UNLUCKY TO WIN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21165, 23 April 1932, Page 3 (Supplement)

UNLUCKY TO WIN.

LOTTERIES IN RUSSIA.

Apparently it does not pay Soviet citizens to collect their winnings if they draw prizes in the State lottery loans. A correspondent to Tho Times relates the experience of an old Russian poasnnt employed at a State farm in the Government of Pensa, who, more or less by force, was compelled to buy a ticket. To his astonishment he found that He had won the first prize in the State lottery, amounting to 500,000 roubles—nominally £50,000. " Tho peasant at once collected the money," states the correspondent, " and proceeded with his family to make tho most elaborate plans concerning their future. But in Russia man proposes and the Soviet Government disposes. As soon as the Soviet authorities found out who was the winner of the prize they declared the unfortunate peasant a ' kulak,' a ' profiteer,' and a ' bourgeois,' consequently confiscating all the money ho had now, and, this not sufficing, sent the bewildered old man and his wholo family, as ' socially dangerous elements,' to some remote place in Siberia." This explains why some 40,000,000 roubles, belonging to winners iu State lotteries, remain unclaimed.