THE RUSSIAN TERROR.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 46, 22 February 1918, Page 5

THE RUSSIAN TERROR.

UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS. STARVATION, FEROCITY, AND DISEASE. LONDON, February S. The correspondent of the "Times" at Petrograd sends an appalling account of the conditions in .Russia during the Teign of terror, murder and criminality. The oonditione are worse than in the darkest time of the old regime. Bands of Red Guards—soldiers and sailors —are for ever training for fresh plots; seeking, searching, confiscating, and invading homes, and. with marauding, drunken hooligans, destroying:, smashing, robbing and violating decency. They arrest and silence protests with revolvers and bayonets. Militiamen sometimes administer rough - handed justice, killing burglars caught red-handed and flinging their bodies into the nearest canal; but the extent of the lawlessness, robberies and murders is indicated by the open sale in the market Elace of overcoats and furs smeared with lood with which is human hair. ; There are cases of sailors arresting : and murdering officers and throwing : their bodies into the canals to save the trouble of conveying them to prison. Many people sew their money in the | lining of their clothes to avoid repeated i robberies. Cheques are not cashable. I The banks are guarded by hordes of j lolling, drunken, dirty soldiers superintending the Bolshevik clerks, who are muddling accounts. The latest decree restricts deposits to 25,000 roubles, and

requiring proof that the money has been earned by honest work. All loans have been annulled. The cancellation of all shares is contemplated. Besides being robbed the population is ;radually Hearing starvation, the scanty black bread mixed with straw producing intestinal pains. Cabbages are 1/10 per pound, potatoes 2/10 per lb., and butter 2S/ per lb. In the frequent food note and looting the soldiers and sailors fare best, enforcing their demands at the point of the bayonet. The middle classes have been reduced to extreme poverty. Government, bank, and business employees, students and professors are compelled to subsist by sawing wood, scavenging and snow-clear-ing. Their spirit is utterly broken, and their only desire is to be allowed to live. RELIGIOUS RIOTS. In addition to the foregoing horrors the civil war has now entered a religious phase. The Bolsheviks' confiscation of the Alexander Nevsk'y Monastery has resulted in the Petrograd churches sending out processions of gorgeously-robed priests and choristers with banners and holy pictures, in an endeavour to arouse orthodox sentiment against the Bolshevik decree. With anathemas, curses and threats of hell tire, they exhorted the faithful to oppose the Government excesses. Meanwhile the Red Guards arrested the principal dignitaries of the monastery, thus arousinpr the fierce indignation of crowds of women worshippers, who rushed the belfry, Tanjr the bells, and appealed to the orthodox to save the Church. The infuriated mob attacked the Eed Guards, but the arrival of ma chine guns, freely fired at t'ae bellringer: and crowds, suppressed the riot, durinj which an infuriated monk, armed witl a stick, fractured the skull of a Kei Guard. SAUSAGE MACHINE LEGISLATION The Soviet Congress closed after nin sessions, during which innumerable re solutions, laws, and much rough-arid ready legislation were passed in recor< time, and were brought into operation ii less than an hour. Agrarian reform, socialisation of thi land, social reconstruction, and othei fundamental and far-reaching laws occu pied 12 minutes of the time of the con gress. Some of these novel statutes are ec badly and ungrammatically constructed as to be impossible to understand. The proceedings were interspersed witl the music of two bands. There was fre quent singing of the "International! Marseillaise." The People's Commissioners contem plate a conflict with China ac a, punish ment for China's Tefusal to export foot to Kussia. It is proposed to send agenti to support the autonomous movemen' in the southern provinces and stir up re volution. THE REAL RTGA TIGER. Renter's correspondent at telegraphs that the Bolshevik News agency states that the Germans at Rig fraudulently collected 65,000 votes fo the incorporation of Riga with German? The Germans also arrested 20 suspected Socialists and many prisonei —even women —were beaten in order t force them to betray their comrades. Women arrested for alleged politic: offences were placed in the same.cells i men, robbers and prostitutes. The economic situation is terrible, ai the workers are starving.