BOLSHEVIC RUSSIA

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 331, 19 September 1932, Page 7

BOLSHEVIC RUSSIA

VISITORS IMPRESSION S OF DISTRESS AND POVERTY. SACREDNESS OF MARRIAGE. The advocates of Bolshevik ideals Y/ould do well to go to Russia and stay there, for if they did they -would kno-w the real strength of the situation, suggested Mr. W. P. Cross, of Northampton, in a talk to Rotarians on what h!e had seen in Russia. He was one of the thirty members of a British trade delegation that went to 'Russia to see for itself what conditions there were really like. The members of the delegation, said Mr. Cross, were ' royally entertained at a hanquet, but one had only to glance out of the window to See the other side of the picture and evidence of the direst poverty. The people generally seenied half-fed and halfelothed, and food queues were much in evidence. Private trade seenied to have been wiped out, everything heing run by the Government. Mr. Cross referred to the elimination of the sacredness of marriage as the one thing that was going to hring Russia to the ground. Marriage and divoree were cheap and easy. The people were not debarred from having clergymen if they could support them. But they were not able to do so, henoe churches were falling into disrepair. Some had been turned into elubs. Everywhere one saw homage heing paid to Lenin. Workmen in the factories seemed to be well looked after, most of the factories working thnee seven-hour shifts. Their food, however, seenied poor. It was obvious that the people were heing exploited in order to produce niore goods for export, the money thlis derived heing used to further Bolshevistic pa'opaganda. At first the peasants were delighted to have' given them the land stolen from the landowners, but when they found that there was no one to buy what they produced except the Government, which would only buy at its own price, they rebelled and refused to grow some crops. Thousands were shot for that, but they persisted in their revolt against exploitation.