COLONISATION FAILURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20221, 4 April 1929, Page 9

COLONISATION FAILURE.

ORGANISATION IN RUSSIA

SERIOUS ALLEGATIONS MADE

(Received April 3, 9.25 p.m.) Times Cable. LONDON, April 2

The Riga; correspondent of the Times says the Workmen and Peasants' inspectorate is devising means to wind up the Murmansk Kombiilat, a Soviet organisation formed in 1923 ty exploit the Murmansk railway, forests and fisheries and to colonise 7,000,000 acres adjoining the railwav.

Tho inspectors report that the organisation lias shown incredible inefficiency. They assert that. it. has squandered millions of roubles, falsified its accounts, disorganised tho fisheries and lost £1.07,300 on the timber trade.

Jt is also alleged by the inspectors that tho organisation has settled only 160 families instead of the stipulated 4000 in five years.

Although Murmansk is within the An tic Circle, .situated on the Kola peninsula, the; northernmost part of West Russia, it is the only Russian port which is open the whole year. It is tho centre of a large, fishing industry. A railway connects it with Leningrad. A British flotilla was stationed there in 1917, and after the revolution three warships <md 5000 troops were sent there in 1918. In that year Tschaikowsky overthrew tho Soviet rule, and set up a provisional (iovernment with the help of the British forces, but these left in 1919. alid .Murmansk came again under Soviet rule.