TRAGEDY OF RUSSIA.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 December 1921, Page 5

TRAGEDY OF RUSSIA.

CAPITAL A DYING CITY. By Telegraph —Press Assn—Copyright. Received Dec. 4, 5.5 p.m. London, Dee. 2. The special correspondent of the Daily Chronicle at Petrograd writes: — •'This is a dying city. It outwardly retains its magnificent buildings and wide streets, but buildings which swarmed with courtieis are now empty. It is a sad setting to a tragic farce. The facades«are adorned with gigantic portraits of Lenin, Trotsky, and Karl Marx, but the population is essentially bourgeois. They live by what they call speculation. Someone buys a pair of boots from another who has two pairs; the seller goes to someone who has two coats, and replenishes his wardrobe with the money obtained for the boots, and so exchange goes on. The original capital to start speculation was probably saved from the wreckage of four years ago, cr was the result of illicit dealing* in eggs, butter or other property of t*e peasant*?. The people of,Petrograd are really living by taking in each other's washing.”—Aus.N.Z. Cable Assn.