Evening Post. THURSDAY, MAY 31, 1928. FACING A CRISIS

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 127, 31 May 1928, Page 10

Evening Post. THURSDAY, MAY 31, 1928. FACING A CRISIS

Since the banishment of M. Trot-' sky and oilier Opposition leaders, which, after being long talked about, was carried out at the beginning of the year, we have heard so little of the internal condition of Russia that the budget of news which reaches us to-day is of exceptional interest. Until Trotsky and his friends were silenced their criticism seriously embarrassed the Government in its treatment of the grave economic difficulties of the country, and there were good grounds for supposing that after the removal of the handicap these difficulties would fully suffice to tax the undivided resources of Soviet statesmanship. During th 6 last six jnonths of 1927 the deliveries of grain by the peasants were 2,000,000 tons less than in the corresponding period of the previous year. A continuance of this process threatened the whole rioketty structure of Soviet finance with speedy and cureless ruin. That finance depend^ in large measure, as the finance of the Tsar iised to -depend, on the export of corn for the purchase abroad of the raw material and the manufactured goods that the country needs. Why was the Russian peasant thus endangering the very foundations of his country's finance? The principal reason is that he has a perverse objection to working' for nothing. All the Bolshevik propaganda of the last ten years -has failed to convince the peasant that it is his duty to grow corn for the benefit of the workers or loafers in the towns. • In one respect. this perversity of the peasants may be said to reveal a gross ingratitude. Millions of them who were landless before were made landowners by the- It was of course utterly opposed to the theory. of the revolutionaries that the private property in land which they had previously denounced and abolished shquld be renewed and more firmly entrenched by this immense addition to the number of proprietors. But facts are often stronger than theories^ and being unable to fight the peasants the Bolsheviks surrendered to them. In the conditions in which the Soviets assumed power, says a Bolshevik historian whom Mr. Michael Farbman quotes without naming him, it was necessary, first, to issue_ the decree about the land instantly, and, secondly, to make it an exact reflection of tho psychology of the peasants at that time. . The decree of the ,'Bth November, 1917, accordingly affirmed that "the landlord's property in land is abolished instantly without compensation," but "the psychology of the p.easahls" demanded that a number of new and smaller landlords, should be established without delay. About 86 per cent, of the land thus "nationalised" was handed over to the peasants. Incessant attempts have been made to palliate and amend- an inconsistency which it was plainly impossible to abolish. It was not for the sake of creating small landlords, said ■ Lenin himself, thai tho toiling peasants took tho land from the landlords. Life itself imposes on them the necessity of colloctivist rather than, individual work on tho land. . . . This collectivist agriculture is urgont, and wo aro seeking to arrive at this end by organising agricultural communes and Soviet farms. Unfortunately, however, for the Communist rulers of Russia the psychology of the peasant has not taken any more kindly to collective agriculture than to collective ownership, and this conflict, between his ideas and theirs has been a fundamental and chronic trouble. The peasant is naturally unwilling to sell for cash when the shortage of manufactured goods prevents him from getting what he wants with it, and so he is tempted either to diminish production or to hoard. Conversely,, the bread queues and a decree made in January fixing prices for rye and wheaten bread, and appointing "a special staff of inspectors to compel the bakers to produce certain quantities of these particular breads," testify to the trouble of the urban population. On the last point M. Rykoff spoke with perfect candour in an address reported in "The Times" of the 271h February, as follows:— [He] admitted the present scarcity of necessaries and the hardships endured by the town workers in Russia. The more increase of wages would not, he said, improve the situation of tho workmen so long as supplies of grain, butter, eggs, and meat were not available too. "A radical change in tho ■workman's economic position can, therefore, be made only by changing the entire economic situation of the U.S.S.R." Some improvement had been effected by punishing private, speculators and lax officials and by seizing the corn of well-to-do peasants. The 940,000 tons of corn collected in the first half of February represented a considerable advance on the December figures, but the trouble was still acute, as M. Rykoff's remarkable statement.shows. : That the position has since gone from bad to worse is proved by the summary which is cabled to-day of some articles written by an adventurous correspondent-of the "Daily Express." Referring to the wheat problem, he says that "despite three good harvests Russia is only able to carry on and is not extending her cultivation." After undertaking a journey to the Ukraine to ascertain the cause this correspondent supplies, exact confirmation of the reports of other authorities regarding the vie-

iqus circle of trouble between town and country which we have summarised above. Severe conilict was, he says, proceeding bctwecji tho State and the peasants. The latter wore forced to sell their wheat to the foimcr at 2s Gd per pood (thirty-six pounds avoirdupois). Tho cultivators say that this is not enough to buy requisites at the rural co-opera-tivo stores. Some time ago the rural stores were practically empty and tho Soviet forced city shops to send goods to the country. Tho result is that the Leningrad shops have short supplies, and still only open for a few hours in tho middle of the day, when they arc besieged by queues similar to those familiar during the war at the food shops in Britain. Regarding these queues some remarkable evidence was provided by Dr. Edouard Luboff in an article contributed to the "Daily Mail" in March: Last year, it is estimated by Soviet statisticians, the housewife had to wait in various shopping queues on an averago three hours a day; to-day she waits six, but tho tragedy is not in tho waiting, unpleasant as it is. With wages equalising a purchasing power of 15s a week ("Pravda," 17th November), and with prices some 150 per cent, above j their pre-war level, the Mobcow j worker's wife finds shopping, even wore •there no queues, a difficult and painful process. '• On grounds which we cannot further discuss, the correspondent of the "Daily Express" arrives at the conclusion that "Red Russia is faced with the gravest crisis since the Revolution," and that whether a denouement demanding :a drastic change of policy comes late or soon depends upon whether the next harvest is good or bad. The writer is to be congratu-, lated on the courage which has enabled him to' make these valuable investigations arid on the skill which has kept him out of the hands of the Ogpu and i the "Dictator of Crops"—the very latest acquisition of this land of liberty—while he was doing so. ' ,