RUSSIAN HORRORS.

Wairoa Bell, Volume IV, Issue 140, 8 April 1892, Page 6

RUSSIAN HORRORS.

Late letters from St. Petersburg show that the telegrams which pass the censorship do not depict half the horrors of the situation. In the. province of Samara, the Government officials who went to carry relief to the village found it deserted, but nearly every house contained a corpse, and in some of them were found several. In Peusea, the people were to be seen praying for death. Suicide, however, is frequent, no matter how terrible the situation. The Government is already 'finding it difficult, on account of the enormous drain of the famine, to meet other expenses, and some official salaries are already in arrear. Work, however, is being pushed by the navy-yards and on military roads, the starving peasantry being largely employed for the latter purpose. On trie 13th February, 10,000 more persons from the famine-stricken districts had taken refuge in St, Petersburg, and are quartered on the various householders. An English correspondent writes from Saratov, March Ist, that crimes of violence in the Valley of the Volga are of frequent occurrence. Clergymen’s houses have been robbed, and the bodies of murdered men are found on the high roads Caravans of merchants are escorted by armed forces. Villages in the government of Samara that were prosperous in 1886 are now plunged into the deepest misery, and the population has been decimated. Id one village, 2,765 of its 7,356 inhabitants have migrated. Of those remaining, 1,250 are dependent on charity. In three months the people of tin’s village lost 4,038 head of live stock. They are indebted to the State in the sum of 72,380 roubles. Similar conditions pro vail in other villages. Forty thousand acres ot land are idle in the province of Samara, owing to want of seed. Large numbers of German colonists live in holes in the earth for warmth. They eat bread made of wild hemp and the carcases of horses, causing severe nausea. The famine is changing the peasants into wild beasts. Many of the Governors of provinces ignore the existence of the famine, and are exacting the entire taxes by means of the merciless flogging of peasants.