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Hokitika Guardian, 15 December 1932, Page 4

There are many conflicting accounts of coriditio'ti® in Russia to-day, and according to a recent writer in the Economist, the most favoured groups are able to buy the best of whatever goods may be available in quantities which are not wholly inadequate. To this category belong the top grade of commissars, civil servants, factory officials foreion specialists, and heads of the Red Army and the O.G.P.U. All other categories suffer more or less from the extreme shortage of commodities of all kinds, which the Bolsheviks so far have been quite unable to remedy. In the outcome the poorest grade of workers lives practically on brown bread: alone, supplemented perhaps by an' occasional cucumber or sausage, with a few ounces of tea and sugar ai.3 rare luxuries. Peasants are worse off a-s regards all goods except foodstuffs. The Five Year Plan is an instrument for ensuring the success of Bolshevism by industrialising Russia-, collectivising her agriculture, and so raising the general standard of life. The Plan is also affected by many factors of a non-economic character. Nationalism and war psychosis are deplorably conspicuous in Russia, and travellers are told wild tales about the hostile designs of capitalistic Powers. The Bolsheviks' therefore argue that Russia must not merely bo industrialised, but must also be made self-sufficient, dependent on the placidHvilT or capitalistic countries neither for machines nor technical aid nor raw materials. -Such influences divert the Plan from purely economic ends, and are 'partly responsible for the present fierce tempo. The pace which has been set can be maintained over the long run only if enthusiasm holds out and if discipline and the power of organisation increase rapidly enough to make production efficient. Perhaps they w'M. J.f so, then mankind will h 'v« taken a great stride, toward better things. Rut whoever the ultimate possibilities, the tcrv’fa pr Items now confronting a population unorganised, unskilled, only yesterday roused from the sleep of 1 •airharoiv. ages, threatened this winter through a .‘'lloll. harvest with fresh pirivation terrible to contemplate, make the r.nmedi’te prospects dark and troublous. Meanwhile, year by year, t-hrcj. and a half million new mouths clamour for bread.