FIVE YEAR PLAN

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXIII, Issue 11835, 4 January 1933, Page 3

FIVE YEAR PLAN

•RUSSIAN PRESS APPLAUDS RESULT 3. BUT STANDARD OF T,TYING LOWER. MOSCOW, Jan. 1. The first Five-Year. Plan ended at midnight and the second Five-Year Plan starts immediately. Outstanding accomplishments have been in the domain of henvv industry especially as regards machine manufacturing. The press naturally emohnsir.es the success of the plan. Ihe population, however, is conscious I hat the standard of living has declined owing to inadenuate agricultural production. Under the second plan, production of light industries, ns, for instance, textiles, canned goods. and other items of overvdav consumption, is liloelv to be increased. RUSH FOR. F n OD CARDS. fU.P.A. by Flee. Tel. Copyright! (Ree. Jan. 3,9. S p.rnA RTF A, Jan. 3. Although the Soviet’s second FiveYear Plan began op January 1. the rdan is not vet read'’ and won’t even he presented to the Central Executive fill Jnnunrv 20. Meanwhile, agitation is increasing in Moscow arid other centres owing to hundreds of thousands being ineligible for the new edition of food cards. Many more are without cards owing to the inefhcienruv of distribution. As possession of fond cards removes the menace of expulsion during the impending depopulation operations, the anxiety of non-recipi-ents can he appreciated. Lust year ended in open warfare between the grain collectors and the ■peasants. In inanv regions in the North Caucasus, the Volga Pasin and in Ukraine. expeditions at night surround suspected habitations and arrest inmates and search for hoarded grain which peasants often destroy. TTorscs are perishing in thousands, owing to starvation.. “A TRAGIC FAILURE.” RUSSIAN SPEAKS OF RUSSIA. SYDNEY, Dee. 23. ‘‘Russia Five-Year Plan is already a tragic failure,” declared Mr. S. Poliakoff Russian author, playwrigoi, and .journalist, in an interview i ll Sydney yesterday. “Nothing has been achieved to justify in any way ihc tremendous sacrifice of lives, freedom, and money involved.”

At the iime of the revolution, Mr Poliakoff was reprover 4 aiive in London of flip “Roussko Slovo”, an >iflnential paper in Russia under the old regime. The printing plant was seized by the revolutionaries, and is used now to print the Soviet-controll-ed “Izvestia” (“News”) and “Pravda” ('•The Truth”). Now, according to Mr. Poliakoff, there is no news in “'The Truth’’ and no truth in the '•News”. Alt. Poliakoff is associate! at present with the ‘‘Podednin Xovosti. a Russian paper. published in Paris, and controlled hv the ‘‘Prime Minister” <>l the exiled there Air. Paul Alilioukov. a prominent political figure in Russia before the revolution. Though admittedly anii-Connnnnist, Air. Poliakoff expressed sorrow at the failure of the Five-Year Plan, the success ol which, he said, would have meant a happier life for the Russian people. lie also said that the Bolshevists meant well for their country. Rut his point was that they had failed comptotclv to translate good intentions into effect. Instead, he said, they had plunged Russia into a condition infinitely worse than their plight under the old regime, which, in its ineffectiveness and despotism. was had enough. People could not "he inade hanoy by force ; men could not be made into machines. The success or failure of the Soviet Government depended on the result of the Five-Year Plan, lie raid. And it had failed, for in Russia to-day there were shortages of food, clothing and houses.

Big political changes were certain, hut they would not come overnight by moans of a revolution, Mr. Poliakoff predicted. Revolution was not to he expected from a cowed, imhnppv people seeking only the means to exist. Both Russia’s present leaders would have, to give way to men who realised that the country’s problem was a peasant problem. And the peasants (there were 160.000,000 of them') did not want Communism. Their desire was to til] the land and to sell the fruits of their labors as they thought fit. Through the State would continue to operate many of the big undertakings it had a reversion to private enterprise.