Russia a Nightmare

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1041, 4 August 1930, Page 9

Russia a Nightmare

IMPRESSION OF A VISITOR Could Not Buy Square Meal HIGH-PAID AMERICANS RUN FACTORY A MONTH in Soviet Ilussia lias left a noted English ai biographer with an impression resembling a nightmare. A wash once a. month, five meatless days every week, and extreme difficulty in securing a square meal, are his most vivid recollections. Simultaneously a report is received revealing the alleged barbarity of the Ogpu in putting to death Lettish colonists who contravened religious regulations.

United P.A.—By Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, Saturday.

‘‘Coming from Russia, is like awaking from a nightmare,” said Mr. Hessell Tiltman, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald’s biographer, in an interview after his return from a month’s travelling with Mrs. Tiltman through Russia.

“There are only two kinds of people in Russia,” said Mr. Tiltman, “the Communists, who are fanatics, and all the others who E.re apathetic and hopeless as they always have been. “We were greatly honoured to witness the production of the first tractor in the world’s greatest factory at Stalingrad, which was erected on what was virgin country two years ago.

“Great. Soviet airplanes swooped overhead. Innumerable speeches were made and songs were sung, but there was nothing to eat. The crowd failed to understand us when we demanded something to eat, the Communists being perfectly' satisfied to see the tractor.

“lt was most difficult to procure a square meal in Russia. Although telegrams asking the authorities to grant us every facility had preceded us everywhere we invariably discovered that there were no facilities to give to anybody.

“The Stalingrad factory is run by Americans, who are highly paid. They say Russia is a good country if one is satisfied with one. wash a month and five meatless days a week. “The teaching of English is Moscow’s best paid profession. Young Communists are eager to learn our language in order to ‘spread the light’ in the outer world. We saw many classes of Communist youths learning English with the object of going to Australia, South Africa, Ameiiica and England.” The Riga correspondent of the. London “Times,” says Latvian newspapers declare that the Ogpu (Russian secret police) after atrociously torturing 14 Lettish colonists in the Province of Smolensk shot them on a charge of harbouring a priest and at-

tending a service in contravention of the rules restricting the movements and activities of ministers of religion. Notwithstanding appeals from the relatives of the victims to be allowed to bury their dead privately the bodies were thrown into a common grave. The property and even the clothing of the 14 men were confiscated, leaving their families destitute. The Ogpu also sent 130 Dettish colonists who had attended services to the notorious Solovetsky prison camp where the conditions are described as “a living hell.’ REDS’ FIASCO LONDON, Saturday. The celebration of Red International Day by Communist riots ordered by Moscow was a general fiasco. The Parisian police arrested a number of Communist leaders, including the editor of “Humanite.” In the Hungarian and Rumanian capitals all was quiet. LENIN’S BODY DISSOLVING BERLIN, Saturday Experts now admit that the embalming of Lenin’s body, which it was supposed would have preserved it for all eternity, "was inferior in character, with the result that nothing now will stay the process of dissolution, which is proceeding rapidly. The remains of the Russian revolutionary leader, therefore, are to be cremated, and the. ashes will be kept in a mausoleum in the Kremlin, where the display of the body in a glass coffin has done much to intensify the spread of Leninism among a population like that of Russia. The news that Lenin’s body is decomposing will have an enormous effect upon the peasants throughout the country, and may presage the end of his work. \