IN DARKEST RUSSIA

Evening Star, Issue 12942, 4 May 1908, Page 6

IN DARKEST RUSSIA

In an article on ' Polar Russia,' and the distress reported among many of the tribes there, a writer in the ' Novx« Vremya.' charges the Government witli completely neglecting enormous tracts of country, whose inhabitants in consequence aro being unscrupulously exploited and demoralised by dishonest traders. Horrible descriptions have reached St. Petersburg of the famine now ravaging the Tchuktchy and Yakuts tribes in Northern Siberia. Starving children have been seen gnawing the bodies of their mothers, who had died of hunger. The distress has been intensified by the loss of hundreds of thousands of reindeer in last year's epidemic. In the Tundra of Bolshe7.emeLsky alone 300,000 reindeer perished. This represents an annual loss of £500,000, as each animal is worth at least £1 a year to its owner. —Exiles' Wretched Condition.— One of the Duma members has received a letter from the political exiles in the Chcrdin district of the Perm Government begging him to intervene on their bohalf. They say that they number over 1,500, and only an insignificant proportion of them receive the monthly dole of about 5s for food and clothes. The remainder are given no money for their maintenance. There have been numerous cases of "hunger typhoid," some with fatal results, and the exiles ask to be allowed to settle in the factory districts of the Perm Government, where they can earn wages by manual labor.—R cuter.