TEMPERANCE SOCIETY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 8, Issue 86, 3 July 1945, Page 2

TEMPERANCE SOCIETY

METHODS OF U.S.S.R. CONSI DIvMED At the .tunc meeting of the Bay of Plenty S.D.A. Temperance So-* I ciety necessary business was attend- • eci to and then 4 a reading on the attitude of Soviet Russia to its drink problem proved exceptionally interesting. Some outstanding points 5 were: The appalling legacy of drunk--3 enness left by Tzarist Russia. The " interest in Britain as to how Com- * munism would deal with tliis prob- ' lem resulting in an investigator m 9 going to Russia before this last war. He is the writer of tlie article. He found the Soviet Government "avowi edly and aggressively opposed to 1 the. existence of the drink traffic." ' As Lenin said: "Vodka and other s opiates will lead lis back to capitalism not forward to socialism." That the success of the first Five * Year Plan was threatened, by the ' prevailing drunkenness. This was met by Anti-narcotic Clinics and ' to one of which the drunk 1 is eventually passed from the police. Intensive and lengthy treatment is e given. On being discharged the man is placed under a doctor. A relapse means usually a further course but c for a second relapse the drunk is , sent to a labour colony far from temptation and often for life. Coin- ■ plete cures were numerous. Other , methods are including a strong t educational campaign by the So- - ciety for the War on Drink, whose a literature is distributed mainly by the Trades Unions. Drinking or • smoking by a Komsomol (Young - Communist) leads to expulsion from the party. The anti-drink work is Y financed mainlv by 250 000 roubles - annually from the drink-producing r concerns ? and a grant from the Government. Püblic ridicule has proved , another effective method. The writer . closes with: ''From what I'learned . and saw while in Russia 1 aame home convinced that the most resolute? persistent and comprehensive 4 total abstinence and anti-narcotic campaign was in operation on a scale whicli completely dwarfs anyj tiling which has been attempted e elsewhere. That astonishing things „ are happening in the Soviet Union g no intelligent person will now deny . and not the least astonishing is the s undoubted success of the effort to s wean the worker from the vodka , bottle that traditional curse of Rus--1 sian manhood." Two points naturally arise. First s the conviction that the problem can be dealt with. Second a ' are Communists outside Russia as j energetic in dealing with this problem as are their Soviet comrades ? — — * -i'