MOSCOW MISERY.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17645, 23 December 1922, Page 3

MOSCOW MISERY.

DIRTY LODGERS AND HIGH RENTS. MOSCOW, November 8. The Bolshevist custom of quartering people who say they belong to the working classes on obvious middle-class folk is a souroe of great suffering. A Government Housing Department with illimitable powers has charge of all houses (every house in Russia. being Government property) and is empowered to carry into ettect tiie decree allotting to .eacn person a certain number or square feet. Imagine occupying, with your wife, servant, and (say) two small children, a. flat of five rooms' in Moscow.There is a room for each person, and no. room is above the prescribed' limit, so you think you are all right. But the perambulating Commission, which is continually on the move to find rooms for the Communists who are on its hands, arrives late one night. You mistake it for one of the wandlering gangs of armed burglars who frequently rob houses, and parley a long time with it. It loses its temper at being mistaken for a robber band and enters with a determination to be nasty. It soon gets an opportunity; for though there are beds in the children's room (a bed is thus placed in every room 6f every house so as to satisfy the requirements of the law on housing by •giving the impression that every room is occupied at night), the children themselves are sleeping with their mother. Next day you find four ragged hooligans, one Red Army soldier with a ragged overcoat, and three children quartered in your two spare rooms—one of -which you had used as a study, and the other as a dining-room, a'nursery for your children, and at the sam© time a workroom for your wife. Your wife has, of course, prided herself on the" cleanliness (jf everything. What happens in a day or two can easily be guessed. The soldier develops typhus. Your wife also catches f typhufs. Your servant leaves you. . . , The pro-Bolshevist visitor to Russia, and, to a still greater extent, the parlour Bolsheviks who have not visited' Russia, are continually praising the ' strong and reckless will and the firm discipline of the Communists." I take this phrase from a book written bv such a visitor, who also says: "My firm belief is that under Communist rule the anarchy and suffering of this transition period liave been combated, in some rasoects with relative success, by the Communists, where every other party would have failed." ... A Czar commander left the execution of his orders to passive obedience. "The Communists back every decree, whether it to education pr health or industry, by an active educational campaign." Everybody, even their enemies, agrees that the Bolsheviks are efficient. Yet the tribute to the resolution and capacity of the Reds is undeserved, for the Reds only show resolution and capacity on übe one pqirt of keeping in power and crushing all conspiracies against i them. • In everything else they create ! a muddle. * I Now, if the Bolsheviks only show j capacity on the one subject of keeping ! they differ from j the Czarist Government which preceded ' them? For the Czarist Government, j careless and incompetent in many things, showed- great care and supreme ; comT*tenoe in guarding the person of the Sovereign and crushing all plots '^ r *"tpd against his Government. The Bolsheviks have thus come round full circle. In almost cvervthine fhev stand where the Czar stood. Was it worth the trouble to make the oh&Ojte P