Western Mail & South Wales News

r. Gareth Jones, who returned during the week-end from his Russian tour, makes this statement in the first of a series of articles he is writing, exclusive to the "Western Mail & South Wales News," on conditions in the Soviet Union.

The first article is a discussion on Russian famine conditions with Kerensky, who was the last Prime Minister in Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution. Kerensky states that the arrest of the British engineers arose from Stalin’s decision to inaugurate a reign of terror, and was an effort to explain the collapse of the Five Year Plan.

Mr. Gareth Jones, who is now on the staff of the "Western Mail & South Wales News," reached Cardiff yesterday from Russia after a tour in which, walking alone and without official guidance or surveillance by the Soviet authorities, he was able to make a personal study of the conditions in that country.

Mr. Gareth Jones, who has been foreign affairs adviser on Mr. Lloyd George’s staff, has paid three visits to Russia since the war. He speaks Russian fluently, and in his last tour he came into contact with peasants, and workmen in the villages and industrial centre, with the leaders of art and literature and with the men who are holding high Government positions in the Soviet Republic.

The journey across Europe is over. From Moscow the train took me to the Soviet frontier. I saw the Red frontier soldiers with the fixed bayonets for the last time and before long we were in Latvia.

American workers on the train, who had gone to Russia expecting a paradise but who were now leaving, cursing the hunger and the slavery, breathed deeply with relief. The European express crossed Lithuania, East Prussia, the Polish Corridor, until Fascist, Jew-baiting Berlin was reached. Eighteen hours after leaving Berlin I again saw London.

What impressed me most throughout my European journey was the cry hundreds of Russian peasants who said to me when I tramped through the villages: "There is no bread. We are starving."

Since the first revolution of March, 19l7, had swept the Tsarist régime away these peasants had had three masters—Kerensky, Lenin, and Stalin. I had seen the Russia of Stalin. What would Kerensky say of the changes which had come over his country since he was overthrown by the Bolsheviks?

Although he is in exile his life-work is to follow the results of the policy of rival, Stalin, and he has excellent sources of information.

M. Alexander Kerensky became Prime Minister of Russia in July 1917, and held power until the Bolshevik Revolution. He was one of the most dangerous enemies of the Tsarist Government and played a great part in the overthrow of the Monarchy in March, 1917.

The views of the man who preceded Lenin are of historical interest today, when the most decisive spring sowing in the annals of Russia begins.

Kerensky said to me: "Before his death in 1924, Lenin in his famous political testament wrote that certain features of Stalin's character were dangerous to the Communist party. Lenin had in mind the stubbornness of Stalin (Stalin’s will power is stronger than his reason), and also the absence in Stalin of the feeling of personal fear. When Stalin is convinced of something or wishes to obtain something he pushes straight on regardless of the consequences. These two characteristics combined, stubbornness and absence of personal fear, have made Stalin into the grave-digger of the Bolshevik dictatorship.

"On the lines of the New Economic Policy, when freedom of internal trade was restored, Bolshevism could have reigned over Russia for decades. But Stalin ended the New Economic Policy and within four years completely wrecked Russian agriculture. The ruin of agriculture is the great achievement of the dictatorship of Stalin.

‘‘In my opinion, during all the existence of the Bolshevik dictatorship no one has dealt so severe a blow to the Communist party as Stalin. Events are now moving rapidly, for not only the ordinary people but also many members of the Communist party and of the Young Communist League are against the regime.

"You have just told me that you have seen with your own eyes the ruin of the Russian countryside, and all the evidence I receive from Russia confirms your observations.

"Now in Russia famine is gripping a vast area and is far greater than in 1921. The Ukraine, the Volga, West Siberia, North Caucasia, the provinces which formerly supplied all Europe with grain, have no longer bread, meat, butter nor enough potatoes. The stock of cattle has been reduced by two-thirds. The peasant has hardly any agricultural implements, and the tractors destined for the collective farms and State farms are mainly broken and are at this present moment, when the spring sowing is beginning, in the repair shops.

"Russia is mainly an agricultural country and the destruction of agriculture will have as its inevitable logical conclusion the wrecking of industry, to build which the Russian peasant was expropriated from his land. For the sake of industry all Russia was condemned to famine, "The Five Year Plan is one of the greatest bluffs in history, and now the bill has to be met".

"I explain it thus. Stalin and his assistants know the real situation in Russia, and they want, by a terrible increase of terror, to frighten the growing opposition within the party.

"Besides some explanation for the collapse must be given to the workers themselves and to the Young Communists, and the scapegoats are Russian engineers and foreigners, whom they accuse of having sent bad machinery into Russia and of economic espionage and sabotage charges which are, of course, ridiculous.

"The great cause of the catastrophe is the mad attempt of Stalin to bring serfdom back into Russia, not only in the villages, but also in the towns.

