THE WASHINGTON HERALD Sunday, June 4th 1933
RURAL—A typical group of peasants receiving mail on a
collective farm in the "Black Earth" region of Soviet Russia to
which Mr. Jones refers in the accompanying
article. Soviet Photo Agency Photo
‘ Bread, We Are Starving!’ Is Cry
Heard Throughout Russia,
Finds Gareth Jones
Five-Year Plan Has
Brought Country to Famine, Says Former Lloyd George Aide After Visit
There
By GARETH JONES,
Former Foreign Affairs Secretary to David Lloyd George,
Who Recently Completed a Visit to Soviet Russia With Which He Is Familiar,
Speaking Russian Fluently.
LONDON, May, 1933.
S OVIET RUSSIA today is suffering from a famine
which many foreign observers in that country consider far worse than that of
1921. Although the Soviet Government denies there is famine, I witnessed it
with my own eyes.
In March there was one cry I heard everywhere: "There
is no bread!" I first heard it from peasants in Moscow streets when an
old Ukrainian came up to me and said:
"Give me something to buy bread. We are dying in
Ukraine, for we have no bread. So I have come to Moscow to buy bread which I
shall mail back to my village."
Before long a young Ukrainian peasant came to me and
begged: "We are dying in our villages," he said, "and we in the
Ukraine are doomed, for we have no bread."
Peasants from many parts of Russia have flocked to Moscow
to seek bread. I talked to a Crimean girl, who was selling white spring
flowers. Her plaint was: "We have no bread in the Crimea and people are
dying of hunger."
I talked to a family of peasants - father, mother and two
small children - who were wandering aimlessly near the opera house and asked
me for money. They had migrated from Kiev and told of the famine there.
"There is no bread," they also said. I talked to Nijni Novgorod peasants
selling on street corners wooden bowls carved at home. Speaking of their
district on the Volga, they said there was no bread there.
"They have taken all our farms away, and now we are
starving," they said.
I talked to many peasants who had come from surrounding
districts and was surprised to learn from each - what I was later to find
out for myself - that even in districts near Moscow there is no bread.
Decline
Nine-tenths of Horses Perish
"Moscow is feeding us. If it were not for Moscow we
should starve," were phrases I often heard.
There has been a peasant invasion of the bigger towns in
Russia and the statements of these peasants were the first evidence of a
famine.
"How many cows have you in your village?" I asked
peasants I met in the towns. Their answers revealed another feature of the
famine - the disastrous decline in livestock in Russia. One Ukrainian in
Moscow replied:
"In my village we had a hundred and fifty cows. Now
there are only six."
A peasant woman living about thirty miles from Moscow
replied: "We had three hundred cows and now we have less than one hundred."
"We have only one tenth of our cows left," was the answer
of another peasant.
"How many horses have you in your village?" was my second
question. Their replies pointed to a catastrophic decline in horses. In one
village horses had decreased from approximately 80 to 18. Most peasants
claimed that approximately nine-tenths of the horses have perished. While
this seemed certainly exaggerated, the information I received from
foreigners who have lived for years in Russia supported the main trend of
what the peasants said.
To find out real conditions in the villages I decided to
tramp alone for several days through a small part of the Central Black Earth
District and a small part of the Ukraine.
One night I entered a compartment in the slowest train
between Moscow and Kharkoff which stopped at every station. On this journey
I witnessed many signs of famine. At numerous stations I got out and talked
to the peasants lining the railway track. The cry was the same everywhere:
"We have no bread, many are dying."
In Rzhava I talked to a group of women peasants who
seemed stranded and bewildered. They explained: "We have come from the
Ukraine, and we are trying to go north. We have had hardly any bread for two
months. In our villages they are dying rapidly. We want to go further north,
but they will not give us railway tickets, and we do not know what to do."
Warning
Villagers Desperate for Food
Aboard the train itself passengers told of the hunger in
the villages. One young Communist, who was from a village, but had worked in
a town, said:
"I have had no bread for a week, only potatoes. My
brother died of hunger. When I left my mother and two sisters a couple of
days ago they had only two glasses flour left."
In the train were many peasants who said they had come to
the towns to look for bread. It is thus a paradox that now in Russia there
is some bread in the towns and no bread, or little bread, in the villages.
Hence, the towns, which are visited by tourists, give a false Impression of
the Russian situation.
Finally I got off the train in a small village and
tramped through the snow. "Be careful in the villages. They are desperate
from hunger," was a last word of warning as I left the compartment. With my
rucksack piled with food I had bought in the Torgsin stores with dollars, I
set out across the snow. The next few days I spent in villages, sleeping in
peasants’ huts, talking with everybody I met.
This, of course, was a great exaggeration, but there is
no doubt that some of the population has died.
"Ost-Express," a German news agency which is considered
highly reliable in official circles, estimates that in some of the German
colonists regions in Russia from 15 percent to 25 percent of the population
has perished. Letters sent by German colonists appealing for help from
relatives make tragic reading. Here are some typical extracts from letters,
of which thousands are sent to Germany and elsewhere:
"You just cannot imagine what hunger means. We have
already had it once and that sad life is before our eyes again. The future
is terrible."
