RUSSIA “ONE VAST SLUM”

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 24 October 1940, Page 6

RUSSIA “ONE VAST SLUM”

“The country is one vast slum. Outside of Moscow I saw nothing that compared favourably with even the worst slums of Glasgow. Moscow offers little enough; the rest of the country offers nothing. It is perfectly evident that the attempt to industrialise has broken completely down. If the engine is running, it is not in gear. “The Russians are greatly in need of clothing. Outside Moscow—and with the exception of Red Army officers— I saw no one so well dressed as the men who wait outside Labour Board offices in English cities to receive the dole. “I talked with a number of impartial newspaper men who knew Russia— Americans who have spent considerable time in the country. They told me that the present breakdown dates from the great purge of 1935, when, in a wave of nationalism, foreign experts were kicked out. There is simply no on e to carry on the industrial work. It is believed that Stalin signed with Germany simply because he was too weak to fight Germany.”—(Dr. Lancelot Hogben, Regius Professor of Natural History at Aberdeen University, who was in Russia on one of many visits after the war broke out.)