[R_SS A4 Vashchenko inadvertently startled the world Vashchenko…]

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R_SS A4 Vashchenko inadvertently startled the world Vashchenko, chairman of the Planning and Budgetary Commision of the Supreme Soviet, was attempting to conceal the size of the 1975 harvest and to prove the success of Soviet agriculture by announcing that the average Soviet grain harvest of the last five years was 8% higher than in the previous five years.

Unfortunately for him, simple arithmetic is the enemy of bureaucratic concealment: since the size of the previous harvests is known, it is possible to calculate from the average that the 1975 crop was 137.3 million metric tons. harvest 36% below this year's pian. This is 30% below last year's and it is a US government which US government which controls a surplus over internal and export needs of 100 million tons from this year's gigantic harvest and a further 47 million tons of stocks.

The US, therefore, could easily supply Soviet needs but would undoubtedly try to secure a high political price.

Ford's government is threatening to withold grain exports already contracted for unless the Soviet Union pays shipping rates 60% above the world price (though the Soviet bureaucracy accepted this price when the deal was made).

REACTIONARY

The US longshoremen's union have taken the reactionary position in support of US capitalists that they will black supples o higher price. Much more serious would be an effort by the US government to take advantage of the new situation to impose such conditions on new sales as an end to arms supplies to the MPLA in Angola.

Few events could make clearer the disastrous consequences of nearly 50 years of Stalinist "socialism in one country"

The Soviet bureaucracy has made the victorious Russian workers of 1917 into hostages of imperialism. To maintain its usurped power, the bureaucracy must either make more concessions to imperialism or reduce the living standards of and increase is repression of the Sore: axes 05 088220* cha: tions to resolve these contradictions.

RESIST

At the same time socialists in the labour movement of the capitalist countries must resist all attempts to exploit the disastrous Soviet harvest for the economic and political profit of imperialism. That means fighting for the export of grain to the Soviet Union at nonextortionate prices and free of secret and reactionary political conditions.

In addition all damaging effects of the harvest disaster in the standards of living of workers in all countries must be combatted.

That means a campaign in the labout movement for workers' control of government food stocks, the exportate she fee: monopolwages to ::es ages. any rise in