OCR
| - page four in 1955, when the German Five-YearfPlan is scheduled to ends By that time, the whole working po ulation should be gainfully employed, and independent shop or trade ceased to existe Agriculture. - In his major Berlin speech, Mr.Ulbricht made a brief statement, hinting at a farm collectivization program; he did not go into further details. flural policies and difficultied, in a communist regime, invariably follow and identical patter: extremely high production norms and ing low prices for food stuffs are being imposed; farmers, unable to fulfill their norms, are punished by excessive fees, prison terms or deportation. By such repressive means, peasantg, who do not agree "voluntarily", are to be forced into collectivization.e.. Iffects of such a program of course are most disastrous for agricultural productions Rural refugees, gaining Berlin or the West, report that sections of good farming land remain uncultivated in the Hast. The previous owners have disappeared and - with existing manpower shortage, production difficulties, lack of rentability ana high normsit is almost impossible to find the agricultural labor to take thmm overe —What Mr.Ulbricht meant to say by the few words he devoted to agricultu became public knowledge immediately after the Congress. A new plan was put forth in Eastern Germany. Its basic policy is the generalizati of the Farmé Cooperatives' system. Peasants will be allowed to retain the ownership of their land, but will be pushed to join a larger unit, in which work, production, use of machinery, harvesting, buying and selling are pooled. Imppr&ant advantages are promised to members of these cooperatives: their debts, taxes and compulsory deliveries will be reduced. Communist authorities hope, in hhis way, to increase agricultural efficiency, to encourage larger production, to save manpower and eventually to break the opposition against a future collectivization drive that remains the ultimate aim. Nationalization or repression of Churches. No possible doubt is being left after the Berlin Party Congress, as to what Eastern Germany's socialism expects from the Churches. Mr.Ulbricht issued a clear warning to Catholics and Protesta alikej; they are to break off their present ties with the West and to work for a re=unification of Germany, which, alone would safeguard the nation-wide unity of their Churches... “his means nothing less than an ultimatum: @hurches are to submit and to become instrumental to a German Peo le's Republic, or they will have to disappear. Only nationalized confessions, with no intermational contacts, will thus be tolerated in the future. These threats immediately were followed by action: a prarkis practical warning that Mr.Ulbricht means what he says. At the end of July, the world confederation of the Lutheran Church hax scheduled a meeting in Hanover; more than four-thousand Germans from the Eastern Zone had planned to attend. In the last minute, all their visa were refused. The same thing happened to several thousand applicants who had been