CONDITIONS IN RUSSIA.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 2647, 16 May 1923, Page 3

CONDITIONS IN RUSSIA.

LIFE UNDER SOVIET RULE. PEASANTS WITH "FORTUNES." UNABLE TO COUNT MONEY. Many strange tales have come out of Soviet Russia. Some guests of the Bolsheviks, who saw only what they wanted to see, would have us believe •vism is only a rough road to Utopia, says a London paper. Others', enforced guests of Lenin, Trotsky, and company, tell a very different story. Among the latter is Mrs. Margurite Harrison, an American newspaper cor. respondent, who gat to Moscow via Poland, in 1920. She was arrested twice. The first time sho was released at the '1 of 4 8 hours, after she had given her promise to "avoid certain places and people, and do certain things." The second time she was not so fortunate, and she spent som e nine months in prison

Before her arrest Mrs Harrison had had interviews with Lenin, Trotsky (who kissed her hand), Tchifcherin, and the dreaded Djerzhinsky. She gives interesting portraits of these dictators of the present-day Russia, whom she found, on the whole, not so red as they hav 0 been pointed; but the principal interest of her story is in her everyday experiences.

One or two little incidents which sh 0 relates, give a good idea of the topsy. turvy state of affairs to which Bolshevism has brought Russia. Shopping under Soviet rule and ac_ cording to rules and regulations—as opposed to buying from speculators, which is risky—is evidently more of a business than a woman would like to make it. Once Mrs. Harrison needed a saucepan, and in order to find out how the Moscow housewife did her shopping through legal channels, applied at the Moscow Food Administration for a permit to buy it at the Soviet store. A LENGTHY PROCESS. "Upon presentation of papers prov. ing my identity, and my right to live in Moscow, as a correspondent of the bourgeoiso press, I received an order entitling me to purchase a saucepan. This order was countersigned by three officials in the Food Administraton, the process taking an entire day_ On the second day I exchanged it for an order permitting me to go through the Gov. eminent store, where samples were on exhibition, and pick out the particular kind of saucepan I desired. I chose it by number whereupon I received another coupon entitling me to purchase it at the Government co-opera-tivo in the district in which I lived. "Then I had to ascertain on what day saucepans would be on sale. On the morning of that day I was obliged to go early, and stand in line until the shop was opened, in order to make sure that all the saucepans would not be sold before I arrived. The entire process occupied a large part of my time for a whole week, but the saucepan was good and cheap, only three roubles. Similar ones sold on the Sou. kharevka (an open market) for 2500." NO RIGHT TO SELL.

Unofficial selling was as dangerous as unofficial buying. A workman's •wife, unable to get enough food for her three children, went one day and tried to sell six silver spoons. She did not come back, and it was not until three weeks later that her husband found her —in prison.

The peasants who had foodstuffs to sell made vast sums by their risky traffic, but many of them could not count and so had no idea how much they were making. A friend of Mrs Harrison, who was employed in the Commissariat of Agriculture, was pressed by one of the peasants to come and spend a wcek.end in his village.

"At first she refused, but finally con. sentcd, on being promised a large basket of eggs and several pounds of honey to tako home. .. On Sunday morning, after church, she found the real object of the invitation. Several of the leading peasants came to see her, carrying huge sacks stuffed with what was apparently waste paper.

"Barischna," they said, "we havo a great deal of money. No one in the village knows how much he has, because no one here can count over ten thousand roubles. Will you count our money for us?" She counted all that day and far into the night. Bach of the peasants had at least several millions." CHALIAPIN'S FEE—IN FOOD. One Russian whom Mrs Harrison found reputed immensely rich in the only sort of wealth worth having was Chaliapin, the opera singer, because he always demanded payment in kind. Sometimes his price was too high, as on one occasion when, for singing at a concert, he demanded half a pood of cocoa (a pood is 361bs), half a pood of rice t and a pood of white flour. "The concert was held without him," adds

Mrs Harrison, drily, "but it was a great success."

Mrs Harrison gives a vivid account of her life in prison. She seems to have kept remarkably cheerful, despit 0 her sufferings, due to bad air, bad food, and bad quarters. The greatest problem was keeping clean.

"Usually there was no hot water to be had, so I used to save hot tea mornings and evenings in empty bottles that had been sent to, the prisoners with milk. At night I took t tea-bath in a small earthcrnware bowl that had been sent me by the Czechoslovak Red Cross > and in the morning I wash. ed my underclothes in the same man. ner, one or two pieces a day t " A CONVERT TO COMMUNISM.

Perhaps the most promising convert to Communism whom Mrs Harrison met was a five-year-old girl, playing with a doll. "What a pretty doll. Is she yours?" asked Mrs Harrison, and was promptly put right with the reply: "Oh, no. She isn't my dolly; she's our dolly!"

It is significant of the state of affairs in Russia to-day, that Mrs Har. rison, looking back on her experiences, declares that in these trobulous times ( no one can know the heart of Russia unless he lives with the Russian people, "both in and out of prison." There is a moral in that, for some of the investigators have come home and declared, like Mr Lansbury, that: "All is well in Russia, the churches are still open." So, evidently, are the prisons.