SOVIET PROBLEMS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 25, 31 January 1928, Page 7

SOVIET PROBLEMS.

Peasants Refuse To Sell Wheat

At Ruling Prices.

CABINET RESHUFFLE.

LONDON, January 30.

The Moscow correspondent of the "Daily Express" says a reshuffling of posts in the Soviet Cabinet is expccted. This foreshadows far-reaching changes in the Soviet's trade policy. The collection of grain from the peasants is still a failure, as the mass of the peasants refuse to sell wheat at the price the State offers, in spite of coercive measures, which include imprisoning the richer peasants.

As the boycott is causing a famine in goods, a new department will be created for the purpose of buying stocks of cheap manufactures abroad, which will be offered to the peasants in the corn belts at very reasonable prices. Sokolnikoff will probably be in charge of the new department, which will be joined to the Commissariat of Trade.

Grigorii Sokolnikoff, the Bolshevist politician, was born in 1888, and was brought up as one of the Russian "Intelligentsia," but at an early age he began to interest himself in the Labour movement, and thus became a political exile. He returned to Russia for a time during the 1905 revolution, and joined the Bolsheviks. Since the 6th Congress he has been a member of the central committee of the party, and in 1910, along with Rykoff, Losovsky and others he tried to bring about a reunion of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. In 1918 he was on the staff of the Soviet organ "Pravda," and during the civil war he had a post at the front. Later he was a member of the executive of the Russian Communist party and Commissary for Finance. In that capacity he was responsible for the attempt in 1922 to rehabilitate the Russian currency by the introduction of the chervonetz as a monetary unit. In the autumn of 1926 the dissensions among the Bolsheviks became acute, and disciplinary measures were threatened against Zinovieff. Kameneff, Trotsky, Sokolnikoff, and others. In October, however, an agreement was reached by which the opposition adhered to the decisions of the 14th Congress, and undertook to carry them out, while at the same time maintaining the opinions which they had expressed on various questions. They were, however, censured for an "inadmissible violation of party discipline." The outcome of the struggle was regarded in some quarters as ! a partial defeat for Stalin, who found his opponents were so strong that he could not take the drastic measures against them which he wished to adopt.