RUSSIAN FAMINE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 48, 26 February 1923, Page 10

RUSSIAN FAMINE.

COMING TRAGEDY. GREAT WHEAT SHORTAGE. j The horrors of the famine of 1922, , after it perioil of apparent improvement, ! ur?- about to be renewed, and there is every prospect that li>23 will inherit them from ht.-t year. Says a '■London Telegraph" correspondent:— I have gone with tare through the official statistics of the Soviet Government. They induce in mc the greatest pessimism. But. a< Russians have ahvaya been great at furnishing statistics with often more interest in the beauty of the diagrams than in a faithful adherence Ito truth. I have checked the evidence I thus obtained by the reports of more than a dozen foreign observers on the ;'spot. The conclusions one is obliged to make look black indeed. i The Central statistical Department in Moscow has furnished figures of famine- . i stricken people for the principal pro- ! viiiees in Russia. These reports date from the second half of this year, and i some las. for example, the Ukrainian) . iconic down as late as September. The total number of the famine-stricken '. population is given as 2:5.719.208.. Nat,f iirallv. one can take it for grunted that I all these people are not exactly dying ' ; from hunger, but they evidently can II be taken as living from hand to mouth .land without a grain of food in reserve. I j THIS YEAR'S HARVEST. I This colossal figure should be opposed 1 to the results of this year's harvest., ' J Accounts vary enormously, but even itlie most optimistic estimate is only ; i about 33,000.001) tons. This is but 45 'j per cent of the pre-war amount.' As ' there are no stocks left in i he country ' one may well understand the dangerous ''situation which exists. The absence ot ' stocks is known to foreign observers. 1 and will be understood if one looks at the figures in tons of production for the •following years: 1013. To.OOO.OOO; 1010, (J3.000.000:' 1020. 20.000.000; 1021, 1 26,->00.000: 102-2. :i:!.0()0.000. Tn spite of civil war. terror, famine, and pestilence, the population of Rue- ' sia has not decreased r>o per cent, so that the danger of a continuation of the famine is clear. The harves* of this year was very I unequally distributed. In some provinces it was above the average, in others very much below it. In fact, in places famine conditions exist already, and the peasants are eating substitutes. Foreign observers give various reasons for their estimate of the harvest being below the average? After the unfavourable I climatic conditions, the reduction of the area sown in some cases l.v about GO per cent —is the main cause. To this should he added: Loss of live stock, destruction of farm implements, and damage by locusts, caterpillars, and other insects, etc. I SOVIET AND THE CORN" TAX.

With every desiro to maintain an objective point of view and to abstain from politics, it must be remarked, nevertheless, that the famine conditions have been caused by the way the Soviet authorities levy the corn tax. This impost is taken from the peasants not according to their actual production, but

according to a schedule established in Moscow and based on imaginary statistics. The official Bolshevik Press contains numerous examples of the disastrous way in which the corn tax is applied. Another disagreeable fact is that some of the seed grain imported from abroad in haste and without discrimination has failed to"germinate. The general prospects are bad. This is borne, out by the foreign representatives engaged in relief work on the spot. One of them says:

A big part of the population of the Samara Province will suffer again from hunger about Christinas time. As the population have already sold everything they had. their live stock has perished, their clothing is worn out. famine in 1923 will be worse than in the previous year.

To the views of independent foreign observers we can join information contained in Bolshevik newspapers, not in the pompous official Press of Moscow. but in the local, small news sheets edited by people who do not live in the Communist clouds. For example, tli? Bnrba, which appears Tzaiitzin, in the famine area: says:

Famine has not ceased. In spite oF (lie new harvest .famine has not been conquered, and is sure to continue into next year. Tlie number of starving people has grown less, but in two or three months will increase again. Everywhere on the fields one seeß starving people collecting the few oars left I>ehind. Help is still needed. Tlie niinilifiof starving people is great—3ll,o63 adults and 207.440 children.