COMMUNISTS NOT BOOKKEEPERS

Evening Star, Issue 18281, 22 May 1923, Page 3

COMMUNISTS NOT BOOKKEEPERS

Speaking at the annual meeting of the Bolsheviks at Moscow recently, Kamancff (one of their leaders) said: “You see, comrades, that Communists are not bookkeepers. We have this year sold the products' of State undertakings below cost price. We have simply thrown them on the market in order to got means to keep going, but we are eating up our capital. In January, 1921, our capital in the cotton industry was £3,700,000; now it is only £1,800,000. Thus we have wasted £2,000,000 on this branch alone, Just because we do not calculate and do not keep proper books. We must stabilise our money. Until our rouble stands firm there can be no talk of regularity in our economy. This year we have exported naphtha to the value of fourteen million gold roubles (£1,400,000), tipjber to sixteen millions (£1,600,000). But our exports have covered only 25 per cent, of our imports, and the rest we have boon obliged l to pay for in gold. If this continues we shall completely exhaust our gold reserves, after which will como the collapse of our monopoly of foreign trade, with the attendant penetration into our midst of private capita! and the victory of tire Mensheviks-,