POVERTY IN RUSSIA

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22341, 28 May 1947, Page 4

POVERTY IN RUSSIA

Sir, —An American correspondent is reported, in your issue of May 21, as saying that he considered the contrast between rich and poor is much shaiper in Russia than in London, Paris and Washington. For a solitary American journalist to expect the world to accept his word is to expect too much. Many other correspondents have been to Mossow, but they didn’t find what this Arnerican found. All the world knows that in America you find extreme wealth side by side with extreme poverty. I gather from excerpts out of a best-seller, called “Skyscrapers in the Mist,” written by an Australian, much about life in New York. Referring to the great city the author says: “There is all of beauty and peace and fineness and all of ugliness and squalor and rottenness.” He describes the Bowery as one of the saddest streets in all the world. He goes on to say: “There is probably no other city in the world where the contrast is so marked.” , . Referring to Fourteenth street in Manhattan, he continues: “It is one of the most depressing slum areas in the world.” I say to the American correspondent, why go to Russia to look for poverty when appalling poverty and misery exist at his own door? It is rank hypocrisy. The new Russia is about 30 years old and is passing a' transition period, whereas New York is 300 years old, R. T. KOIIRRE.