Kowtows to Rich Uncle

Scrubby-bearded, crinkly-eyed old Michail Ivanovich Kalinin, Soviet President and popular front man for Dictator Stalin, brought delegates of the Moscow Province Soviet cheering and stamping to their feet last week with one of his characteristic speeches in homely peasant argot. "Less bread will be eaten when we have more pigs," began the hovel-born President wisely. "Those who do not care for pork will eat potatoes with genuine Russian butter [cheers] or, if they do not like butter, with genuine lard [huzzahs]. When we have enough of these products we will flood Russia with them! And moreover, when we have a superfluity of good things the whole world will kowtow to Russia as to a rich uncle!"

As not even Communists deny, Russia's present acute meat shortage is due to Dictator Stalin's policy of "ruthless collectivization" which caused millions of peasants to slaughter and eat their cattle before they were forced to join collective farms and "share everything" (TIME, July 14, 1930). Over a third of all Soviet cattle were thus massacred or exported before Stalin realized his mistake, eased his pressure. Today, because pigs multiply faster than cattle, Soviet collectives are frantically breeding swine. Last week President Kalinin's nearest approach to admitting Dictator Stalin's mistake came when he observed: "The heavy bread consumption we are now experiencing indicates weakness in our livestock raising. However, pigs take the place of bread very well."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.