RUSSIAN LAND POLICY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19929, 24 April 1928, Page 11

RUSSIAN LAND POLICY.

EICH PEASANTS TO SUFFER. LEADERS' CYNICAL POLICY. HUGE TAXATION SCHEME. (Received April 23, 9.50 p.m.) Times Cable. LONDON, Aprii 23. The Riga correspondent of the Times reports that the spring session of the Russian Parliament closed at the Kremlin with the unanimous budgeting of £608,800,000 of new taxation to be raised. Peasants' taxes will comprise 25 per cont. of the total.

Parliament deferred new epoch-making land laws until next session. A few delegates criticised this policy, but a peasant member, Chaloff, said tlie peasants condition had not been bettered.

Kalinin, a member of the Executive Council, reproved the speaker for his narrow views. He said the Government had crippled the wealthier peasants, established class warfare throughout the villages, and would attend to the poorer peasantry as soon as possible. The Commissar of Finance, Frumkin, said they must not entirely destroy the private trader until the economic situation improved. They bad of late crushed rather more traders than they had intended to crush. The Government must continue to crush, but to crush with care. The President, Rykoff, said he regretted the depreciation of Soviet currency. Stalin explained that' the land policy of the Government had mi been introduced before because three years ago Russia needed rich peasants to (xtend ami cultivate their areas. It would have been very silly to attack them then. Now they had reached the pre-war area of cultivated land, with the assistance of the rich peasants. They could safely destroy them, using their surplus land to form collective co-operative and State farms.