Russian Harvest Best Since 1937

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 4, 6 January 1941, Page 3

Russian Harvest Best Since 1937

HIGHER LIVING COST Trie Russian Harvest —the best since 1937—amounts to about. 90,000.000 tons, as against 75,000,000 lost year, writes the Moscow Correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, Mr A. T. Cholerton. In a Europe where most harvests have been poor this is an Important fact because the Soviet will certainly make a great effort to supply her powerful neighbour Germany, having no excuse not to do so. Rail transport, as inadequate as ever, will however, limit this supply. The Russian bread harvest ought to have been, bigger still, but wastage between car and barn or elevator, due largely to the apathy of underfed peasants, was huge, On an average yqar jt is 20 per cent., but this time it was certainly greater, although there was no lack of tractor fuel. In Northern and Central Russia the potato crop is also enormous, but loss from rot and frost is likely to be large. The authorities, wisely not trusting village storage, rush the potatoes into the town and dump them into damp or frosty cellars. A Late Beef Crop. The sugar beet crop, again bigger than in 1939, was late and from onethird to one-half of it was still lying out cn the fields at the beginning of October. Spurred on by the new law requisitioning the State’s share, not of what actually was but might have been sown and harvested, the collectivised peasants got in most of the grain, but show some indifference to industrial crops. Like sugar beet, cotton is also behind. Fruit is scarcer than ever, partly owing to a hard winter, but alsc because the peasants were frightened by the new taxes on their private strips of garden and orchard. The squeeze to force the collectivised peasants, man and wife, to give more time to the common field and less to their own plots is being increased. This coming year there will be enough bread at the present medium price for everybody, or nearly everybody, but hardship over everything else. ••Improved Quality Goods.** In Moscow during the past year the cost of living has risen over 80 per cent. Wages are being squeezed by a tightening up of piece-rates and by a general cancellation of ways end means of earning money on the side. Aloreover, under a return to the eight-hour day (a 30-hour day is rumoured for n«*t year) and the twoshift system, great numbers of lowergrade workers arc bing tuned off. Under the local passport system many of these will be sent back to the villages. Those allowed to remain in cities will reduce the average family payroll.

Hardest hit af all are the students class. Until October 3 there were 600,000 of them. Now they are melting away on the look-out for jobs. Most of them depend on scholarships, which in some cases reached 500 roubles monthly. In future only a limited number of “perfect” students will get scholarships. The rest of this penrniless horde are now ordered to pay 400 roubles annually ( in musical and art schools 500) as from September 1 last. This applies even to those ix> their fifth year Conscripts for Labour Schools. Simultaneously dormitory fees have been raised from 7J to 45 roubles per month. In some provincial universities and technical schools four-fifths of the students are leaving. Pupils in secondary school classes must also pay 200 roubles annually. Instead, the Soviet will conscript boys from 14 to 17 to. the tune oi 800,000 to 1,000,000 annually for laboui schools, where they will learn manual trades and railway work. Afterward they will be sent on four years’ compulsory, paid work in any part of the Soviet Union. This harsh measure, tearing up by the root the citizen's right to education, guaranteed by the constitution, was probably neeessary, owing to the burden of armament and the dearth of skilled labour, but it seems doutbful whether the Kremlin realised the earthquake it would cause among Soviet youth.