The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. THURSDAY, MAY 24, 1928. THE DON BASIN PLOT

Southland Times, Issue 20494, 24 May 1928, Page 6

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. THURSDAY, MAY 24, 1928. THE DON BASIN PLOT

Russian prophecies of greater exports of grain four years from now represent the hopes of the Bolsheviks who think that by these means they will make themselves independent of the peasants, the petty landholders and capitalists they themselves created when they distributed the land, even vast areas held on a communal basis, among them at the second revolution. The Russian peasant does not like the Bolsheviks, but he fears to encourage the return of the Tsarists lest their elevation to power make way for their resumption of the land. This fear does not lessen the difficulties of the Bolshevik Government, which has to keep down prices and limit taxes and sequestrations to avoid driving the grower of grain into open antagonism. But can the Bolshevik system establish and run State farms successfully? It is extremely doubtful, and for support of that skepticism one has only to turn to the recent troubles in the Don Basin which are being “explained away” by means of a trial of plotters, now in progress. When the trouble first appeared the Government was surprised. The extent of the Government’s unpreparedness for the “antiSoviet plot” disclosures by the Communist Party and the Cheka is revealed in the newssheet issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party for workmen. In an edition devoted to the Don Basin there occurs a page devoted to statements and reports by miners, not one of them blaming or mentioning engineers, specialists or foreigners. They attribute the entire blame to the incapacity and negligence of their own Communist managers and officials, and to the prevalence of drunkenness encouraged by the State vodka monopoly. Evidently after this page was prepared the “discovery” of the plot occurred. The news that the Cheka had evidence of the sabotage by engineers, specialists and foreigners in the Don Basin mines came suddenly to the Government, and it was inserted in the news-sheet, but without the page of reports from the area supposed to be disaffected being discarded. Hence the news-sheet, which is published under official sanction, and in the interests of the Bolshevik supplies evidence to contradict the charge that the troubles in the Don Basin were due to the anti-Soviet intrigues. These report? from miners are illuminating. One miner wrote:—“Drunkenness is irresistibly increas ing. The whole of the Don Basin is flooded by a sea of vodka.” Another said:—“Not a single pay-day passes without knifings and murders. . . . This is the biggest mine in the Don Basin, and on Mondays and days following holidays not more than from 30 to 40 per cent, go to work.” A third stated that a co-operative store supplied his mine with 34 truckloads of Vodka last year, but they have already used 20 truckloads this year. “They wallow in vodka,” he adds.

“smash furniture and windows, heat the stoves white-hot, and wake up to find the whole barracks blazing.” The rest of the page is filled with descriptions—under such headings as “In the Clutches of Mismanagement,” “Three Hundred Thousand Roubles Thrown Away,” “Annensky Miners Without Water”—of the deplorable labour conditions, irregularity of payments and dismissals This failure of Bolshevik management in the Don Basin was more striking than the displays of ineptitude in other industrial centres, but these troubles were all foreshadowed by Dzershinsky, the chief of the Cheka, whose mysterious death followed close on the heels of his very frank warnings to the Bolsheviks of the evils following in the train of their administrative methods and their worship of reports and red tape The “plot” of the Don Basin was discovered for the purpose of taking the eyes of the people off the terrible conditions under the Bolshevik control, but the complaints of the miners who are members of the party and contribute to the party publication are sufficient to shoW how the industrial field is revealing the failure of Communism. If the mines lead to failures of this kind, will State farms be any better? The Russian peasant farmer is going to remain one of the real powers under the Soviet banner.