SOVIET RUSSIA

Waipa Post, Volume 48, Issue 3470, 24 May 1934, Page 7

SOVIET RUSSIA

FAILURE OF COMMUNISM.

A very definite conviction that Communism, as adopted and followed by Soviet Russia, was an utter and abject failure, is held by Mr. William C. Edwards, a London Merchant, who arrived at Wellington from Sydney by the Makura on Monday in the course of a tour around the world. Mr. Edwards, in an interview, said that in his opinion the revolution had beggared the Russians, but, on the other hand, it had saved the world by demonstrating the impossibility of the Communist idea until the millennium arrived, when everyone was industrious, honest, and virtuous. Mr. Edwards said it might be safely asserted that morality had ceased to exist in Russia. There were women with several husbands, husbands with several wifes, and women with several children, illegitimate, as we called them. Divorce was single, and when the parties separated the children were abandoned and were in many places like'stray cats. Prostitution was common among the younger women, and he knew of a case not long ago when a Swedish vessel arrived at a Russian port and mothers brought down their girls, many of them under 12 years of age, to the quayside for immoral purposes. Mr. Edwards explained that he first visited Russia in 1889, and had been there several times since, the last occasion being in 1916. Although he had not visited the country since the revolution, he nevertheless had had a good opportunity of learning about the conditions there, for he owned, considerable property i'n Finland adjacent to the Russian boundary, and had come much into contact both with the Russians themselves and persons who were returning from that country. From his conversations with officials, he was convinced that neither Communism nor Socialism existed in Russia to-day, and he ventured to say that it might be five, ten or even one hundred years before Russia would be in a position to supply herself with adequate quantities of food. The most ghastly and terrifying thing about Russia was the way her leaders were calmly contemplating the starvation of millions of their countrymen. It was common for a husband on his way home from his daily work to take the place of his wife who had been waiting all day in a food queue, and then after a long wait find that there was no more food. He would then go home to Any attempt to tell the truth of the "Russian situation was resisted by the police. People were invariably taken around in "show'' parties, and it was related that a visitor was on one occasion taken to an operating theatre at a hospital which was greatly admired. When an official was asked how many operations had been performed in the theatre the reply was that there had been none. Any one seen speaking with an Englisman was immediately interrogated, and any visitor to Russia was followed and primed with a lot of facts which might be true to the extent of a thousandth part. The result of the revolution was that the intelligentsia of Russia was destroyed, Mr. Edwards continued. The officials in power were frightened of each other, and he understood that it was. common for M. Stalin, who formerly was reputed to have been a bandit in the Caucausus, to travel in a limousine with blinds drawn, accompanied by four other similar vehicles, so that the people in the streets would not know the car in which he travelled. The clock had been put back 200 years in Russia, and with the best brains of the country destroyed or exiled it would be exceedingly difficult to remedy the existing state of conditions.