STARVING RUSSIANS

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 April 1933, Page 5

STARVING RUSSIANS

A HORRIFYING PICTURE HOPELESS AND DESOLATE [BY cable —PRESS ASSN. —COPYRIGHT.] (Recd. April 3, 10.30 a.m.) LONDON, April 2. - The “Manchester Guardian’s” spe- ■ cial correspondent in Russia, after a ■ tour of the North Caucasus and the Ukraine, studying the effect of collectivisation, paints a horrifying picture of starving villagers, whose produce has been seized to feed the cities and for export. He instances the market town of Kuban, in a district of the Caucasus, which is over-run by well-fed soldiery, while the civilians are starving, having had practically nothing to eat for weeks. The scanty food offered for sale is unfit for animals. The .crowd is too poor to buy miserable fragments of cheese and half-rotten potatoes. It is impossible adequately to describe the town’s desolation and hopelessness, not merely on account of famine, but because the population has been uprooted, and whole villages exiled. The North Caucasus is 90 per cent, collectivised, and almost resembles a wilderness. The fields are choked with weeds, and the cattle are dead. “I was shown a piece of bread made from weeds, straw, and inadequately little millet,” he says. “It seemed inconceivable that anyone would eat it, yet it was a rare delicacy.” Similarly, in the Ukraine, cattle and ; horses are dead, the fields neglected, and the harvests meagre. i The Government seized the grain j with such thoroughness and brutality that there is no bread anywhere. Un- ; less the decay of agriculture is • stopped, famine will extend throughout the country. j Russia is becoming a slave State. j Not five per cent, of the Russians en- t joy a standard of life that approaches f that of the English unemployed on the i lowest scale of relief. ■

ECONOMY CAMPAIGN HELSINGFORS, April 1. Reports from Moscow state that as the result of Government orders for an economy campaign there have been 154,000 State employees discharged. This represents a saving of about £60,000,000. Further considerable reductions are expected. VICKERS ENGINEERS. COMPREHENSIVE CHARGES. (Received April 3, 9.50 a.m.) LONDON, April 2. It is learned that the charges against the Vickers employees will be espionage, sabotage, bribery and conspiracy. PRISONERS WELL TREATED (Rec. April 3, 12.30 p.m.) LONDON, April 2. Sir Esmond Ovey arrived in London to-day, and reports to the Cabinet sub-committee to-morrow, after which the full Cabinet is being summoned to deal with the situation at Moscow.

Meanwhile, an Embassy official was allowed to converse with the imprisoned engineers, in the presence of the Prosecutor, M. Vishinsky. All assured him that they were receiving plenty' of food and exercise, but. Gregory made the typically-Britlsh complaint that he was impatient to return to the rolling mill he was erecting at Djerjinsky, “before the Russians mess it up.”