SOVIET FEROCITY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21576, 22 August 1933, Page 9

SOVIET FEROCITY

CAMPAIGN OF DEATH WAR ON "GRAIN WRECKERS" LARGE PUNITIVE FORCE COMMUNISTS AND JUDGES By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright (Received August 21, 5.5 p.m.) Times Cablo LONDON. Aug. 21 A message from Moscow states that tho price of bread has been doubled in Government shops throughout Russia. Paradoxically this is duo to the bumper grain crop Tho Government is preparing to discontinue bread rationing and therefore is trying to bring the official and tho free-marketing prices together. Tho Riga correspondent of the Times says the Soviet is intensifying its campaign against "grain wreckers." It has suspended tho regulation requiring provincial courts to inform the Supremo Court by telegram whenever they pass death sentences, as the process is "useless, involves wasteful expenditure and over-burdens the telegraph system." Picked Communists have been sent all over the country to strengthen tho punitive forces, which number 70,000. Judges have been sent on a circular tour to sentence to death peasants and directors of collective farms who fail to deliver .tho stipulated grain by a prescribed date. Tho number of death sentences passed is enormous.

The ferocity of tho campaign surpasses any since tho first revolution. The Soviet has appointed a Colonisation Committee to settle unpopulated Russian territory. Muraloff, formerly chief of the Moscow military district, has been appointed chairman.