RUSSIA: Back to the Farms

On tour through the rich black earth district where quietly flows the Don, Communist Party Boss Nikita Khrushchev noisily decreed a new purge for Russia’s 94,000 collective farms. “We must declare war on neglect, mismanagement and irresponsibility,” said Khrushchev. “Some tens of thousands of particularly experienced workers of party and government organizations” would soon replace those who would not “renounce the old ways.” And how would these tens of thousands like being farmed out? Henceforth, said Khrushchev, “people should be judged not by their well-groomed appearance but by their knowledge of their jobs.”

While all this was going on, Minister of Electric Power Stations Malenkov (whose failure to show up at one of those big Moscow gatherings of the clans set off rumors that he had already been dropped dead) was reported far away in Siberia, making the rounds of power plants, getting more experience.