HUNGER IN RUSSIA

Hokitika Guardian, 17 June 1933, Page 6

HUNGER IN RUSSIA

A GREAT SCARCITY OF BREADPLIGHT OF THE PEASANTS. Mr Gareth Jones, one of Mr Lloyd George’s private secretaries, recently returned from an extensive tour on loot in soviet Russia. He speaks Rusaiian fluently, and lie brought back a terrioie sioiy 1 eiated to linn by .the peasants. Mr Jones writes m the • is vexing Standard'’ : ‘•A few days ago 1 stood in a worker’s cottage outside Moscow. A lather and a son, the father a Russian skilled, worker in a Moscow factory, and the son a member of the loung Communist League, 'Stood glaring at one anotner. ‘•j.he father, trembling with excitement, lost control of himself and shouted at his Communist son: “Its ten we now. We workers are starving. Look at Chelyabinsk, where. I once worked. Disease there is carrying away numbers of us workers and the little food there is uneatable. That is what you have done to our Mother Russia.” “the son cried back: “But look at the giants of industry we have built. L>.>ok at the new tractor works. Look at : the Dniepostroy. That contraction has been worth suffering for.” “ ‘Construction indeed!” was the fathers reply, ‘Wliat’s the use of construction when you have destroyed all that’s best in Russia?’ “THERE IS- NO BREAD.” ••'“■What that worker said at least £6 per -cent of the people of Russia are -thiflMng'.- There has been construction, -biitr/'d'h the act of building, all that 'best in Russia lias disappeared. aHe main result of the Five Year Plan has been the tragic ruin of Russian agriculture. . . I talked to every peasant I' met, and the general conclusion I draw is that the present sfc.te of Russian agriculture is already catastrophic but that in a. year’s time its condition will have worsened tenfold.

“What did the peasants say? There was one cry which resounded everywhere I went,, and that was: ‘There is no bread.’ Even within a fhiv miles of Moscow there is no bread left. As T was going through the countryside in that district I chatted to several women who were trudging with empty sacks toward Moscow. They all said: ‘lt is terrible.' We have no bread. We have to go all the way to Moscow to grit* bread, and then they will only give us four pounds,..which costs three roubles (six Shillings nominally). How can a poor man live?’ “ ‘Havo you potatoes?” I asked. Every peasant I asked nedded negatively with sadness. “ ‘What about your cows ?’ was my, nezt question, Td the Russian peasant tire cow. means wealth, food and happiness. It is almost the centre-paint upon which his life gravitates.

“ ‘The cattle have nearly all died. How can we feed the cattle when we have only fodder to eat ourselves ?’

MOST OF HORSES DEAD

‘And your horses?’ was the question 1 asked in every village I .visited. Tlio hb'fsb is now a questiOTf bf life' and death, for without a horse how can one plough, haw c;ui one sow, for the next lfafyest ?/ And ifbliec'aiiijbt sow for the 'next harvest, -then death is the only prospect in the future.

“The reply spelled doom for most of the villages. The peasants said: ‘Most of our horses have died aiid we have so little fodder that the remaining ones are scraggy and ill.’ ■Jf it is grave nqw and if millions are dying in the villages, as they are, for I did nbt visit a.single village where many had not died, what wdl it be like in ;» month’s time? The potatoes left are being counted one by one, but in so many homes the potatoes have long, run, out..' The best, once used as cattle fodder, may run out in many huts before the new food comes in June, July and August, and many have not even beet. .. ‘‘The situation is grayer than in Ami, aB all peasants stated emphatically. In that year there' was famine in several great regions, but in most paits the peasants could live. It was a localised famine, which had many millions of victims, especially. along the Volga. But to-day the famine is everywhere, in the formerly rich Ukraine, in West Russia, in Central Asia, in North Caucasia—everywhere. POSITION IN THE TOWNS. “What of the towns?- Moscow as yet docs not look so stricken, and no one staying in Moscow would have an inkling of what is going on in the Countryside, unless lie could talk to the peasants who have come hundreds and ■ hundreds of miles to the capital to look for bread. The people in 'Moscow look warmly clad, and many of .the skilled workers, who have their warm meal every day at the factory, are well fed. 'Some cf those who earn very good salaries, or who have .special privileges, look even well dressed, but the vast majority of the unskilled workers are feeling the pinch. “I talked to a worker who was hauling a- heavy wooden trunk. ‘lt is terrible now,’ he said. ‘I get two pounds of bread a day and it is rotten bread. 1 get no meat, no eggs, no butter. Before the war I used to get a lot of meat and it was cheap. But I haven’t had meat for a year. Eggs were only a kopeck each before the war, but now they are a great luxury.' I o-et a little soup, but it is not enough, to live on.’ . “And now a new dread visits the Russian worker. This is unemployment. In the last few months very many thousands have been dismissed from factories in many parts of the Soviet Union. I asked one unemployed man what happened to him. He-

replied: ‘We are treated like cattle. We are told to get away, .and we get no bread card, liow cm I live? I used to get a pound of bread a day for all my family, but now there is no bread c?.rd. I have to leave the city, and make mv way out into the countrywide where there is also no bread, 5