CONDITIONS IN RUSSIA.

Waikato Times, Volume 116, Issue 19450, 14 December 1934, Page 9

CONDITIONS IN RUSSIA.

ATTITUDE TO CHRISTIANITY. PARCEL OF BI'BLES REFUSED (By Telegraph.—Special to Times.) TE KUITI,. Thursday. Miss Natalie Grushenkova, formerly a lecturer of the Leningrad University, now visiting New Zealand in the Interest of the ' Russian Missionary Society, delivered an address m the lUtz Theatre last night. Miss Grushenkova conies from a Russian family, and Is an able English, Russian, French, and German scholar. She passed through the whole revolutionary period, during which all the family possessions were lost- and terrible. privations were endured. The attitude of Soviet Russia toward Christian teaching was graphically described. The authorities had avowed that at the end of the second j Five-Year Plan in 1937 not a church | or Christian minister would exist. “ Despite Hie materialistic ruling out of a population of 100,000,000 people only i. 000,000 Communists are known," declared the speaker. Miss Grushenkova said lliat since she left Russia last year letters had been received revealing a great famine sweeping the Interior, and people in Hie Block Soil country were subsisting on coarse beet, having no flour or sugar, 'flic last parcel of Bibles sent into Russia was returned with the fol(Contimicu in ucxi column,)

lowing notice on it: “'l’liis book is prohibited in our country." " N'otwithstfindiiHT 17 r revolution have blighted my country I bine great hopes 01 us , ..1 > Christianity,” eondoded Mi«s Crushcttkosii.