GRIP OF FAMINE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21458, 4 April 1933, Page 9

GRIP OF FAMINE

STARVING RUSSIANS , ; SHOCKING REVELATIONS I VICTIMS IN THE CAUCASUS %.«£■ By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright LONDON, April 2 A special correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, after a tour of the North Caucasus and the Ukraine, during which he studied the effect of coU'i lectivisation, paints a horrifying picture of starving villagers whose produce has been seized to feed the people*:*.';, of the cities and for export. . The correspondent instances a market town in the Kuban district of the Caucasus, which, he says, is overrun with well-fed soldiers while the civilians are starving. They had practically nothing to eat for weeks. Scanty food was offered at a sale of ynfit animals to a crowd that was too poor to buy even miserable fragments of cheese and halfrotten potatoes. It is impossible, says the writer, to adequately describe the town's desolation and hopelessness, not merely on account of the famine, but because the population has been uprooted. The entire populations of villages have been exiled in North Caucasus, and 90 per - cent of the collectivised districts almost resemble a wilderness. The fields are choked with weeds, and the cattle are dead. " I was shown a piece of bread made from weeds, straw and an inadequate amount of millet," says the correspondent. "It seemed inconceivable that anyone could eat it, yet it was regarded as a rare delicacy. In the Ukraine, cattle and horses are dead, the fields are neglected and there is a meagre harvest. " The Soviet Gorernment has seized the grain with such thoroughness and brutality that there is no bread any- • r where. Unless the decay of agriculture" is stopped the famine will extend throughout the country. Russia is becoming a slave State. The standard of life of not 5 per cent of the Russian people approaches that of those of the British unemployed who are on the lowest scale of relief."