“GIGANTIC POORHOUSE”

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 23 April 1935, Page 10

“GIGANTIC POORHOUSE”

CONDITIONS IN RUSSIA. VANCOUVER), April 8. Robert Ripley, of “Believe-It-Or-Not” fame, declares that on his recent tour of Russia he found widespread disaster and. suffering. “Russia is not a paradise—it’s a paradox,” said Ripley. “The country is a gigantic poorliouse where millions are on the verge of starvation at this moment.

“Outside such Soviet show places as Moscow and Leningrad starvation stalks through the land amid squalor and filth. They lead you around and show you model farms, model schools, model workers’ clubs, and various other models, but certainly the traveller will find no model in conditions in the rural districts of the Ukraine and Caucasus.

“I had no food for the first two days after crossing the border from Persia. Instead, ragged, starving mobs crowded to the train windows begging and crying for bread. “Starvation in Russia is not due to crop failure—it’s man-made.” Ripley says the Soviet deliberately caused this ghastly chaos by fobbing farmers of their grain to sell it in foreign countries and acquire foreign currency. Meanwhile, people struggled to subsist on dogs,, cats, weeds and grass —even extracting gold fillings from their teeth to buy a loaf of bread in a torgsin shop. “I travelled from one end of Rlussia to the other, and never saw a dog or cat, nor did I hear one person laugh; or see a single smiling face,” lie said.