Famine in Russia.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 243, 22 October 1901, Page 1

Famine in Russia.

liin hopes of a good harvest in Russia, which were founded on the official reports of the middle of the year, have since then been ruined, and famine stares the peasantry of a large portion of the Empire in the face. Only two provinces out of the seventy in European Russia are said to have had really good harvests. Reports on the others range from “ sufficient ” down through “ under average ” to *• insufficient,” and recognition of the situation is only reached when it is remembered that experience has taught that the official “sufficient” really means very insufficient, while “insufficient” indicates sheer famine. Among the provinces most badly olt arc some of the best wheat-growing districts in European Russia. The area affected by the bad harvest is more than half a million sijuare miles, containing a population of more than forty-three millions, who ten years ago suffered from a famine so terrible that it has come to be known as the “ great ” famine. Intense heat and drought when rain was most needed, an unusual plague of insect pests, and tremendous rainstorms, are the causes to which the failure of the harvest is attributed. It has been stated that Central Siberia, another of Russia’s granaries, could supply all that was needed in the famine districts to keep the people alive. But a Moscow correspondent remarks that all has not gone well with the harvest in Siberia, and even if there were enormous crops there, it by no means follows that the Russian peasants would benefit from them. He points out that Russia has practically no roads, but railways. She has twice as many miles of railroad as of metalled roads, or even hedged and ditched roads without any sort of paving. “Of the hundreds of thousands who have perished directly or indirectly (by typhoid and other epidemics induced by starvation) in previous famines, a great majority were within a hundred, or at most two hundred, miles of some railroad. But, partly owing to Russia’s system of managing railroads, though chiefly owing to want of metalled roads for horse traffic, the grain could not and cannot be got to the starving mouths. Russian grain goes in a stream to the ports for the benefit of the outer world. It cannot be got over wild country with nothing in the shape of a road save the ruts marked out upon mother earth, neither levelling nor ditching, to say nothing of any attempt at paving of any kind whatever.” The horses are rendered almost useless by the want of food, even if they are alive, and it is thus perfectly easy for men to die of starvation within a day’s journey of a railway. Russian wheat may compete with Australian and American in the London market, while at the same time America is sending charitable gifts of foodstuffs to southern Russian ports. It has happened before, and may happen again this year.