SQUALOR IN RUSSIA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 77, Issue 263, 6 November 1934, Page 6

SQUALOR IN RUSSIA

OXFORD GRADUATE’S VISIT RLTI’ R N S DIS I LT. USION L D LONDON, Oct. 27. “1 have returned disillusioned, and cannot ire a Marxian Communist after what 1 saw in Russia.” This is the finding of Mr. John Brown, Oxford graduate, one of those whose expenses Io Russia were paid by Lord Nuffield, the motor magnate, as a challenge to Communist propaganda in Britain. Mr. Drown spent four months in Russia, “gate-crashing factories and workers i dwellings.’ ’ Mr. Brown says it was sickening to .see visiting intellectuals shepherded to show places and lapping up anything the officials said. “1 discovered a complete failure to maintain equality of wages,” he said. ‘ ‘ Coalminers are paid more than doctors or professors. “The housing is vile, owing to the great influx to the cities. Even the higher paid workers’ standard of living is below that of a man on the dole in England. There are no smiling .faces among the workers, who lack variety of food-stuffs. They subsist on melons, bread, fish and tea. The unemployed starve unless they beg. “I was amazed at the efficient tanks and machine-guns being manufactured at tho Putiloff Works, where 20,000 men are emp 1 oyed.”