FIVE YEAR PLAN

Hokitika Guardian, 10 March 1931, Page 3

FIVE YEAR PLAN

GERMAN PREDICTS GREAT COMPETITION. (Times Cable). LONDON. March 9. “The Times’s” Berlin correspondent states: —Professor Ashagon. an exAbtache of the German Embassy at Moscow, whence lie was withdrawn because his candour had displeased the Soviet, declares that the Soviet’s Five Years Plan has attained at least a quantitative success, the industrinlisa. tion and socialisation of Russia bavin*/ entered the decisive stages, The most dangerous undertaking. namely th collectivisation of the peasantry, has now broken the victims’ resistance by force, confiscation, eviction, and taxation.

He states that there are nearly half a million peasants; fifty thousand ol whom are of German origin, now interned in Siberia, and they are being forced to work in the forests.

Professor Ashngon stated the Plan would make Russia a serious competitor in the world markets. Her mining and industrial products would be exported without any profit, owing to the centralised economy and dumping. Unless this were checked, it would disastrously effect the cereal, butter and sugar markets; but Germany. In* said, would be wrong if she renounced her share in Russian reconstruction. He stated that the German exports to Russia last year were worth twentyfive million sterling. Hundreds of German engineers and workmen were employed in Russia, but the German peasant colonies there were approaching misery, decay, and extinction. A returned German specialist advises his compatriots not to accept employment in Russia at less than fifty pounds sterling per month, with half of it payable in Germany.