LIFE IN RUSSIA

Otago Witness, Issue 4033, 30 June 1931, Page 67

LIFE IN RUSSIA

PEOPLE WORKING FOR RATIONS. A Brisbane message in the Melbourne Age, of June 9, says:— Captain F V. Benz, a ship’s captain, who called at Brisbane as a passenger on the Taiping on Saturday night on the way from Hongkong to Sydney, told of what he had seen in Soviet Russia in several years of trading between Chinese and Soviet ports. Practically the whole population, he said, was working for rations. Workmen were given tickets with which to buy food at tlie Soviet cooperative stores. They formed long queues and waited to be served. Often supplies had run out before their turn came, and they had to wait until next day. Black bread, very little meat, a little tea, 21b sugar a month, no butter. These were practically the whole rations. There were no luxuries. Coal and also clothes were rationed. If a man had two or three suits he could get no more for a few years. If he wanted anything not supplied under the ration system he must buy it in the private market, where the

peasants sell the little they grow above their own needs. Their capitalistic sales were taxed so heavily that scarcely anyone could buy their goods. A workman’s wages for a month would buy only a pair of boots, 21b of bntter, and a dozen eggs in the private market. A month’s wages of 150 roubles was worth only about 15s in English money, although the Soviet official rate gave it a nominal value of about £l6. The official rate of exchange used by the Soviet banks in. changing foreign to Russian money was approximately nine roubles 80 kopeks to £l, but unofficially (and illegally) 200 roubles were offered for £l. A pair of boots in the private market cost 100 roubles, an egg one rouble, a pound 'of butter 15 roubles.