RUSSIA’S CREDIT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 293, 8 November 1934, Page 6

RUSSIA’S CREDIT.

Side by side with the cabled observation by a prominent London newspaper’s diplomatic correspondent that Russia is anxious to restore her credit in the eyes of the Western Powers comes the information that an agreement has been signed between the Soviet and the Lena Goldfields Company, a British concern, settling a long standing dispute which has sorely tried the patience of the British authorities. The price which the Russians have agreed to pay is believed to be between £2,000,000 and £3,000,000, spread over a lengthy period. While the settlement may pave the way to an adjustment of other differences between the commercial and government interests of both countries, and while the £3,000,000 approximates to the sum to which the Goldfields Company reduced its claim, it is apparent that in the desire of the latter to reach a basis of agreement it has made a substantial concession. Under the old regime in Russia the company had large gold mining concessions of which it was arbitrarily deprived by the Soviet. An arbitration court was appointed to hear the company’s claim for compensation and its award was £13,000,000. But the Soviet absolutely refused to amend its position of utter cancellation of its obligation, and flouted the award. Later, it was decided by the company to accept £3,5p0,000 in settlement after negotiations had been begun in Berlin, but all the Soviet did was to increase its offer to £1,000,000. The £3,500,000 just about represented the amount the. company had expended in capital alone upon its concession, and the figure was far below the recognised value of its holdings. A considerable degree of odium was attached to the Soviet’s attitude, and this had serious repercussions upon its attempts to facilitate trade agreements with Britain, while doubtless other Powers, with a higher regard- for honesty in commercial dealings than had the Soviet, acted in the light of the British investors’ experience, to the detriment of Russia’s forward trade movement. Moscow, according to the British observer already quoted, is increasingly interested in cultivating the British market, since the advent of the Hitler regime in Germany has virtually extinguished the former extensive Russo-German trade, a large portion of which is now coming to Britain. . The settlement of the Lena dispute should do much to foster AngloRussian trade relations, and it is patent that the Soviet has been made to recognise that there are commercial standards in other countries that cannot be flouted. But there remains the fact that many other British investors in Russia have yet to be satisfied for their just claims and the confiscation of their properties by the Soviet.