UNDER BOLSHEVIK RULE

Evening Post, Volume XCVIII, Issue 18, 22 July 1919, Page 2

UNDER BOLSHEVIK RULE

STARVATION AND OPPRESSION

, Reviewing "Russia Under' the Bolshevik," by Mr. I. J. Shkkmky, The Times Literary Supplement says:—

M. ShklovskyTias spared no effort to obtain full and authentic information about conditions inside Bolshevik Russia, and the charges he brings against the Bolsheviks are crushing. He has read in some sadly misinformed English Labour paper that "the Bolsheviks have made of Russia a Socialist Republic of a very high order," and in strong confutation of tluVhe brings up case after easo from the Bolshevik press, from Gorky's paper Novaya. Jizn, and from the reports of innumerable eyewitnesses. Here is a reference to the food conditions:—

"However badly the population feeds, tho Soviet employees are always well off. Russia is starving, but the Soviets are always well fed. They, together with the Rod Army, get the lion'e share of the com taken away from' the peasantry. Here, for instance, is a communication from Novgorod :.—'On 6th June there was a' numerous meeting of citizens, which the municipal and food commissaries were invited to attend. The meeting was a very stormy one, frequently interrupted by cries of "Bread!" At this meeting it was pointed out that at the last distribution of bread only 500Q poods (ono pood equals 361b) of flour had been allotted to the whole town, with 150,000 inhabitants, whereas the local members of the Rod Army, numbering only 3000, received 3000 poods of flour.'" . ■ ■

M. Shldovsky gives afull account, taken from the local papers at a time when the Bolsheviks were still powerful at Ufa; of the fantastic incidents that followed ,the attempt of .the citizens of Zlatousk, a town near Ufa, to persist in' electing a Soviet which was predominantly anti-Bolshevik. The Bolsheviks sent Ked Guards ' to occupy the city, and arrest all persons offending against their high authority. As a result the entire city - went on strike, 'workmen being in the vast majority. "We have decided,", said the loader of the Bolshevik foree (i "not to argue with you, but to fight against you. because you have mado a counter-revolution, and arc coun-ter-revolutionaries." "And can the proletariat be counter-revolutionary as a whole?" asked one of the workmen. It is reported that the Bolshevik leader did not venture to reply. We pass on, to tho land nuestiofrT In very-many cases the peasants have not yet decided how they will divide the Jand that they took at haphazard from the landol?ners at the end of 1917. Indeed, it is hardly -worth their whilo to come to a decision, since they are not for a moment secure in its possession. At any moment there may come into the district a set of landless men; who will have -the support of the Soviot authorities, i.e., of the Red Guards, .in demanding that they, indubitably the "poorest peasants," shall redistribute the.land among themselves, to the exclusion of the temporary owners. In this struggle for the private ownership and retention of the land, the beautiful decrees for the socialisation of the soil remain what they are—propagandist journalism. When the reader oomes'-to those sections of the book which deal with the'" credit and currency methods of the Bolsheviks he will understand why it is that production and exchange have ceased in Bolshevik Russia, "Our Budget has reached the astronomical figures of from eighty to a ■hundred milliards of roubles. No revenue can cover such expenditure," announced Gukovaky, the Bolsheviks' Commissary of Finance, in May, 1918. v -Printing presses arc hard at work day and night (except when. the workmen, engaged occasionally attempt a political strike against the Bolshevik. regime) printing millions upon millions'- of "notesj^'-whiqh "■ are 'noir no longer *::wosf£K*'*tHe';'par)er:' th"iy ~""aro ""orinted"on. There are': peasants who have poods of paper moneyi. and haW no notion'what .to do with it;" they 'have long ceased toy-ac-cept it in exchange for food from either the Bokheviks or the starving townspeople. According to the Bolshevik daily paper, Pravda (the Truth), there is in circulation more than £1200 worth o£ paper money a head of the population. The Bolsheviks have been eoually lavish in attending to the educational needs of Russia :—

Take, for instance, their attitude to the universities. At Srst the reformers made such experiments as, for instance, the appointment of the porter to the post of inspector of the Technological Institute, or of the cook as head mistress of the Higher Glasses for Women. Then the Bolsheviks decided that no certificates oE matriculation were necessary for entering the universities. , Any half-educated person might become a student of any faculty. The professors were at a loss, how to lecture, on higher mathematics to students ignorant of the multiplication table, or how to explain spectral' analysis to persons • who could hardly read. Then the Bolsheviks decided that there was no necessity for the professor to have a diploma either. It was only necessary that he should be ft, supporter of the Bolshevik platform. That is all! And celebrated professors were obliged- to leave the universities which they had made famous.

When wo remember that the Bolsheviks are unable even to provide fuel for their^ schools, and that to obtain a lead pencil necessitates a visit to several' Government Departments for permits, it is not difficult to see that the . Bolshevik decrees about education, • brilliant as they may appear, are wholly in the air. Expropriations of millions of paper money for educational purposes, as have indeed been made and enthusiastically commented on in sympathetic quarters abroad, are meaningless. M. Shklovsky reminds us that not a single paper and not a single book may appear in Bolshevik Russia now unless it is an official Bolshevik production or one of the fow publications which the Bolshe-. \viks can officially approve. Even the trade union press is prohibited, and he instances tho Metal Worker.

The author finds it'"difficult to restrain his indignation when he sees responsible English Radical papers, approximating very much in type to the Russian papers of which he himself was for long, the London correspondent, accepting the transparently false statements of M.'Xiitvinov that the Red Terror began only after the Allies had landed at Murmansk, and that during the whole Terror only 400 persons were Executed, more than, hah' of these being criminals. M. Litvinov was referring, doubtless,, fy> thq fact that the Bolsheviks did not "recognise" the Terror until late lost summer. • But Bolshevik decrees and Bolshevik practice rarely coincide. In this case the practice of the Terror under Soviet auspices antedated the decree by as many months at least as tho Bolsheviks had been in power.

As early as at the end of 1917 a St. Bartholomew's massacre took place in Sobastopol, during which 500 citizens disappeared, as Mme. Zraaida Duhova wrote in the Novaya Jizn. "The garrison of the Uavoltitionary Army at Sebastopol^ has already begun its final struggle against the bourgeoisie," writes tho Novaya Jizn. We have already explained that in tho word "bourgeoisie" tho Bolsheviks include all who do not agree with them; manufacturers, the educated classes, officers, peas^ ants, and even workmen Mensheviks or Socialist-Revolutionaries."" "Without much ado, they decided simply to massacre all the bourgeoisie. At first they, massacred the inhabitants of the two most bourgeois streets in Sebastopol, then the same operation was extended to Simferopol, and then it was the turn of Eupatoria." At Simferopol sorao two or three hundred officers were shot in the X prisons and in the streets; at Ya-lta some 80 or 100 persons were thrown' into the bay; at Eupatoria tho sailors placed the local "bourgeoisie" in a barge and sank it.

The Rev. Mr. Bullock, the recentlyappointed organising secretary in New Zealand of the Church of England Men's Society, is expected to arrive in Wellington by the transport Briton this week. He will proceed to Christehurch immediately to meet the general secretary, the Yen. Archdeacon Russell, and will arrange for a general conference of the C.E.M.S., to be held in Wellington.

Messrs. J. H. Bethune and Co. will hold a sale of books, etc., to-morrow, at 1 p.m., at.their rooms, Featherstonrstreet.