Word: dulling
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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When Ralph and Christine Dull of Brookville, Ohio, arrived in the Ukraine last spring, they thought they knew what to expect. After all, they had visited the Soviet Union six times since 1983 under the auspices of international peace groups. They believed the U.S. was not doing enough to help promote peace and understanding, so they decided to take matters into their own hands. "We felt that it was up to the American people to establish contacts with the Soviets." Now near the end of their sojourn, however, the Dulls are finding that their ideals of cross-cultivation...
Working with the Soviet embassy in Washington and the Soviet Ministry for Agriculture, the Dulls set up a unique Soviet-American farm-exchange program. They would spend six months on the Ukraina kolkhoz (collective farm), while a Soviet farmer, Viktor Polormarchuk, worked on their spread back in Brookville. (From his letters home, Polormarchuk's wife Valentina reports that her husband is working hard, has lost several pounds and talks about doing some private farming of his own when he returns to the Soviet Union.) "Mikhail Gorbachev's new proposals ((for liberalizing the economy)) fit in exactly with what we think...
When he arrived, Ralph Dull thought he could best assist his Soviet friends by serving as a kind of senior adviser who would help the Soviets improve their outmoded agricultural methods. He had not expected to work in the fields...
...should I waste my time sitting on a tractor?" Dull replied in an interview in the daily Izvestia. "There are already 40 extra people here to do that." In Ohio, says Dull, he and his three sons and one son-in-law run the farm themselves; in the Ukraine, he estimates, an operation of the same size would require the services of 140 workers and six supervisors...
Despite its inefficiency, the Ukraina kolkhoz is one of the Soviet Union's most profitable collective farms. It employs more than 7,000 people and earns a profit -- about $4.7 million in 1988 -- on sales of cattle, corn, sugar beets, wheat and other products. Yet mismanagement limits its progress. Dull cites as one example a "specialist system," requiring that people be trained to do only one specific task. Party officials, often without agricultural expertise, constantly monitor to make sure things are done as the party dictates. "Soviet farmers are accustomed to having Big Brother watching over their shoulder," says Dull...