LOOKING FORWARD TO THE PAST.

The “strategic task” of Belarusan agriculture is to reach, by the year 2000 or afterward, the output levels of 1990, the last full year of Soviet rule. Those were the stated hopes and marching orders of the February 3 conference of agricultural officials in Minsk, chaired by parliamentary speaker Anatol Malafeev, a trusted lieutenant of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Admitting a crisis in agriculture, the participants seemed to expect the state to address it through more debt relief, higher price support and targeted credits to salvageable kolkhozes and sovkhozes [cooperative farms and state farms, respectively]. Some officials suggested that some of those farms be recognized as insolvent so that the rest of them might be salvaged.

Food shortages have recently forced the authorities to introduce rationing measures. Belarus currently has approximately 2000 Soviet-type kolkhozes and sovkhozes. More than half of those operate at a loss, despite existing state subsidies and debt write-offs; and 630 are classified as “idle.” According to projections, depopulation of the countryside at the present rate will probably result in a virtual disappearance of work-capable collective farmers by the year 2008-2010, by which time the food output should have returned to what are officially viewed as “golden-age” Soviet levels (Russian agencies, February 3-4).

LAZARENKO TO REMAIN AT LARGE FOR NOW.