in our country the principal holders of grain available for the market are the small and, primarily, the middle peasants. This means that not only in respect to gross output of grain, but also in respect to the production of grain for the market, the USSR has become, as a result of the October Revolution, a land of small peasant farming, and the middle peasant has become the central figure in agriculture.

... the abolition of landlord (large-scale) farming, the reduction of kulak (large-scale) farming to less than one-third, and the change to small peasant farming with only 1 l per cent of its output available for the market, under conditions of the absence in the sphere of grain growing of any more or less developed large-scale farming in common (collective farms and state farms), was bound to lead, and in fact has led, to a sharp reduction in the output of grain for the market as compared with pre-war times. It is a fact that the amount of marketed grain in our country is now half of what it was before the war, not withstanding the fact that gross output of grain has reached the pre-war level.

(Stalin, 1940, pp. 208-209).