FACING RED RUSSIA

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 127, 31 May 1928, Page 11

FACING RED RUSSIA

SHOETAGE OF MONEYi HATRED AGAINST BRITAIN Cnltca I"res 3 Association—By Electric graph—CopyrightAustralian Press Association, LONDOM, 29t.ii May, Th<s "Daily Express" publishes the first of a series of articles from its special correspondent, after making a, tour of Russia. Tho 'correspondent says: — ■ "Keel Russia is faced with the gravest crisis since tho Revolution, . which may come to a head in, a few months, if the harvest is bud, •or it may bo postponed if tho harvest is good, but the end must "be the same. Communism will either have tp lieknowledge'defeat or sensationally; change its policy. The outstanding features are a shortage of money, 'which, lias practically forced, the Queers and men of the Bed ■ Army and Civil servants to. talse part of their pay in loan stocks. The Kremlin is struggling hard to support the rouble, and trying to force from business men and small holders higher-pay-ments, though they now pay (32 per cent, of the taxes. , . LEjaN'S POLICY CHANGED. V Lenin had to acknowledge the partial failure of the Marxist theory, and permitted and encouraged private trad? ing. Stalin, however, haa changed all this. Within the year, ended last October, 103,000 private businesses closed. Out of 11,000 private shops in ' Moscow, 4000 have closed in the last six months. The peasants are djs* satisfied. They claim that they cannot obtain goods at rural co-operative: shops in exchange for their wheat, The Government has gone the length of' putting barricades between the villages and the markets to .prevent the peaganst selling their wheat to, speculators. It has imprisoned thousands of peas- • ants, and confiscated their lands.' It has oven executed. $ome. The rupture of Anglo-Russian relations hit Russia very hard, and the Soviet is using the economic situation to stir up the, bitterest hatred against Britain, which ia represented aa tho ' villain trying to ruin Bussia. STATE ANP PEASANTS. ■ Tho correspondent in his second. ,ar- • ticle examines the wheat problem. Ho points out that despite three successive good harvests Russia is only able to carry on, and is not extending her cultivation. Ho visited the Ukraine _ to find the cause, and discovered that a severe conflict was proceeding between, the State and tho peasants, Tho latter were forced to Sell their wheat, to the former at 2s Od per pood (thirty-six pounds avoirdupois). cultivators say that this is not enough to buy requisites at the rural co-operative stores. Some time ago' the rural stores were practically empty and the Soviet forced city shops to send goods :to the country. The result, is that the Leningrad shops have short - supplies, and still only open for a few hours in the middle oil the day, when they are besieged by queues similar to those ' familiar during the war at the food shops in Britain. ' The Soviet has managed ,to reduco the rural store prices to the extent of 6 per cent., and. has now " launched a great industrial campaign ia au attempt to reduce production costs further. They authorise spending 150 millions sterling yoarly in modernising the mines, oil wells, and factories, under British, American, and German experts, but it will take from three to five years to complete this gigantic scheme. BAD PROSPECT. FOR JEWS. The correspondent's -first impression, was that Kharkoff was tho most prosperous city he had seen in Kussia, with good'buildings, good'roads, and well-dressed men and women. Later he found that side by side with this prosperous element—all Jews and Jewesses —there were literally armies of beggars. KharkofE and KiefE have the largest Jewish populations in Russia. The revolution freed them, and when Lenin allowed partial private - enterprise they, as the cleverest business •folk, reaped the reward. All went well till Stalin.came into power. He is at the same time an antiSemitic and an anti-private enterprise dictator, and before long all Jewish shops will be closed, as already has been done in the North. Worse may follow. It is only twenty-three years since the terrible anti-Semitic pogrom at Kleff.