HIGH RUSSIAN PRICES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21546, 18 July 1933, Page 9

HIGH RUSSIAN PRICES

FOOD BECOMES SCARCER HUNGER AND POVERTY Times Cable LONDON, July 16 The whole Soviet system is the biggest economic jam in history. The strictest censorship cannot long hide the truth, says a correspondent who lately visited Russia. No butter, milk or lemons are obtainable in .railway dining cars, and the traveller gets only a tiny omelette, a little black bread and tea for oi roubles, the official exchange for which is lGs, whereas outside Russia the rouble is worth 2d.

A member of the Communist Party, with a full ration card, gets a value far in excess of a worker earning 125 roubles a month, the purchasing power of which, if he is lucky, equals 10s a week in Britain. As the scarcity .of goods increases under the Five-Year Plan the prices rise. They are now 20 to 25 per cent higher than when the plan was inaugurated. Many of the public works are completely uneconomic, for instance, the Dnieprostroi power station, which cost £33,000,000. While it is a wonderful technical achievement, which should feed factories with tenfold its own capital, it feeds none, because none exists.

The Kremlin claims that 20 per cent more land is under cultivation but enormously less food is produced. Millions of workers have been goaded to desperation by hunger and poverty, and have become roving hordes seeking a livelihood.