MOSCOW ECONOMICS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17233, 12 April 1930, Page 10

MOSCOW ECONOMICS

♦ QUEER REGULATIONS OLD CLOTHES WANTED BERLIN. Feb. 22. Fresh and significant prodigies of Rolsiiovik economics are reported today. They can lie interpreted only as meaning that the outlook lor the liveyear plan is blacker than ever. Thus a Moscow telegram gives a list of things which Russian citizens are now to be permitted to receive as gifts from relations and friends abroad. It is to lie a case of carrying coal to Newcastle. The list includes flour, groats, dried vegetables, meat, milk, fish, and even caviare, in the production of which Russia, has practically a world monopoly. However, “small (piantities of cloth in*, footwear, eosmetical preparations, and articles of silver or g*>ld may also be imported in this manner. I'urther, all wear which has been sold and exported by the Bolshevik Covcrnmeiit may re-enter Russia as presents. 1 akin* the country as a whole,' that is, oi course, both eating your cake and having il. SO AI ’ AS -V ROM'S. Presumably to stimulate this strange form of import, it lias been decided that every addressee ol one of these gift parcels "will lie entitled to receive a piece ol soap. Moreover, an ollhe is to he opened at Riga which will execute orders received hy post lor tin* despatch of consignments of toodstufts to persons in Russia. This provision recalls the great, famine of 1921-22. At that, time the Hoover relief organisation opened in the chief European towns depots at which the, desnatch of food parcels to hungering Russians could be arranged for. Are the Bolsheviks anticipating such another cataclysmal conse-pumi-c of their economic wisdom It is not said whether the panels a>e to have Customs privilege, if not. the new decree will Ue a. dead letter. At one time or another thousands. <d refugees from Russia have received letters from their relatives still in that country imploring them not to send tbcm thither even the, ra'ggedest ol discarded raiment, as only wealthy people could afford to pay Hie import duties demanded on it at the Customs house. PLATINUM EXPORT. Mysterious also is the news that the Russian State, Rank has shipped to Hamburg a consignment of 750 kilogrammes'’ (15521 b) of platinum, which it values (excessively, it is said) at £500.000. It is said to !,o the first, ume that the lank lias exported platinum, and the consignment, is believed to come from the metal reserve, on which the currency is bused. 1 here arc no reasons for supposing that the ehervouetz inflation lias been suddenly transferred jut,, a deflation, allowing the Stale Rank to reduce its reserve. The paper Kurjer Czenvoity. quoted in ii. Warsaw telegram, states that, the Polish examining judge entrusted with the preparation of the case against the Communist- leaders recently arrested has established a connection between them and the great dollar forgeries. One ol the defendants, Cichowski by name., is slid “to have received large consignments of forged notes from Moscow via. Danzig and through the intermediation of the Russian Comme.ri ial Mission in Warsaw, and to have uttered them m Poland for the benefit of the {'ommmiisl organisation and propaganda.