MISERY IN MOSCOW

Otago Witness, Issue 3590, 2 January 1923, Page 26

MISERY IN MOSCOW

BILLETING OF TYRANTS. UNWELCOME DIRTY LODGERS. BOLSHEVIK HOUSING SCHEME. 'The Bolshevik custom of quartering people who say they belong to the working classes on obvious middle-class folk is a source of great suffering, writes the Moscow correspondent of a London paper. A Government Housing Department with illimitable powers, lias charge of all houses —every house in Russia being Government property—and is empowered to carry into effect the decree allotting to each person a certain number of square feet. Imagine occupying, with your wife, servant, and say, two small children, a flat of five rooms in Moscow. There is a room tor each person, and no room is above the proscribed limit, so you think you are all right. But the perambulating commission, which is continually on the move to find rooms for the Communists who are on its hands, arrives late one night. You mistake it for one of tho wandering gangs of armed burglars who frequently rob houses and parley a long time with it. It loses its temper at being mistaken for a robber band and enters with a determination to bo nasty. It soon gets an opportunity, for, though there are beds in the children’s room—a bed is thus placed in every room of every house so as to satisfy the requirements of the law on housing by giving the impression that every room is occupied at night—the children uiemselves are sleeping with their mother. Next day you find five ragged hooligans, one Red Army soldier with a ragged overcoat, and three children quartered in your two spare rooms —one of which you had used as a study and the other as a dining room, a nursery for your children, and at the same time a workroom for your wife. Your wife has, of course, prided herself on the cleanliness of everything. What happens in a day or two can easily be guessed. The soldier develops typhus. Your wife also catches typhus. Your servant leaves you. . . . The pro-Bolshevik visitor to Russia, and, to a still greater extent, the parlour Bolsheviks who have not visited Russia, are continually praising “the strong and reckless will and the firm discipline of the Communists.” I take this phase from a book written by such a visitor, who also says: “My firm belief is that under Communist rule the anarchy and suffering of this transition period have been combated, in some respects with relative success, by the Communists,. where every other party would have ;ailed.” . . “A Tsar commander left the execution of his orders to passive ohedieioe. The Communists back every ■decree, whether it relates to education or health or industry, by an active educational campaign.” Everybody, even their enemies, agrees that the Bolsheviks arc efficient. Yet the tribute to the resolution and capacity of the Reds is undeserved, for the Reds only show resolution and capacity on the one point of keeping in power and crushing all conspiracies against them. In everything else they create a muddle. Now, if the Bolsheviks only show capacity on the one subject of keeping in pow-er, wherein do they, ..differ from the Tsarist Government which preceded them? For the Tsarist Government, careless and incompetent in many things, showed great oa.re and supreme competence in guarding the person of the Sovereign and crushing all plots directed against his Government The Bolsheviks have thus come round full circle. In almost everything they stand where the Tsar stood. Was it worth the trouble to make the change?