Russians mobilize city workers to gather potatoes - UPI Archives (2024)

MOSCOW -- Russia's potato season is almost over, so city people drafted to pick them are coming back from the farms with stories of cold, mud and hard work.

'Don't talk to me about potatoes,' said a clerk. 'We lived in tents and picked up muddy spuds for eight hours a day. All there is to do at night is drink. There's no other way to keep warm.'

No one seems to know how many city dwellers are drafted to work on the farms. One Moscow newspaper said 43,000 people were out in the fields -- about 1 percent of the city's work force.

Entire years of students from universities and specialized institutes spend up to a month picking potatoes, although the season falls just after the beginning of the school year. High school students also are drafted.

'It was hard work, but we had a good time,' a secretary said of her student days. 'There were no studies, no exams, so we played guitar after work, sang songs, went for walks, flirting ... You get the idea.'

Factory workers also go: 'Generally the least important ones, like me. I'm a quality control inspector,' a young woman said, showing hands reddened from fieldwork.

One source said 340 of the 400 workers at his plant spent some time in the fields this fall.

The yearly mobilization shows the high priority Soviet authorities place on a guaranteed supply of basic commodities. Potatoes are a staple of the Russian diet and a favorite food as well.

Despite the disruption of work schedules and studies there seems no other way to provide enough pickers for the harvest season.

The director of a planning institute in a Ukrainian city said 100 of his 700 employees are unskilled workers kept on the payroll to meet the demands for farm work.

'We can't send the engineers, after all,' he said. 'They have their own plans to fulfill.'

Although agricultural workers are said to make up one-fourth of the work force, rural people seem to have other things to do at harvest time.

Farmers are 'either drunk or busy on their private plots,' one Muscovite said. Another Moscovite said a farm woman tallied the potato sacks filled by city workers but no one else was around. Another said her group refused to work without the locals.

'We sat down and said, 'No way, we're not working unless they do,'' she said. 'So the brigadier (foreman) rousted them out and they stood around and grumbled.

'They worked for half an hour and so did we, but they crept off when the chief wasn't watching. So we sat down again. Finally the boss said, 'If that's how you're going to work, we don't need you.' So we went home.'

Other countries also use city workers and students to pick potatoes, but the pay is higher. Most Soviets get little or nothing beyond their normal monthly salary -- and all the potatoes they can eat or take home.

Because of mud during the harvest and breakdowns of machinery and trucks, some 30 percent of the crop is left in the fields. Some of the rest is lost in transport, either to theft or carelessness.

Theft is also widespread at vegetable bases in the large cities, where workers from other enterprises are directed to 'volunteer' every few months to help pack deliveries forretail stores.

Soviets say work at the vegetable bases is somewhat voluntary, unlike the potato fields, where absence is counted as missing a day's regular work and can lead to dismissal.

Theft at the vegetable bases was featured in Krokodil, a humor magazine, which ran a cartoon showing volunteers going home with melons and cabbages spilling out of bags, boot-tops and trousers. One young man is empty-handed and someone tells him:

'Take something for appearance's sake, at least. Everybody's looking at you.'

In city stores, potatoes cost 34 kopeks for a 3-kilo bag (5 cents a pound,) although shoppers say dirt makes up a good part of the weight and spuds are often rotten or underripe.

Those who want the best potatoes must go to the peasant markets, where squat, round-faced countrywomen in white caps and aprons sell the best of their private produce for 50 kopeks a kilo (30 cents a pound).

'I think the price will keep going up,' one housewife said, complaining that hardly any potatoes were available in late summer.

Western experts say the drought that ravaged the Soviet grain crop this summer hit just as potato plants started flowering. They expect the country to produce little more than last year's 66.9 million tons of potatoes, below the planned target of 90 million.

Despite the problems, Russians are not likely to go without potatoes for long.

The government's determination to get in the crop shows it wants no public dissatisfaction over shortages of staple foods, one of the first signs of unrest in Poland.

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