CONDITIONS IN RUSSIA.

Shannon News, 8 June 1923, Page 1

CONDITIONS IN RUSSIA.

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PEASANTS WITH "FORTUNES/' , UNABLE TO COUNT MONEY."

Many strange tales Lave come out of Soviet Russia. Some* guests of the Bolsheviks, who saw on.y what they wanted to see. wou.d have us believe .. ~.i is only a rough ro-iu iO Utopia, says a London paper. Otlurs, enforced g'uests of Lenin. Trotsky., and company, tell a very different story. Among the latter is Mrs. Margurite Harrison, an American newspaper cor. respondent, who go.t to Moscow via Poland, in 1020. She was arrested twice. The first time she was released at the a of 4 8 hours, after she had given her promise to "avoid certain places and people, and do certain thing's.” The second time she was not so fortunate, and she spent som L . nine months in prison

Before her arrest Mrs Harrison had had interviews with Lenin, Trotsky (who kissed her hand). Tchit'oherin, and the dreaded Djcrzhinsky. She gives interesting portraits of these d.ctators of the present-day Russia, whom she found, on the whole, not so red as they lia.v ( . been painted; hut the principal interest of her story is in tier everyday experiences. One or two little incidents which sh<_. relates, give a good idea of the fopsy. tuvvv state of affairs to which Bolshevism has brought Russia. Shopping under Soviet rule and ac. cording to rules and regulations—as opposed to buying from speculators, which is risky—is evidently mor e of a business than a woman v/ould like to. make it. Once Mrs. Harrison needed a saucepan, and in order to find out how the Moscow housewife did her shop, ping through legal channels, applied at the Moscow Food .Administration for a permit to buy it at the Soviet store. A LENGTHY PROCESS. “Upon presentation of papers prov. ing my identity, and my tight to live in Moscow, as a correspondent of the bourgeoise press, I received on order utitiing me to purchase a saucepan. This order was countersigned by three officials in the Food Adrninistraton, the process taking an ent're day On tk second day I exchanged it for an order permitting me to go through the Gov. eminent store, where samples were on exhibition, and pick om theparticu.nl kind of saucepan I desired. I chose it by,, number. whereupon’ I received another coupon entitling me to purchase it at the Government co-opera-tive in the district in which I lived. “Then I had to ascertain on what day saucepans would be on sale. On the morning of that day I was obliged to go early, and stand in line until the shop was opened, in order to make sure that all the saucepans would not be sold before I arrived. The entire process occupied a large part of my time for a whole week, but the saucepan was good and cheap, only three roubles. Similar ones sold on the Sou. kharevka (an open market) for 2500." •tW* 9 - 2 ■ • NO RIGHT TO SELL. Unofficial selling was as dangerous as unofficial buying. A workman’s wife, unable to get enough food for her three children, went one day and tried to sell six silver spoons. She did not come back, and it was not untii three weeks later that her husband found her —in prison. The peasants who had foodstuffs to sell made vast sums by their risky traffic, hut many of them could not count and so had no idea how much they were making. A friend of Mrs Harrison, who was employed in the Commissariat, of Agriculture, was pressed by oae of the peasants to come and spend a weck.end in his village. “At first she refused, but finally con. -sented, on being promised a large basket of eggs and several pounds of honey to take home. .. On Sunday morning, after church, she found the real object of the invitation. Several of the leading peasants came to see her, carrying huge sacks stuffed with what was apparently waste paper.

“Barischna." they “we have a great deal of money. No one in the village knows haw much he has, because no one here can count over ten thousand roubles. Will you count our money for us?" She counted all that day and far into the night. Each of the peasants had at least several millions.”

Mrs Harrison, drily, “but it was a great success.”

Mrs Harrison gives a vivid account of her life in prison. She seems to have kept remarkably cheerful, despite her sufferings, due to bad air, bad food, and bad quarters. The greatest problem was keeping clean. “Usually there was no hot water to be had, so I used to save hot tea mornings and evenings in empty bottles that had been sent to the prisoners with milk. At night I took t tea-bath in a small eartliernware bowl that had been sent me by the Czechoslovak Red Cross < and in the morning I wash, od my underclothes in the same man. nor., one or two pieces a day/’

A CONVERT TO COMMUNISM. Perhaps the most promising convert to Communism whom Mrs Harrison met was a five-year-old girl, playing with a doll. “What a pretty doll. Is she yours?” asked Mrs Harrison, and

was promptly put right with the reply: “Oh, no. She isn’t my dolly; she's our dolly!” It is significant of the state of affairs in Russia to-day, that Mrs Har. rison, looking back on lier’experiences, declares that in these trobulous times f no one can know the heart of Russia unless he lives with the Russian people, "both in and out of prison." There Is a moral in that, for some of the investigators have come home and declared, like Mr Lansbury, that: “All is well in Russia, the churches are still open.” So, evidently, arc the prisons.