Word: commissariats
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...housewife, already beset with a scarcity of salt, sugar, matches, soap, etc., last week faced the prospect of didying her infant with her own platok (kerchief) because of an acute shortage of diapers. The Government organ Izvestia revealed that of the 1938 quota of 3,170,000 diapers, the Commissariat of Light Industry had managed to turn out only 765,900 in the first nine months of the year. To make matters worse, Izvestia somewhat puzzlingly added, "many of these failed to reach the ultimate consumer." Presaging a "purge" of the luckless officials, the paper blamed "inefficient organization...
Conditions grew so chaotic that the editors of the Government newsorgan Izvestia took a hand, invited officials to confer with them, later devoted three columns to shocking revelations and a blunt analysis of what was wrong in the Agriculture Commissariat. Izvestia blamed everything on the lack of a "single coordinating authority which would direct the work in a rational way." Higher officials were wasting their time in endless conferences which brought no results. Sleepy workers were staying on their jobs sometimes 24 hours a day, fearful of showing a "lack of zeal." Said Izvestia: "Real work usually begins after...
Comrade Ryvin, a new official of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, told the meeting of the following case: 'Once,' he said, 'we worked out the rates of remuneration of a certain class of collective-farm workers. It was an important and urgent document. We took it to the Vice Commissar for his approval. While, however, we were giving him our explanatory comment on the document, he fell asleep...
...sleepy, too, and for the same reason.' " The crop-rotation scheme, Izvestia revealed, is no nearer realization now than it was in the spring, and Sotsialisticheskoe Zemledelie (Socialist Agriculture} gave a ready explanation for the delay: the "enemies of the people" formerly in charge of the Commissariat made a hit-or-miss job out of allotting land to the collective farms. There was no survey, with the result that "deeds of eternal possession" to the same plot of land were often handed to two or three different farms. The peasants then quarreled over who was the right possessor...
Meanwhile, there were signs last week that the Soviet Union's rulers at last realized that conditions in the Commissariat of Agriculture had become dangerous. I. A. Benediktov, formerly a Vice Commissar, was named as the new Commissar, equipped with the full powers to "coordinate...