SOVIET MINISTER

Hokitika Guardian, 15 November 1933, Page 7

SOVIET MINISTER

BUYS soap and prosecutes \From a Moscow Correspondent) Daniel Sulimov, Premier of the AllHnssian Soviet Republic (the principal member State of the Soviet Union;, recently took his place incognito in a long queue which had formed outside a shop where a sale of soap, under the alluring announcement, “For all citizens,” was in progress. After waiting a long time in the queue he discovered that the soap was of appalling quality, | ■emitting a poisonous odour. The price of a measure of the soap was a rouble and ninety kopeks, and the clerk indifferently waved back Sulimov’s proffered two roubles with the rejoinder, “We have no change.” Having surmounted this hurdle by telling the clerk to keep the change, Sulimov was given the soap in unwrapped form, and only succeeded in getting a. small bit of papfer by threatening to call the manager. The Premier felt that the organisation responsible for placing such bad | soap on ffale should be held up to reprobation and started on a tour of personal investigation. When lie finally located the organisation, after being sent from one incorrect address to another, he was told that the director was absent, that his assistant was ill, and that nothing could be done for him. At this point Sulimov announced his identity, whereupon there was a striking change of attitude; a frightened offieical was produced and assured the Premier that this organisation ailso , was not responsible for the quality of j the soap. i After cutting his way* through several | more layers of bureaucratic red-tape ] the finally obtained the satisfaction of finding the presumptive actual culprits and having proceedings instituted against them on the basis of a Soviet law, considerably more lion- j ' oured in the breach than in the observ- ,■ anc-e, which makes it .a yiminal offence. 1 to turn out goods of outrageously bad quality. I The narrative of Sulimov’s crusade for better soap was published, perhaps with a view of encouraging other Soviet citizens to protest more energetically when a long period of waiting in a queue is rewarded by some conspicuously bad product. However, the endurance j of the ordinary buyer, lacking Sulimov’s , prestige, would probably give out long before he could find out who was really responsible for the poor product or even obtain a. hearing for his grievances. KEROSENE SHORTAGE While queues for manufactured goods | have shown a tendency to abate in recent months, great crowds of people are always to be found where bread is being sold at “commercial prices” which are very high), over and above the regular rationed allotments which , holders of food, cards are i entitled ,to , buy at moderate prices. And more recently there has been a breakdown in the supply of kerosene, which is an espeially serious matter because, most families in Moscow rely on the primus stove for such domestic cooking as they may undertake, Queues have been forming shortly after midnight in front of kerosene shops on the uncertain prospects that some of the precious fluid will be on sale when the shops open at eight in the morning. In fact, a double gamble is involved in taking a place, in a kerosene queue ; first, on the shop possessing kerosene at all, and secondly, on the supply lasting until one’s turn in the queue has been reached. Among several causes for the sudden shortage of kerosene in the capital (for a long time it has obtained with great difficulty, if at all, in neighbouring villages) perhaps the most immediate is the demand for motor fuel for the tractors and other motorised implements operating on the harvest fields.