RAPID SOVIETISATION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 October 1939, Page 5

RAPID SOVIETISATION

PROCEEDING IN POLAND MASS EXPORTATION OF GOODS TO RUSSIA. LIVING STANDARDS LOWERED. 8y Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright LONDON, October 23. The Paris correspondent of I lie “New York Times” states that rapid Sovietisation and a general lowering of living standards, as a result of a mass exportation of all sorts of goods to Prussia, are the main features of life under the Soviet Union, according to a professor from Vilna who has arrived at Paris. He declares that the Soviet shock troops and militia are well equipped and motorised, forming an impressive contrast to the bulk of the Soviet army, which has made little progress since the Russian-Polish war of 1920. The soldiers behave correctly and continue to assure the population that they came in friendship. There is no looting or mass executions, and no persecution of Catholic priests and ministers. The churches are intact, but religious teaching in the schools has been suspended. Skilled labourers and technicians have been conscripted and specialist's have been sent to Russia. A division of big estates has been decreed, but the small estates remain intact. The situation is worse in the Polish. Ukraine, where there have been many peasant raids on landowners and attacks on Polish officials. The German wireless suggests that the gold of the Polish National Bank, removed from Poland before the German occupation, may be handed to Turkey by Britain (says a British Official Wireless message). This is, of course, entirely untrue. The gold is Poland’s property, and Poland alone has power to disposeof it.