COMMUNISM A FAILURE

Greymouth Evening Star, 31 May 1928, Page 7

COMMUNISM A FAILURE

RUSSIAN HARVEST CRISIS PEASANTS IN REVOLT ■ (Australian Press Association.) • (By Cable—Press Assn.—Copyright.) ' ' LONDON, May 29. The “Daily Express” publishes the first of a series of articles from its special correspondent who is making a tour of Russia. The correspondent says: “Red Russia is faced with the gravest crisis since the Revolution, which may. come to a head in a few months, if the harvest is .bad, or it may be postponed if the harvest is good; but the end must be the same. Communism will either have to acknowledge defeat, or have to sensationally change its policy. Outstanding features are - a shortage of money, which has practically forced the officers and men of the Red Army .and the civil; servants to take part of their pay in loan stocks. The Kremlin is struggling hard to support the trouble, and is trying to force from the business men and small holders higher ' payments, though they now pay 62 per cent, of the taxes. The late Nicolai Lenin had to acknowledge the paidial failure of the Marxist theory, and he permitted and encouraged private trading. M. Stalin has changed all this. Within the year ended last October, 103,000 private businesses were closed. Out' of 11,000 private shops -in Moscow, 4000 have closed In the last six months. “The peasants are dissatisfied, They claim that they cannot obtain goods at the Rural Co-operative Shops, in exchange for theii* wheat. The Government hqs gone the length of putting barricades between the villages and the markets, to prevent the peasants from selling their wheat to speculators. It has imprisoned thousands of peasants, and had confiscated their lands; it has even executed some. ‘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 is represented as a villain trying to ruin Russia.” The “Daily Express” special correspondent, in a second article,* examines the Russian wheat problem. He points out that, despite three successive good harvests, Russia is only able to carry on without extending her cultivation. . He visited the Ukraine to find out the cause and he discovered that a severe conflict has been proceeding there between the State and the peasants. The latter are being forced to sell their wheat to the, former for 2/6 per pood (weighing 36 lbs. avoirdupois); The cultivators say that this is not enough to buy their requisites from the Rural Co-operative Stores. Some time ago the Rural Stores were practically empty and the Soviet then forced city shops to send goods to the country. As the result, the Leningrad shops are short of supplies still, and they are only open for a few hours in the middle of the day. Then they are besieged by queues, similar to those in war time at the food shops in Britain. * The correspondent says that the Soviet have managed to reduce the rural store prices to the extent of six per cent., and they are now launching a great industrial campaign in an attempt further to reduce the production costs. The Soviet are spending 150 million pounds sterling each year 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. - The correspondent’s first impression was that Kharkoff was the most prosperous city seen in Russia, with good buildings and good roads, well dressed men and women. Later, however, he found that side by side with this prosperous element, wlqp are all Jews and Jewesses, there are literally armies of beggars. Kharkoff and Kieff have the largest Jewish populations in Russia. The Revolution freed them, and when Lenin allowed partial private enterprise in Russia, they, as the cleverest business folk, reaped the reward. All went well till M. Stalin came into power. He is at the same time an antiSemetic and an anti-private enterprise dictator, and before long all the Jewish shops will be closed, as Has already been done in the North. Worse may follow. It is only 23 years since there was a terrible anti-Semetic pogrom at Kieff. INDUSTRIAL UNREST. LONDON, May 29. “The Times’s” Riga correspondent says: Moscow reports the discovery of further serious cases of economic sabotage in White Russia; Ukraine, Trans-Caucasia; and at numerous towns in Central Russia, resulting in the intensification of the campaign to sweep out the socially-alieu ele- * ments that are occupying controlling positions. Numerous officials of the Denugel Coal Trust have been dismissed. Sixty have been arrested and will be tried. Thirty-five have been arrested at 1 Smolensk. Five ex-industrialists have been arrested as the creators of the present financial difficulties of the JKaluga Textile Trust. Many have been arrested at Leningrad, Bakhmut, and Nvovrossisk and also in the Ukraine and in Siberia for sabotaging the Soviet building plans, and in some cases for even building two-storied houses withoiit stairs. The newspapers state that a campaign of hate against the factory village inspectors has,, developed a great intensity, and that numbers have been beaten and killed throughout. the country.