"We have not had for one and a half weeks anything except
salt and water in our stomach and our family consists of nine souls.
A letter from the Volga region contains the passage:
"One cannot get past on the road. It is marked by human
bodies. There is nobody left among all our friends who has anything. … Your
brother’s four children died of hunger and all the others are not far from
that. They exist - it is not good to write -by eating carrion."
I received confirmation from Russians and foreigners who
had recently been in Central Asia, Kazakstan, West Siberia, North Caucasus,
Ukraine and the Volga districts that the famine is serious in those
sections.
Such is the famine in Russia in the Spring following the
end of the Five-Year Plan. What are its causes? What of the future?
Copyright. 1933, by N. Y. American. Inc, Inc.
This is the first of two articles by Mr. Jones on famine
conditions in Soviet Russia. The next will appear in an early issue,
probably next Sunday
* * * * *
The Shock Brigade
America First
BOSTON SUNDAY ADVERTISER
Soviet Collective Farm Move Caused Famine in Russia, Says Gareth Jones
Human Factor Ignored in Five-Year Plan, He Declares
By GARETH JONES
Former Foreign Affairs secretary to David Lloyd George, Who Recently Completed a
Visit to Soviet Russia, with Which He Is Familiar, Speaking Russian Fluently.
London, May 1933. (Approximately May 14th 1933)
The famine now killing hundreds in the Soviet Union
cannot be attributed to the weather, for in the last few years climatic
conditions have - with the exception of drought in some areas in 1931 -
blessed the Soviet government. Then why the catastrophe.
The famine is man made. It is the result of the Soviet
policy of abolishing the private farm and replacing it by large collective
farms, where the land and cattle were owned in common. This policy of
collectivisation, rushed with madcap speed during the Five-Year Plan, aimed
at Americanising the grain fields of Russia.
The wheat fields of the United States formed, an example
the Bolsheviks sought to imitate. The tiny patches of the small peasants
were to disappear and thousands of tractors were to sweep across vast areas.
Science was to increase production with fertilizers.
By 1933 this great revolution was to make Russia again
the granary of the world. Large scale farming under Communist direction and
without private ownership of land was to be the salvation of the Bolsheviks.
The Soviet leaders took everything into account except
one thing - the human factor. They studied the soil, the tractor, science,
fertilizers, - but omitted MAN. As a result Paul Scheffer’s prophecy that
collectivisation would be the doom of Communism is likely to become reality.
Land Hunger.
That’s What Made the 1917 Revolution
The Russian peasant has been too powerful for the Soviet
Government. In a series of visits to Russia I have had hundreds of
conversations with Russian peasants and analyzed them. There are four
dominant ideas running through almost all these conversations. They are:
1. LAND. 2. BREAD. 3. COW. 4. LIBERTY
These four words sum up the mentality of the Russian
peasant. How many times have I heard them say: "I want my own land. How can
I be happy unless I have my own land? Why should I work if I have not got my
own land?"
The land hunger of the Russian peasant made the 1917
revolution. Throughout the centuries his cry has been: "Land, more land!"
Through the revolution he increased his supply of land and became more
capitalistic than ever.
When the Five Year Plan was organized by the Soviet
Government the land was taken away from him. No wonder he sulked and would
not attend to the soil.
What would an American farmer do if the police took away
his soil? His reaction would be far more violent than mere sulking. Only in
isolated cases did the Russian peasant murder the Communists from the towns,
although many villages revolted. His usual revenge was to take to the stove
and neglect the fields.
Two-thirds of the peasants have been collectivized and no
longer own their land. They have resorted to passive resistance hence bad
crops, epidemics of hundreds which now curse the Russian countryside.
Confiscation
Government
- Seizes More Grain Than Tax
"Bread’ is the second dominant note in the peasant’s
mind. A month ago a Ukrainian expressed this admirably to me when he said:
"I don’t care whether I work for a landowner or a Communist or a Polak, as
long as he gives me enough bread."
The grain raised by the peasants was violently seized in
the grain collections. Women peasants would lament to me: "They took all our
grain away, there is no bread. How can we live?"
The collective farms are associated in the peasant’s mind
with the seizing of grain and the absence of bread.
"Why should we work when everything we produce is taken
away from us?" ask the peasant.
Often the Government did not pay the peasant for the
grain it seized, and when it did pay, the sum (from 90 kopecks to 1 ruble 50
kopeks per pood - 36 lbs. of wheat) meant sheer confiscation. Moreover, the
peasant cannot work without bread. Physical weakness, as well as passive
resistance, keeps him to his stove.
The "cow" plays an important part in the peasant’s mental
make-up. To him it is wealth and happiness. Joining the collective farm
meant in most cases giving up the cow to the common good. Peasants would
say: "Why should I give up my cow to, the others? Why should drunkards and
good-for-nothings have the benefit of my cow?"
