"RUSSIA'S IRON AGE."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 102, 2 May 1935, Page 23

"RUSSIA'S IRON AGE."

It is often maintained that democratic experiments have failed and that modern conditions require dictatorship. To-day the U.S.S.R. is held to be a justification of the "one-man system." it is claimed for the corporate state that, at least, it "works." Kxtracts from a lengthy review by John Beevers of "Russia's Iron Age," which appears in a reputable English journal "Time And Tide" for February 9, 1935, will perhaps give us some idea of this new efficiency. "The Soviet attitude towards common criminals, prostitutes and street waifs is the most humane in Europe, but it is more than counter-balanced by a complete disregard for life and liberty the moment political issues become involved. It would seem that the forced labour camps of Siberia are never scones of deliberate brutality comparable to that of Oranienburg, but the climate, the wretched food, the unceasing labour anil the complete loss of liberty make them quite unpleasant hells. And one goes there for a slight deviation from the strict party line. Liberty of speech is unknown, of course. There is one voice in Russia to-day—that .of Stalin. It is possible to criticise the bad working of one factory and survive, but let the critic venture upon any doubt of the wisdom of the Five Year Plan and his career is finished by exile or bullet. The idealism of Lenin has already gone. Russia is more concerned about consolidating her position as a great power than fomenting world-wide revolution. That seems pretty obvious once we get the cant of our own sentimental Communists out of our heads. And the slaughter of millions, directly or by famine, the imprisonment of thousands more, the complete destruction of physical and mental liberty throughout the length and breadth of the land —all this seems rather a high price to pay for reaching a position and a state of civilisation which we in England largely enjoy to-day. True, there are no unemployed in Russia, but no doubt we could hint, out our own unemployment if we chose to embark on unprofitable and unnecessary public works and forced our unemployed to work on them for their keep alone. And most of the benefits of Soviet rule have a catch in them as big as this." Such a write-up should lead those with an open mind to read the book itself, which is from the pen of Mr. W. IT. Chamberlin, who was in Russia for twelve years as the "Christian Science Monitor" correspondent. G.