BOLSHEVIK RULE.

Wairarapa Age, 15 December 1920, Page 4

BOLSHEVIK RULE.

Under Bolshevik rule the Soviet Ifiidors \x\ ]']issj;j JrjStij.iitpi'l R system of forced, labour muter which the. workin an was kept steadily at work for lons' hours, and was unable to change his work without permission. He could not oven leave the town in which he was employed without special leave. Tl' he disobeyed orders his food supplies were cut off; the rations allowed him were quite inadequate, and he was paid in practically valueless paper money with which he could buy little or nothing. When strikes, which arc absolutely prohibited, did take place, they were put down remorselessly with machine-guns and artillery. Even such a sympathetic observer of events in Russia as Mr. A. Ransome, in his "Six Weeks in Russia" (19.19), had to admit "the horrible state of the houses, miserable f.ifid, the absence of light and heating, tjio ruinous prices of food (.10s and £ij n. pound for bread and never less than £lO a pound for sugar), the lack of boots, the far worse condition physically of workmen than in 1912, and the' decay and imminent collapse of buildings/ 1 concerning which he wrote: "Tn another three years wo shall have all the buildings in Moscow tumbling about our ears," while, he added, "Everybody in Moscow and Potrograd is both hungry and cold."