The Wanganui Chronicle THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1949 SLAVE CAMPS IN RUSSIA

Wanganui Chronicle, 17 February 1949, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1949 SLAVE CAMPS IN RUSSIA

-"pHE admission that slave eamps exist inside Russia comes as no startling news to the western world. The estimates of the officials of the United States Government are very wide, ranging from 8,000,000 to 14,000,000. Some published estimates have been 15,000,000. Even if the lowest estimate is accepted it represents a very high proportion of the population under detention, The estimate of the population of the Soviet Union in 1940 was 193,000,000. Assuming that the increase has lifted the total population to 200,000,000 today, the total male population would be within the region of 50,000,000. Of the total population, 80 per cent, are rural and only 20 per cent, are urban. It is the experience of most countries that the rural population is not very politically minded, although under a Communist setup it is most likely that many members of the rural population would come into conflict with the Government. Ignoring the fact that the percentage of politicals would be very much greater among the urban dwellers than among the rurals it is clear that some 16 per cent, of the male population must, inside Russia, be engaged in enforced labour of the slave type. This on the lowest of the American estimates.

It will be urged that women form a large part of the labour force of the Soviet Union. This is actually so both in rural and urban occupations. It is to be assumed that a considerable portion of the 8,000,000 internees in the slave camps are woman and if this be accepted, then the proportion of internees to the total labour force would be something less than 16 per cent. On the basis that women represent half of the labour force of the Soviet Union and on this account half of the occupants of the camps are womenfolk, then the percentage is reduced to 8 per cent. Eight persons in every hundred adults is under slave conditions, four in every hundred, and two in every twenty-five. Translate these conditions into Wanganui City and contemplate what a relative size camp would be established, say, just beyond the Araiftoho cemetery. That camp would hold no less than 2160 adult persons of former Wanganui domicile. To allow these people to remain and work in these camps and leave their children to run wild in the city would be impossible and so it would be necessary to bring the children into the orbit of the camp. Follow this result through further and consider how, under Russia’s present lack of trained personnel in all directions, this accumulation of youngsters would fare as far as healthy conditions of living are concerned, and particularly insofar as education and personal training is concerned. Their chances of getting a fair deal in life would be greatly reduced.

Insofar as the conditions that apply to the people engaged in the camps are concerned being in any sense remedial, it would be necessary to ask: “Remedial of what?” Opinions are hardly likely to be formed by enforced labour. Enforced labour being cheap is likely to be put to inefficient uses. But because no wages are paid for slave labour it does not follow that the employment of slave labour is profitable. The great weakness of slave labour is that it costs so much in supervision that it becomes uneconomical. In the days of slavery in the United States the cost of supervision was so oppressive upon the masters that they compromised with the slave system and introduced the task system. After a set task had been completed by the slave he was put upon a wage basis. Slavery was breaking down before the civil war and possibly it would have disappeared as a result of its own weakness. This possibility may not amount to a probability, however, because human nature is obtuse when it is required to advance its own interests by relinquishing what appears to be an advantage. To leave the Russians to work out their own destiny in respect to slavery is possibly the only course that is practicable at the moment, but it is improbable that the Soviet authorities will rise to the enlightened action of sending home all of these unfortunate people. To do so would require an act of faith. The rulers of the Soviet Union are today short on faith and thus they will cling to this seeming advantage of a large army of unpaid labour. The longer this army of the enforced remains in Russia the bigger will it probably grow and will present itself to the Government as an increasing potential source of danger. It presents to the Government a dilemma: if it is continued it will grow as a menace, if it is dissolved it will be a fertiliser of discontent in the whole of the Soviet Union. It is possible that only a large-scale revolution will bring about a radical change in respect to the internees of these camps, a fact which cannot altogether escape the people of the Soviet Union territory. Revolutions are seldom engineered and carried out successful in country districts. It is the urban population that is able, by reason of the closer proximity, to confer and act quickly, and it is there that revolutions arc started. The difficulty in Russia is for a revolutionary movement to take action simultaneously in various parts of the country, the great distances making it difficult to bring about concerted action in a number of widely separated centres. It is easy for a central authority to isolate an area in which a revolt shows itself and to prevent contacts with other sections. The directing of the spotlight upon this subject by representatives of the United States of America will serve a very useful purpose. It will reveal that Communism is not a doctrine of freedom but of the reverse.