MISERY IN MOSCOW.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18281, 23 December 1922, Page 7

MISERY IN MOSCOW.

BILLETING OF TYRANTS.

UNWELCOME DIRTY LODGERS

BOLSHEVIK HOUSING SCHEME.

The Bolshevik custom of quartering people who say they belong to the working classes on obvioas middle-class folk is a sourco of great suffering, writes the Moscow correspondent of a London paper.

A Government Housing Department, with illimitable powers, has charge of all houses—every house in Russia being Government property—and is empowered to carry into effect tho decree allotting to each person a certain number of square feet.

Imagine occupying, with your wife, servant, and, say. two small children, a flat of five rooms in Moscow. There is a room for each person, and no room is above tho prescribed limit, so you think you are all right. But tie perambulating commission, which is continually on the move to find rooms for thi Communists who are on its hands, arrives late one night. You mistake it for one of tho wandering gangs of armed burglars" who frequently rob houses and parley a long time with it. It loses its temper at being mistaken for a robber band and enters with a determination to be nasty. It soon gets an opportunity, for, though there are beds in the children's room—a bed is thus placed in every room of every house eo as to satisfy the requirements of the law on housing by giving the impression that every room is occupied at night—the children themselves are sleeping with their mother.

Next day you find five ragged hooligans, one Red Army soldier with a ragged overcoat, and three children quartered in your I two spare rooms—one of which you had I used as a study and the other as a dining room, a nursery for your children, and at the same time a workroom for your wife. Your wife has, of course, prided herself on the cleanliness of everything. What happens in a day or two can easily be puessed. Tho soldier develops typhus. Your wife also catches typhus. Your servant leaves you. ... The pro-Bolshevik visitor to Russia, and, to a 'still greater extent, the parlour Bolsheviks who have not visited Russia, are continually praising " the strong and reckless w ; ll and the firm discipline of the Communists." I take this phekse from a book written j by such a visitor, who also says : " My ' H-rn belief is that under Communist rule the anarchy and suffering of this transition perod have been combated, in some respects with relative succors, by the Communists, where every other party would have failed.'' . ..." A Tsar commander left the execution of his orders to passive obedience. The Communists back every decree, whether, it relates to education or health or industry, by an active educational campaign." Everybody, even their enemies, that the Bolsheviks are efficient. Yet the tribute to the resolution and capacity of the Reds is undeserved, for the Reds only show resolution and capacity on the one point of keeping in power and crushing all conspiracies against them. In everything else thev create a muddle. Now," if the Bolsheviks only show capacity on the one subject of keeping in power," wherein do they differ from the TsarVt Cover which preceded them? i For the Tsarist. Government, careless and I incompetent in many things, showed great care and supreme competence in guarding the person of the Sovereign am? crushing all plots directed acainst his Government. The Bolsheviks have thus come round full circle. In almost everything they stand where the Tsar stood. Was it worth the trouble to make the change?