiscated. Although the government fixed certain rules about the permissible maximum and requisitions what was above the maximum, the buying and selling of horses and cattle continues. A peasant, whom I know, bought a horse in the gouvernement of Tambov for 300,000 rubles, while in the gouvernement of Moscow it would have cost him 500,000 rubles. In the above mentioned village of Riliensko the peasants are allowed to keep from 3-5 sheep, 1-2 horses, and several cows, according to the size of the family. In that village there are peasants who still have five cows.
In the village of Novo Djevitsch, in the gouvernement of Samara, with a population of 5,000, there are 7,000 head of cattle and 120 horses. A further reason why some peasants are getting along better than others is, that the formerly well-to-do still have satisfactory agricultural implements. But the poor peasants, who have nothing, and can get nothing from the state, are compelled to lean on the richer peasants. The rich ones lend them their implements, but require, in return, labor from the poorer ones or compensation in some other manner. In this village there is not a single communist.
The social inequality among the peasants which is created through the difference in wealth is still further accentuated through the lack of all kinds of manufactured articles and industrial products. The- misery of the poor peasants is on the increase. Plows and harrows, if they happen to get to the village, which is very seldom, are, on account of their scarcity, not distributed to the peasants personally but to the communal management. If it now happens that a rascal hides under the mask of a communist commissar, he keeps, of the two plows consigned to the village, one for himself and the other he gives to the whole village. Hardly any but "communists" were made commissars.
The foregoing is an actual case which I have observed. It took place in the village of Strokino in the gouvernement of Moscow. The commissar nuisance causes other similar things to happen. In the Marxstadt district, in the German Volga colony, there are commissars who requisition the cows from the peasants, in order to put them in their own barn. What the government can give the peasant of manufactured articles is so insignificant that it in no manner covers even the most pressing needs. In Novo Djevitsch each peasant obtained, in three months, not more than 1 Ib. (400 gram; 0.88 American Ib.) of salt. Once they also received 4 archins of cloth (1 archin equal to .71 meter or 2 1-3 ft.).
The Russian peasant's hunger for manufactured articles and industrial products is insatiable. Furthermore, the peasants are compelled to turn over their grain to the state. In the village of Novo Djevitsch the peasants must every year surrender 32 pud of flour. For their own needs they can keep a minimum of 20 pud (1 pud equals 34 Ibs.). Besides, the peasants must pay taxes. The taxes are, generally, very low. In the villages the taxes are delivered mostly in natural products. The paper of the communist party among the Volga Germans writes on May 12, 1920, about an "Order for collection of the natura tax in the Marxstadt district": "According to 'decision of the Marxstadt District Executive Committee the natura tax for the year 1919 shall be collected from the villages of Strassenfeld, Otrogovska, Morgentau-Sujedino (and 19 others)."
Besides these taxes the peasant must further deliver certain products. In number 83 of the same paper of May 9 appears a decree, signed by Lenin, as president of the Council of People's Commissars, by manager Bonch-Brujevitch and secretary Fotijeva, concerning the obligatory delivery of butter and eggs. Article 3 of this decree reads: