QUIET RUSSIA.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3146, 4 December 1922, Page 8

QUIET RUSSIA.

American and western European newspaper correspondents l who have keen in Moscow during the period of the railway and coal-mine strikes in the Fnited States; the renewed 1 lighting in Ireland; the political crisis in Italy and the troubles in Germany incidental t.> the fall in the value of the mark, reached the conclusion that Soviet Russia was the most tranquil! country in the world.

(■ndcr the iron hand of the proletarian dictatorship, strikes and disturbances such as the cables reported daily from abroad are impossible in Russia. So. while their colleagues in other countries were actively' engaged in reporting wars, strikes and near-revolution-ary demonstrations, the Moscow correspondents found little or nothing to do. The court trials and death sentences of the counter-revolutionists seemed mild in comparison with the news coming into Russia.

This tranquillity was particularly surprising to the first French newspaper correspondents visiting Russia since the early days of the revolution. American newspapers for more than a year have had direct relations with Russia, hut the French press has obtained its “news” ol Russia by way of the “grapevine” route, printing obvious fabrications indicating that bloodshed and horrors were continuous performances in every Russian cite. even up to this day. One French correspondent was so surprised to find Moscow calm and even attaining (lie gaiety of a metropolis—with brilliant cafes, crowded racecourses and flowered bedecked parks and plazas full of smiling and wbll-dTessed promcnaders— that he feared his Parisian readers, accustomed 1 to a different brand of Russian news, would not believe what he wrote.