ENFORCED MIGRATNON

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18068, 20 April 1933, Page 4

ENFORCED MIGRATNON

HEART-BREAKING SCENES HUGE RUSSIAN TREK 10, G00, 000 PERSONS SHIFTED MOSCOW, Feb. 18. _ Hundreds of thousands of families in Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov and other large cities are frantically packing their few belongings for a tragic plunge into the unknown, as the redoubtable Ogpu (■State Secret Service) begins the enforcement of the rigorous passport regulations recently promulgated. Knowing that they will be classed among the undesirables in the amazing nation-wide sifting of 160,000,000 human beings, these families are preparing for the inevitable. In effect they face exile to unfamiliar regions and the heart-breaking task. of adjusting themselves to harsher living conditions. SCAMPER FROM CITIES Tens of thousands are scampering out of the urban centres before their turn comes. In that way, they hope, they will at least choose their new homes instead of being “assigned” to some inclement lumber or mining district. This hope is likely to bo disappointed, however. The passport system is being applied first in the six largest cities, but it will be extended quickly to the rest of the country. Those whom tho Government considers “useless mouths,” or potentially, if not actually, hostile to the dictatorship, will be ferreted out even in the tiniest hamlets of this immense land. From Moscow alone, according to common report here, some 800,000 inhabitants will be expelled. In all it is likely that the displaced populationshifted by official force to places where it can be more useful to the Kremlin’s political and economic programme—will run close to 10,000,000 by the timo the passport decree is fully enforced. FLOATING POPULATION Those affected are not necessarily all hereditary “class enemies” or former kulaks. Millions are peasants who fled from collectivisation to tho seemingly more attractive industrial centres. They constitute an enormous floating population, restlessly seeking work where feeding and housing conditions are somewhat moro tolerable. Others to be cleaned out of the urban districts aro people who, unablo to adjust themselves to the new regime, have been living by their wits—a little trading, an occasional job, some handicraft work at home winch the Government does not think indispensable. Among such people, and their number is legion, thero is at present a frenzied rush to obtain respectable jobs in factories and offices. A useful job is the only protection against the terrors of the passport system. Thoso who have jobs tread softly and scarcely dare to breathe for fear of losing them at this crucial point. To bo driven out of an office or factory just now may bring exile in its train. TRANSPORT SWAMPED While the passporls are being issued, tho authorities have taken a number of steps to strengthen their control. For instance, they have forbidden moving from one room or apartment to another. Barriers are also being raised by tho Government against hasty departures, especially through the control of the sale of railroad tickets. The transport system, already incredibly over-burdened, is being further swamped by tho sudden hurried shift of population. Under the passport decree every Soviet citizen over tho age of 16 must obtain from the G.P.U.A. a special identification passport which records in detail his or her “social history.” Tho chief item of this history, of course, is parentage. Never befero has tho status of people been so rigidly pre-determined by birth —descendants of the former rich, aristocratic, religious elements, or even tho sons and daughters of small Tsarist officials, gendarmes, etc., have only a nominal chance to escape tiic round-up of undesirables. A pathetic by-product of tho passport decree is a sudden reduction in the. price of old furniture and other household effects.

Foreseeing expulsion, families are hurriedly disposing of their property, accepting almost any price. Government organisations which buy up such property for resale —such as the commission shops—are reaping a more than usually rich harvest. Most of them, however, aro holding off buying in the certainty that prices will sink still lower as the panic spreads among “former” people who still have a few tilings from the good old days.