When the government attempted force to make them yield
their cows they retaliated by massacring their cattle and eating them. The
massacre of the cattle was especially widespread. In January and February,
1930, before Stalin issued his cry of "Halt!" The Soviet Government then
repented of its policy of depriving the peasant of his cow. In some
collective farms the peasant is allowed to keep one cow, but it is too late,
however, for there is a grave lack of fodder. Millions of cattle were
confiscated from peasants and sent to newly formed cattle factories, where
they died of exposure and epidemics.
Kulaks
Hardest Working of All Peasants
So great has been the inroad upon the livestock of Russia
since the Five-Year Plan became effective that not until 1945 could
livestock reach the level of 1928. The date, given to roe by one of the most
reliable foreign experts in Moscow, will only see the 1928 level reached
provided there is fodder, no disease and plans for importing cattle are
successful.
"Liberty" has been another guiding force with the Russian
peasant. He objects to being driven about in the collective farms by young
Communists from the towns. While force may lead to achievements of abort
duration, it cannot make one hundred and twenty million peasants increase
their production.
Moreover, force has led to the uprooting of six or seven
million "kulaks" - the former wealthy peasants. These have been sent to
exile with a barbarity not realized by the outside world.
Policy
Soviet Plans to Crush Opposition
Near Moscow I saw a group of hungry, miserable peasants
being driven along by a Red Army soldier with his bayonet fixed. This sight
recalled one conversation I had with a woman peasant who said: "Look at what
they call the Kulaks. They are just ordinary peasants who have a cow or two.
They are murdering the peasants, sending them away anywhere. It is
oppression, oppression, oppression!"
The "kulaks" were the richest, hardest working peasants
and their destruction means a great loss to Russia’s national wealth.
The Soviet policy of collectivization has collided with
the mentality of the Russian peasant and his passive resistance has won. Add
the disastrous fall in world prices, which forced the Soviet government to
export more and more grain, butter and other foodstuffs to meet its
obligations abroad, and one has a general view of why famine now exists in
Russia.
What of the future? One of the most decisive Spring
sowing campaigns in Russia’s history is in progress. To try and gauge the
result of this campaign, I asked these questions in March in each village I
visited:
1—What were the Winter sowing and ploughing like?
2—Have you seed?
3—What will the Spring sowing be like?
The Winter sowing and ploughing had in all regions been
bad. In some parts there had been hardly any Winter sowing. Winter sowing
accounts for about one-third of the total harvest. Much of the seed was
eaten last Fall.
In many villages seed was lacking. Experts assert,
however, that the government has far greater reserves of seed than in 1921,
and that it has well supplied the Ukraine with seed. But there is a definite
lack of seed in many districts. Danger exists that if there is not the right
quantity of seed, weeds will win and throttle the grain.
When asked about the prospects of Spring sowing, the
peasants would reply: "How can we sow when we are all weak and swollen? How
can we sow when in a month we may have no more cattle fodder to eat when our
horses have died and we cannot plough?"
Bleak
Future folds Little Hope for Masses
The most important factor in the spring sowing is the
absence of horses and tractors. In many villages about four-fifths of the
horses had perished and those that remained were weak and diseased. There
were not sufficient tractors to compensate for the death of the horses.
One wise peasant put the problem concisely: "A horse is
better than a tractor. A tractor goes and stops, but a horse goes all the
time. A tractor you can only use in certain seasons, but a horse you can use
all the year round. A tractor cannot give manure, but a horse can."
The outlook for the next harvest seems, therefore, very
black, although perfect climatic conditions may offset part of the
unfavorable factors.
Perhaps the new agricultural policy of the Soviet
Government will help. It is, first, to send many thousands of town workers,
called the Political Department, into the villages. Their task will be to
crush all opposition and organize work in the collective farms. They are
ruthless men who may be relied upon to do their task with violence. While
they may succeed in terrorizing the peasants, it is difficult to see how
they can succeed in increasing the harvest.
Disaster
Attempt to Uproot Peasantry Fails
The second point of the governments new policy is the new
agricultural tax, by which the collective farms will pay in tax so much gain
(usually about 2 ½ centners) per hectare of the sowing area PLANNED, and be
free to sell the rest in open.
I asked some peasants about that. One said:
"Yes, they said it would be alright last year to sell the
surplus on the private market, yet they took everything away. We do not
believe them any longer. They say they will only take 15 poods per hectare,
but they will take everything.
In most districts the yield will be so small that it may
be less than the tax. The peasants have so lost faith in the government that
the new policy will not encourage the peasants to work. The outlook for the
harvest therefore, remains black in spite of the new policy.
From 1917 to 1921 the Bolshevists uprooted the nobility
and the bourgeoisie and Russia survived. From 1928 to 1933 they have tried
to uproot the peasantry, and the result has been disaster.
Copyright, 1935, by N. Y. American, Inc.
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