PECULATION IN RUSSIA.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume VI, Issue 9, 24 January 1905, Page 7 (Supplement)

PECULATION IN RUSSIA.

The Russian authorities have been careful of late to prevent the publication in newspapers under their control of stories of corruption in connection with army contracts. But it must not )>e supposed that the supply system is now satisfactory. Of course it was impossible to hush up the tremendous scandal of the hospital stores, and when a flagrant piece of corruption was exposed at St. Petersburg itself, stories of similar incidents in other centres naturally got into circulation. Gradually correspondents of French and British newspapers in Moscow, Odessa, and the capital gathered information from authoritative sources which showed the enormous extent of the discovered frauds. The naval and military authorities took prompt action to punish some of the offenders, and it was given out that the departments affected had been thoroughly reorganised. A recently reported Moscow incident shows, however, that the peculation has not ceased. A warm dispute between the Grand Duke Serge, the Military Governor of Moscow, and M. Morozoff, a millionaire manufacturer, took such a shape that secrecy was absolutely tmpossible, and the whole story was soon public property. The Grand Duke summoned M. Morozoff, who is probably the largest employer of labour in the country, and others of the rich merchant class to the Governor’s palace, and told them it was necessary lor them to subscribe more generously to the army and other war requirements. M. Morozoff replied that in that case they must have their own representatives on the administration fund, to ensure that all subscriptions were applied to patriotic purposes only. The Grand Duke Sorge demanded what he meant, whereupon M. Morozoff retorted that he had given a million roubles worth of his cloth for the use of the army in Manchuria, and had since seen it on sale in shops of Moscow. The Grand Duke then angrily ordered him to apologise, or he would be given his passport and conducted to the frontier. As M. Morozoff refused to apologise, his passport was given to him. He first asked permission to give some final instructions to his factories, and then gave orders that all his works should lie closed, thus throwing 65,000 people out of employment. In spite of all the Grand Duke’s efforts, the necessary notices- were posted in the workshops. At this point, however, the Government intervened, and the Grand Duke had to withdraw his order, M. Morozoff cancelling' his notices and remaining in Moscow.