LESS PRIVATE TRADING

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 222, 8 December 1927, Page 18

LESS PRIVATE TRADING

COMMUNISTS ELATED VODKA YIELDS £50,000,000 By Cable.—Press Association. — Copyright. LONDON, Tuesday. The Riga correspondent of “The Times” reports that the Communist leaders hail the decline in the prosperity of private traders as one of the chief victories on the home front. All the speakers at a Communist congress said the decline was a great achievement. Stalin, a member of the Central Executive of the Soviet, said traders and vodka were necessary evils, useful for oiling the financial machinery. The vodka monopoly was producing £50,000,000 a year. He hoped for an increase of 300 per cent, in consumption, owing to improved distribution. The Commissar of Trade, Mikoyan, said the total private trade had declined by 19 per cent, in 1927, and the wholesale trade by 22 per cent., owing to the special taxation and the withdrawal of credit and stricter control. These facts were paraded before the congress in refutation of the charge made by their opponents that Stalin and his followers were unduly sympathetic toward the bourgeoisie.— “Times.”