BOLSHEVIK RULE

Southland Times, Issue 18934, 22 September 1920, Page 2

BOLSHEVIK RULE

DESCRIBED BY A RUSSIAN

EFFECT IN EAST SIBERIA

FROM PROSPERITY’ TO RUIN,

An interring visitor to Wellington at the present time is M. Constantine J. Rumkin, a trans-Baikal Russian, He represents a British firm at Tientsin, North China, whose operations extend into Manchuria—wonderfully productive country, in Chinese territory, the railways of which were held under a Russian concession by General Horvath. This remarkable man, according to the visitor, controls the whole of the Chinese Eastern railway up to the Siberian border, and though attempts have been made from time to time to displace his authority (which came originally from the old Imperial Government of Russia! by the Bolsheviks and others, he has successfully defied them. These railways were built with Chinese, French, and Russian money, and Horvath says he holds (hem, not for any Government, but for the shareholders. He took that stand after the Bolshevik Government took charge of affairs in Russia, and repudiated the nation's liabilities, and it was through him that the headquarters of the railway system were removed from Petrograd to Pekin. M. Rumbin said that, in common with the rest of the people in that part of the world, he was cut off from communication with Russia as soon as the Bolsheviks became dominant, and he could not, of his own knowledge, speak of the results of Bolshevik rule in Russia, but judging by what had happened in Siberia and by meeting refugees from Russia he could form a pretty good idea. It was all wrong, all too ghastly and terrible to speak alxmt, and those people who, in their misguided way, appeared to regard with favour the rule of the Bolsheviks should go there and see for themselves the chaotic ruin and desolation which had been brought upon the nation by the Soviet form of rule. A great many people had influenced by articles written for the Manchester Guardian by Professor Goode, but he only saw what the Bolsheviks desired that he should see, and then they sent him away again. Professor Goode, too, could not understand (he Russian language, and so was handicapped in his search for the true conditions of Russia. He himself had left Russia as long ago as 1905 because he was at odds with the prevailing conditions, but these conditions under Bolshevik rule were a thousand times worse, and were not to be excused by anyone with a grain of common humanity left, in his composition. If Bolshevism had been any good for the great mass of the people and for the nation, he, and tens of thousands of others, would have been with the Bolsheviks, hut after what he had seen in Siberia, and the innumerable tab's of soul-destroying horror he had heard from refugees in Manchuria, he could only condemn them.