RUSSIA TO-DAY.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 June 1925, Page 11

RUSSIA TO-DAY.

LIFE UNDER THE TERROR. PRICES TO AFFRIGHT MAYFAIR. MOSCOW’S HOUSING PROBLEM. (By R. S. Scholefield.) No. VI. (All Rights Reserved.) All over Europe the most acute postcar problems have been those connected with the cost of living and housing. In many lands the problem cropped up, and “Das tcure Leben,” “La crise des Loyers,” or •’Profiteering in Food,” have been frequent headings in the newspapers. Everywhere measures legal or extra-legal have been taken to deal with abuse. Germany formed the “Wohnungsamt” to deal with the housing question; in France the newspaper “Intransigeant” at one time used to denounce publicly those using the housing crisis to extort large premiums, while more recently Prefets of Departments have sold vegetables in the market-place to undersell profiteers (it is a pity that we do not imitate this!) and here we have our Rent Acts, and have had cases of seizure of houses by homeless ex-service men. Moscow possesses both problems, but intensified tenfold. In connection with the recent stabilisation of her money, and the introduction of the new “Ghervonetz” currency, it is the Bolshevik plan to restrict imports below exports, so as to show a “live trade balance. 5 ’ It is quite sound finance, and a praiseworthy effort, but the' trouble is that the sound people at the “Gosbank” (State Bank) do not have sound people supporting them in other departments. In a huge country like Russia, the economic minimum of imports must always come to no mean sum, and there must be an economic minimum of exports to hnance them. The expensive and unwieldy machinery of State industry has caused costly production, go that Russia cannot export her manufactured products to any extent; and the recent policy pursued towards the peasants has not been of a kind to encourage them to produce a large margin of grain for export. So that this, the great stand-by in all Russian budgets, cannot help them out of the morass. The natural and immediate result of the national financial policy is to shoot prices of all but the most absolute necessities to an almost incredible level and they reach their peak in the capital. Bread, meat, eggs, butter and milk cost roughly aibout the same as in England, and once leave these essentials, and you are lost! You come into a realm of phantasy, where all ordinary .standards have disappeared. The prices of some other food articles are interesting. Take fruit. This consists of Russian (mostly from the Crimea) and imported. Apples and pears are mostly sold by the “dyesyatok” of ten pieces, and the prices vary from 80 copecks (Is 9d) in summer to an average of 2 roubles (4s fid) in winter. Of course, if you want a better-class apple in winter, you must pay for it. I have seen them exposed at the large co-operative store in the Petrovka, which before the war was the shop of Muir and Mirrielees, at 4 roubles for ten, or about apiece! I think it would give something of a shock, even to the residents of Mayfair, to have to pay such a price! HALF A CROWN FOR A LEMON. Oranges and lemons come to a certain extent from South Russia, but either the season is short or the transport bad, for one seldom sees them. Those that do appear are imported from abroad (Italy in the' case of the lemons, via Odessa) and cost accordingly. I have never seen a lemon or an orange offered below 40 copecks and I have frequently seen them at 1 rouible. Shades of the New Cut-, and j other cheap markets! Nearly half a crown for a single lemon! And I have seen good ones offered in London at three a penny! A shilling would be about an average price for a cauliflower; tenpence for a cabbage Ido not know what accounts for the high cost here, except perhaps low production. As I left Russia, some people were congratulating themselves that you could now get a suit for 70 roubles, lowest price. That is to say, you could acquire the cheapest suit of shoddy for a little under the price at which any first-class tailor in England will make you one! If you want a really good suit of English material but made in Moscow, you. can pay up to £4O for it.

I fear to weary with endless repetitions of prices, but it may give some idea how they appear to Russians when I say that the average salary of a handworker is about 80 roubles a month, that of a university professor about 40. Little wonder that all sorts of minor

“graft” exists, and that people of all classes are driven to illegal expedients to augment their pittances! The housing shortage is due to two causes—increase of population and cessation of building. IBut the great destruction of houses during the revolution also contributed, and all over Moscow you can see the shells o-f bulletscarred buildings, only a small proportion of which are being reconstructed. There is a scheme in existence whereby tion of which are being reconstructed, of one of these half-ruined houses, when it will be his for a term of years, and he can exploit it as he pleases, but several causes act against wide advantage being taken of this. In the first place, few people in Moscow have the money (or would like to have it known, if they had). NO FAITH IN AUTHORITIES. In the second place, trust in the good faith of the authorities is low. And in the third place, where in Moscow are you to find tenants likely to be able to pay rents of a nature to give you a fair return on your capital A British syndicate was concerned with some of this rebuilding work, but I do not think that their degree of success was of a nature to attract others. Against this, Moscow has largely added to its population. The removal of the capital from Petrograd (now Leningrad) brought a horde of government servants to headquarters; and,. during the bad times, thousands came from the country towns to seek work at the centre? Before the war. Moscow had about a million and three-quarters population. The figures now are about 1,900,000 officially, but unofficially much more; and it is obviously difficult to estimate exactly a population, many of whom must be tucked away in odd dens

and passages. Thus we have the vicious circle of increased population and decreased space. Each house is in the hands of a “Domopravlenia” or Housing Committee, and, by a despicable breach of faith, Bolshevism now insists that the head of this shall always be a “responsible Communist” (it is a history in itself, into which I have here no space to enter). The legal space per head is about fourteen square feet, and additional space, if available, can be obtained only with the consent of the Housing Committee. One need hardly explain who are preferred, when extra space is being allocated. Rents, both for legal space and extra space, are on a sliding scale, which for “workers” depends upon their salaries, and are reasonable enough. An unemployed man, for instance, only pays one rouble a month. It is only when the “worker” ideal is departed from that rents become astronomical. A “speculator” (private trader), a “free” (nongovernment employed) engineer, professor, lawyer, writer might have to pay up to R. 250 a month and such foreigners as are in Moscow are mulcted' in enormous sums. The room of a “worker” in a house can sometimes be acquired at a low rent by paying a premium up to £2OO, but this is only justified in case of a very long stay. Rent and tax alone for a double room in the Savoy Hotel come to just under £2 daily, and a foreign banker in Moscow, who had managed to secure for himself a onestorey four-roomed furnished house, paid £l2OO premium for a five years’ lease, £B4O per annum rent, and over £9OO per annum taxes. It makes Park Lane or Fifth Avenue look pale!