God Arises
Religion and Society
~ 395 ~
legacy of the previous economic system
disappeared.
Far from being a temporary evil, however, such
measures proved to be a permanent part of the
economic situation. It is always painful for man to
be torn away from his natural environment, and
this was no exception. An estimated 5.5 million
people died of hunger and related diseases when
they were forced into state and collective farms on
Stalin’s orders.
But an even more conclusive indictment of the
state-owned system of agriculture is the fact that
despite massive investments in the public sector,
the private sector continues to flourish in the Soviet
Union. Thousands of private farmers own small
plots of land in Georgia and central Asia. According
to a November 1984 article in
Questions of Economy
,
a monthly journal published by the Academy of
Sciences, Moscow, plots and small holding account
for 25% of total agricultural production in the Soviet
Union. More than half the nation’s potatoes, and
roughly a third of its meat, eggs and other
vegetables are produced privately. These figures are
