Why Not Some Yankee Trading?

Now that he has sewn up the Nobel Prize, it looks as if Mr. Nixon is out after a Lenin Medal, or at least a Hero of Soviet Labor citation, for Stakhanovite performance in socialist construction. He is going to ship a billion dollars’ worth of the grain that the Communist regime is unable to produce to feed its subjects. He has authorized U.S. firms to erect a huge factory complex to turn out the thousands of trucks they desperately need. He is, arranging to supply advanced computers, chemical and synthetic fabrics plants, computerized machine tools, and many another means of production that the Communists have not got around to providing for themselves. Plans are afoot for a multibillion-dollar application of U.S. techniques and equipment to development of Siberian oil and gas fields.

After 55 years of freedom from the shackles of capitalist exploitation, the Soviet regime achieves the biggest grain deficit in the history of any country ever, and the President of the United States will bail it out. Experience has shown that in general Communist regimes cannot produce enough food. Russia itself and most of its East European satellites were grain surplus nations in their pre-Communist days. But year after year the Communist spokesmen denounce the frightful weather— drought one year, floods the next; too cold this winter and too hot that; epidemics, pests, plagues. And the record does prove that in Communized countries the weather is almost always very bad for agriculture: the political weather, that is. Under a Communist regime, farmers and farm workers do not have interest, incentive or the suitable infrastructure to lead them to grow enough food. The Soviet Union needs such a pile of wheat this year, we are told, because the crop in the Ukraine (the Soviet breadbasket) and the northern Caucasus was ruined by too open a winter. As it happens, the Ukraine and northern Caucasus have been prominent scenes of nationalist dissent during this past year.

Now that he has sewn up the Nobel Prize, it looks as if Mr. Nixon is out after a Lenin Medal, or at least a Hero of Soviet Labor citation, for Stakhanovite performance in socialist construction. He is going to ship a billion dollars’ worth of the grain that the Communist regime is unable to produce to feed its subjects. He has authorized U.S. firms to erect a huge factory complex to turn out the thousands of trucks they desperately need. He is, arranging to supply advanced computers, chemical and synthetic fabrics plants, computerized machine tools, and many another means of production that the Communists have not got around to providing for themselves. Plans are afoot for a multibillion-dollar application of U.S. techniques and equipment to development of Siberian oil and gas fields.

After 55 years of freedom from the shackles of capitalist exploitation, the Soviet regime achieves the biggest grain deficit in the history of any country ever, and the President of the United States will bail it out. Experience has shown that in general Communist regimes cannot produce enough food. Russia itself and most of its East European satellites were grain surplus nations in their pre-Communist days. But year after year the Communist spokesmen denounce the frightful weather— drought one year, floods the next; too cold this winter and too hot that; epidemics, pests, plagues. And the record does prove that in Communized countries the weather is almost always very bad for agriculture: the political weather, that is. Under a Communist regime, farmers and farm workers do not have interest, incentive or the suitable infrastructure to lead them to grow enough food. The Soviet Union needs such a pile of wheat this year, we are told, because the crop in the Ukraine (the Soviet breadbasket) and the northern Caucasus was ruined by too open a winter. As it happens, the Ukraine and northern Caucasus have been prominent scenes of nationalist dissent during this past year.