FACING DEATH

Wairarapa Daily Times, 29 August 1933, Page 5

FACING DEATH

FAMINE IN RUSSIA/;« \ STRIKING REVELATION. Press Asajjhiilju Electric Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, Monday. The “Daily Telegraph’s” special observer in the Northern Caucasus makes a striking revelation of the famine conditions. He says bread has completely disappeared from the dietary of tlie peasant-owner, who is resigned to despair. Complete apathy, characterises the people. The starving peasant is practically a prisoner in ,his village, and must remain to await the end.

In. some villages in the Northern Caucasus, the population is almost extinct, but the authorities will not acknowledge that a famine exists, though without doubt it is more acute than in 1921, when hundreds of thousands. u'6re s'avdd. by the American Relief Association. When sufferers implored help they ' were told, they could .eat bread wliicli- they- had ’hidden away.

’ The distribution ofi one'pound • of bread daily would prevent death from ;i starvation, yet the Soviet .Government exported 1,500,000 tons of grain of the 1932 erop. It may. well be that the extermination of the Cossack population would be advantageous and desirable to the ■.Government. . || One "meets people with legs swollen by. starvation; others are so weak that they lie about the roads, awaiting, death. Bodies'are even seen in. the 1 ’ streets of towns. There is a grave danger of an epidemic from these cir- : cumstances.

The special correspondent of the “Daily Express” says five million Russians are facing death and starvation owing to the tragic weakness of the Soviet’s second five-year plan. Managers and workers anxious to provide for their families steal whatever they can. The pilfering fever has reached such proportions that goods cannot be transported in Russia unless accompanied by armed guards. Tractors arrive on farms with the most valuable parts stolen on the road.