UNDER THE RED FLAG

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 189, 12 May 1928, Page 24

UNDER THE RED FLAG

. HUNGRY CROWDS OF MOSCOW If the news of Moscow's famine and long, hungry and freezing queus ever reaches Trotsky in his exile in lurkestan he will be pleased to see that his prophecy has been fulfilled; for one of the chief reasons for his fall from grace was the emphasis he laid on the increasing length of the Moscow queues and his prophecy that conditions in the New Year would grow worse (says Dr. Edouard Luboff in the “Daily Mail”). But Moscow is used to hungry queues; they have been her lot ever since the Bolsheviks became her masters, and established the system of State trading. To-day the queues are longer and the waiting crowds of women and children are hungrier and colder, but the system is the same. Last year, it ds estimated by Soviet statisticians, the housewife had to wait in various shopping queues on an average three hours a day; to-day she waits six, but the tragedy is not in the waiting, unpleasant as it is. With wages equalling a purchasing power of 15s. lid. a week (Pravda, November 17) and with prices some 150 per cent; above their pre-war level, the Moscow worker’s wife finds shopping, even were there no queues, a difficult and painful process. Moscow is hungry, not only because there is not enough food to go round, but because the majority of the population cannot afford to pay the prices charged. I have succeeded in obtaining the retail prices in Moscow on the eve of the present panic. A pound of white bread at the fixed price is 2}d. This is twice as much as before the war—and that in a country that was called the granary of the world. Sugar produced in the nationalised refineries from cheap beet is retailed by the State shops at Bd. per lb., or three times as much as before the war. Eggs and butter, which are being exported in large quantities, fetch l|d. each and Is. Bd. per lb. Even frozen beef is Is. 2d. per lb., or three times as much as in 1913. These prices are lower than those ruling here; but as wages are onlv about a third as high, the British worker’s lot is immeasurably happier. A common suit of clothes made in the Soviet tailoring factory cost £6, and an overcoat of the same quality £B. From various figures cited in the "Izvestya” and the “Pravda” I have been able to compare the budget of a Russian worker with that of his prototype in England and I find that, allowing for Russian conditions, the Russian worker lives on one quarter of the British standard. He is terribly, underfed; even his ration of bread is only one-half of that allowed to prisoners in the times of the Czar. And if it is maintained that the average figure does not represent the actual consumption of the head of the family, then it is evident that his wife and children are badly underfed. The reduction in the average consumption and the rise in prices are due to acute shortage. The peasants—that inarticulate majority of the Russian people—have at last put their oftrepeated threats into practice. They refuse to sell their produce to the Soviets, preferring in many cases to convert the grain into vodka by illicit distilling rather, than to exchange it for ulseless paper roubles. At first this form of resistance and opposition was though temporary, and it was expected .that when the land tax fell due , the peasants would be forced to sell. But these expectations have not materialised and the Soviet officials are now panicky. They have collected large quantities of manufactured goods and have taken them post haste to the villages in the hope of being able to exchange them for agricultural produce. This has . left the towns, and particularly Moscow, without adequate foodstuffs, and manufactures. The new move has failed also to influence the peasants, since the goods brought were not those always wanted. The Repeated announcements that Moscow has been assured of requirements have failed to slacken the people’s anxious demand for food, and each announcement has been followed by longer queues and more hoarding. To-day Moscow is getting hungrier and even the Ogpu (the secret. terrorist police) is unable to cope with the rumours and with the activities qf the khvostniki, the professional qudurers who shop for speculating purposes. Hundreds are arrested daily but others take their place. .