RATIONS IN RUSSIA.

Waikato Times, Volume 104, Issue 17502, 8 September 1928, Page 14 (Supplement)

RATIONS IN RUSSIA.

PEASANTS DEFY SOVIETS. RIOTS IN MANY TOWNS. (By a Russian Correspondent). Stalin, the chief of the Moscow Bolsheviks, is finding the Russian peasants too strong for him. Despite his coercive measures they will not deliver to him the wheat which he requires to feed the towns. As a consequence ho has had to buy wheat in the international market a-s a means of averting a political upheaval. Town populations are rationed, and food riots have occurred in several places. Pravda, the Soviet-controlled Moscow newspaper, stated on July 1 that “the extraordinary measures adopted by the Soviet Government to solve the problem of bread supplies” have failed to achieve the expected results and that the town population is already suffering. There is an abundance of grain in Russia, particularly of wheat, but supplies do not and cannot reach the town population owing to the policy of the Government. Instead of dealing with the peasantry on simple economic lines, the Soviet have made every effort to make grain supplies “a political question of great importance,” and the peasants, in spite of drastic measures against them, refuse to deliver their grain to the State. Neither the threat of confiscation nor exile, nor the actual penalties, have moved them. Their plea is always Lhe same: “Give us manufactured goods and we will give you grain.” But they plead in vain, since under the Soviets there are not enough manufactured goods to go round. The peasants appear to have realised their strength and, according to Pravda, Ihe boycott of the Soviet grain collectors has become “slabil-