SOVIET TROUBLES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 184, 6 August 1934, Page 7

SOVIET TROUBLES.

PEASANTS RESIST FORCE

LONDON, August 2

Food difficulties are again in the forefront of the Soviet's internal problems, and widespread distress and regional famine appear to be certain in the late autumn and the winter,, the Riga correspondent of "The Times" states.

The gigantic attempt to militarise agriculture —involving martial law and the enlistment of whole male populations into labour gangs while the womenfolk were left at home to work in the fields — resulted in the high-spirited Cossack peasants resisting.

Tho Government thereupon sacked and burned villages, summarily shot the leaders and fugitives and transported train-loads of victims to the Archangel timber region and the Siberian forcedlabour camps.

The full story of this ruthless campaign will, probably, never be told and it is impossible to conjecture the number of victims. One article, published in Moscow, casually mentioned that 98 grain officials and peasants had been shot in the Moscow region. ">

The Kuban Cossacks, long persecuted for their non-Communist mentality, have practically .been exterminated.