STRANDED IN RUSSIA

Taranaki Daily News, 29 January 1931, Page 7

STRANDED IN RUSSIA

BRITISH SUBJECTS IN NEED.

LADY PAGET’S RELIEF PLAN.

Lady Muriel Paget, who recently arrived in Moscow was intending at the end, of November to visit Leningrad in connection with her plan to establish a hostel in Dyetskoe Syelo, a village near Leningrad, where there are two of the former Imperial palaces, as the best means of relieving the distress which exists among several score of indigent British subjects who have been stranded in Russia since the revolution, Most of them are advanced in years and unable to do regular work, and have existed up to the present with the aid of benefactions which have been contributed for their support by charitable persons in England. ’ , , , , “The establishment of a h°stel under British management,” Lady Paget said to an interviewer, “would make it possible to support these old people both more comfortably and more economically. This seems -a better solution of the problem than repatriation, because most of the 60 British subjects who have more or less definitely expressed a desire to enter the projected hostel have lived away from England so long that they have few ties there, while they have Russian friends and, in some case, relatives, from whom they would not wish to be separated.” An investigation carried, out by a doctor 1 in Leningrad, where most of the prewar British residents in Russia are living, reveals a serious state of need in tlie matter of clothing and food; The possibility of importing food for an organised group of people in the proposed hostel would provide a more balanced and adequate diet. The Soviet authorities have shown a. disposition to co-operate with Lady Paget’s scheme, and have agreed to place at her disposal a stretch of land, facing on a small lake in Tsarskoe Syelo. Lady Paget brought with her the architectural plan of the hostel, which is intended to accommodate about a hundred inmates. While a final decision had not yet been adopted on this point, it was expected that, with a view to avoiding delay, the dwelling would be built in England and shipped to Russia, so that only the foundation need be laid in Russia. It was hoped that the hostel could be erected as soon as the snow disappears nexr spring. . . Some of the prospective residents ot the hostel are former governesses employed by Russian well-to-do families before the revolution. Others are former employees of British firms which did business in Russia in pre-war times. Most of them are in Leningrad, but one picturesque figure, an ex-jockey, who w#? once noted for his hard riding on the Russian race tracks, but is now old unci blind, and several other British subjects are. in Moscow, while others are scattered in various provincial towns. Lady Paget says she feels that A special relief problem jjxists in this case, because there is no well-to-do British community in Russia capable of handling the situation with its own resources. As soon as the plans for opening the hostel are fixed and definite a committee, whieh has come into existence in England tn support her project, will issue an appeal for funds for the maintenance and upkeep of the’-kosteL