That is, the cunning Cossack-kolkhozniks decided that if they got little grain per workday because the weather had let them down, then there was no need to slave away in the collective farm field…
Yes, some “children of asphalt” do not understand this; they think that if a kolkhoznik received little grain per workday, then he later died of hunger because he ate little. The “children of asphalt” are unaware of the kolkhoznik’s private farmstead, unaware that his household plot was 0.5–1 ha, which is 50–100 sotkas. Ask the dacha owners who during the USSR provided themselves with potatoes for the whole winter on 6 dacha sotkas how much 100 sotkas is. And in the kolkhoznik’s barn there were also cows—and not just one—breeding sows, goats, sheep, chickens and geese… And the weather for wheat and for beets and potatoes is not always the same unfavorable weather, and one’s own plot can be watered…
And the local authorities tried to force the kolkhozniks to work by repression—they evicted them from their homes and, in effect, drove them out of the kolkhoz. Of course, if they give little grain per workday, then let nothing at all be sown in the collective farm field. Right? And let the teachers who teach the kolkhoz children at school for free go hungry. Let the doctors and feldshers who treat the kolkhozniks for free go hungry, let the workers who make tractors go hungry… Right? This is what Stalin explained to the great writer who could not understand such simple questions. A writer to whom his fellow villagers—saboteurs—ran with complaints. And who else should they run to if not a fellow villager who was a writer?!