REIGN OF TERROR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 33, 8 February 1930, Page 11

REIGN OF TERROR.

WAR ON PEASANTRY. { SOVIET PERSECUTION IN ! SIBERIA. | PROPERTY SOLD FOR TRIFLE. i ! Evidence that a virtual state of war at present exists between the Bolshevik Government and the Russian peasants continues to accumulate. it appears from the Bolshevik "Sovietekaya Sibir" j that on October 25 and 2t>, 76 peasants j were executed by the Ogpu in Siberia j without trial. Their offences consisted j of agitation, arson, tiie disturbance of meetings of Communist "cells" audi other acts which elsewhere than in 80l- | Uhevik Russia hive been punished by ! death onlv in the extreme emergencies of war or revolt. | An illuminating account of the Bolj shevik methods which have produced 1 this bitter antagonism ha<s been written for the next number of the Osteuropa by the German agrarian expert, Professor Auhagen, who is working in Moscow. He says that the pretended success of the Bolsheviks in creating collective farms is due to a system of terroridm, which leaves the peasants no alternative but to join those organisations, in order to increase the crop yield, the Bolsheviks demand from the peasants a | quantity of corn, which, in most cases, ' exceeds their entire harvest. Thus in • the Slavgorod district of Siberia, whence came most of the German peasants at » present trying to leave Russia, two farms were called upon to deliver 3003 poods of corn (62 poods equal 1 ton), whereas their entire harvest amounted to only 1500 poods. From 200 other farms on which the total harvest was 25,000 poods, the ' delivery of 34,000 poods was demanded, in duch cases the peasants are compelled to buy corn in the open market order to make good the deficiency. If they - fail to deliver the prescribed amount, - they are subject to a money fine five r times the value of the shortage. Should 3 they be unable to pay this then their - effects are sold up. i But compulsory auction of his property, is tantamount .to a sentence of

death on the peasant, for the prices realised are infinitesimal. The professor quotes eases in the Crimea. In which horses and-cows were sold for 6/ and hens for "2d "each. A bed with its clothing went for -/, a sofa for I/, a caair for Id. Buildings, which had cost from j £1000 to £2000 to erect, were knocked down for from £2 to £10. Ia Siberia, quite recently, a dwelling house rooted with iron plates, as is the custom in some parts of Russia, realised only three farthings, and a threshing machine Id. (In all these figures the rouble is taken at the nominal value of about -■!, but it is in reality considerably depreciated). "And what is the fate of these unhappy outcasts," continues the. professor. "Nothing is left to them but what j they have on their persons. Everywhere around them is poverty, and, what is the worst of all, fear. Whoever gives shelter to the outlaw exposes himself to the danger of a similar fate or of a boycott, which will cut him off from the supply of goods from the co-operative society, and here and there even prevents him taking water from the parish well . . . most of these unhappy people are absolutely beside themselves.

"They have claim to neither shelter j nor work. Admission to a. collective farm or trade union is forbid'e:: them. The co-operative societies with their less exorbitant price arc closed to them. If they ask where they are to go the authorities reply, 'Where fate takes .you.' They can only hope to live illegally. Legally they are driven out into the steppes and abandoned to the wolves." And it is on the expropriated property I of these wretches that are built up the | Soviet and collective .farms of the rapid j ' multiplication of which the Bolsheviks i J are now so loudly boasting in their j speeches and newspapers. j It is from the effects of this policy I ■ that are fleeing those colonies of Ger- , I man peasants which had lived oonteutI edly in Russia since the days of Cathj erine the Great. ; i