THE FAMINE IN RUSSIA

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 32, 6 August 1921, Page 5

THE FAMINE IN RUSSIA

IMPOSSIBLE TO CHECK THE DISASTER

SIGNIFICANT -PLACARDS IN

MOSCOW.

(UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION.—COPIMfIMT.)

(PUJLISHBD IN Till TIMES.) (Received August 6, 10 a.m.) BERLIN, sth August. Advices from Riga report sanguinary fighting along the railway from Moscow to Voronesh between the starving refugees and the Red troops sent to control the exodus. There were casualties on both sides.

Moscow is placarded with notices reading : " Away with iLenin and Trotaky. Only a Tsar can save despairing Russia."

LONDON", 4th August.

The special correspondent of The Times says:—"The famine in Russia presents a catastrophe recalling the Darkest Ages. Though there will'probably be corn enough, if properly distributed, to keep alive the starving millions, ' the hopeless disorganisation and lack of transport, the revolts in Ukraine and Siberia, and the paralysis of economic initiative through Soviet misrule, all make it impossible to check the disaster. It is impossible to foresee the consequences for Russia and Europe. The Soviet's non-party relief committee cannot do more than sliohtly mitigate the suffering. The ramshackle structure of the Soviet Government is reeling, and the population is panicstricken. . The combined result is chaos amidst a devastating drought. Cholera, which has swept from the mouth of the Volga throughout the famine^stricken area, has been spread further by wandering peasantry, added to the fact that no sanitation exists in the towns. The sufferings of the peasants in the country are appalling. Men, women, and children are eating grass, leaves, and weeds, making cakes from aoorn flour, eating the bones of animals ground to powder, and devouring even offal-. Great hordes of panic-stricken peasants are moving aimlessly about the country, sickening and dying in their tracks. Even the model German settlements on the Volga are breaking -np."