RELIGION AND SOCIETY

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