"You ask me what is the way out of the chaos. There is only one way out. Freedom should be given to work, and to make and to buy, and to sell. The peasant should have his land back and his right to free labour. Only thus will he able to make a proper living. In the towns freedom for the Trade Unions should be given back to the worker, because now the Russian is more exploited than the Negroes in the Colonies. Russia should return to the foundation of civil law, which it received, from the Provisional Government.

"Under Tsarism economic conditions were undoubtedly better than to-day, but Tsarism was doomed to destruction because the last Monarch hated political freedom. If Tsarism had gone along the path of reform and had brought in a Constitution it would be existing today.

"Now the present regime has destroyed those few bases of democratic rule which already existed, and has introduced a tyranny in which not only political, but also civil rights have been destroyed. Thus the present regime is doomed, like the Monarchy.

Four British engineers are now sitting in cells in that ugly grey and yellow former insurance office which is the headquarters of the O.G.P.U., and two others, Mr. Monkhouse and Mr. Nordwall, have bound themselves not to leave Moscow.

A few days ago I was walking past that sinister building. On the pavement outside marched Red Army soldiers with their bayonets fixed; within, the British engineers, accused of wilfully damaging machines and of wrecking the Soviet electrical industry, were being submitted to that nerve-racking form of torture-the mental agony of endless questioning.

I had narrowly escaped being arrested myself not long before at a small railway station in the Ukraine, where I had entered into conversation with some peasants. These were bewailing their hunger to me, and were gathering a crowd, all murmuring, "There is no bread," when a militiaman had appeared. Stop that growling," he had shouted to the peasants; while to me he said, "Come along; where are your documents"

A civilian (an O.G.P.U. man) appeared from nowhere, and they both submitted me to a thorough gruelling of questions. They discussed among themselves what they should do with me, and finally the O.G.P.U. man decided to accompany me on the train to the big city of Kharkoff, where at last he left me in peace. There was to be no arrest.

The fate of the other British subjects in Russia was a less fortunate one, and now they await their trial. This event is more than an isolated act of violence by the political police. It is a symbol of the panic which has come over the Soviet rulers.

Hunger, far greater than in the famine days of 1921, is condemning the Russian people to despair and making them hate the Communist Party more than ever. Even the young communists, once passionately enthusiastic, are now resentful at the disillusion which has come. The workers want food and fear loss of work.

The peasant, having lost his cow, his land, and his bread, and being doomed to starvation without a finger being raised to help him, is cursing the day that Lenin took command. A sop must be provided for the wrath of the hungry mob. The wicked foreigner must be found on whom to put the blame. Thus our British subjects have been seized. The imprisonment of the Metro-Vickers’ specialists is a continuation of that hunt for victims which characterises the spring of 1933 in Russia.

Last month the Vice-Commissar for Agriculture for the whole of the Soviet Union was shot and with him specialists and 34 workers in the agricultural sphere. Many of them were in the Ministry of Agriculture, Moscow, and in the Ministry for State Farms, and during a previous visit I met one of them, Mr. Wolff, an outstanding expert on agriculture and a man respected by all who knew him.

Imagine in this country the shooting of the Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture because the agricultural policy of the Government had failed! They were accused of counter-revolutionary wrecking in the machine-tractor stations and in the State farms in the Ukraine, North Caucasia, and White Russia.

These agriculturists confessed themselves guilty - or rather were forced by torture to confess themselves guilty - of the following actions:-The smashing of tractors, the burning of tractor stations and of flat factories, the stealing of grain reserves, the disorganisation of sowing, and the destruction of cattle. Surely a formidable task for 35 men to carry out in a country which stretches 6,000 miles.

Just as these men were arrested because of the tragic ruin of agriculture, so the British engineers were arrested because the electrical plans failed. The Bolsheviks boasted of their magnificent Dnieperstroy, which was to flood the Ukraine with light and make the machines in a vast area throb with energy. What happened?

In spite of the heralding of this achievement throughout the world as a super-triumph for Socialist construction, the tramways within the very area of the Dnieperstroy stopped because there was no electric current. The great cities of Kharkoff and Kiev, the leading cities of the Ukraine, were often plunged for hours on end into darkness, and men and women and children had to huddle in blackened rooms, because it was difficult to buy candles and lamp oil. In the theatres in Kharkoff the lights would suddenly go out, and hundreds of people would sit there, dreading the crush and the fight in the dark for the way out.

At the same time as the people not many miles away from the Dnieperstroy sat in darkness, resounding slogans of the triumph of the Soviet electrical industry were drummed into the imagination of the world’s proletariat by impressive statistics and by skilfully taken photographs of electric works and of workers wreathed in smiles.

The trial of the British engineers is something more than the symbol of the collapse of the Five Year Plan. It is an indication of the grip which the O.G.P.U. (the "State Political Department," i.e., political police) has over the whole life of the Communist party.

When I was in Russia in 1931 a period of toleration had begun. The O.G.P.U. had had some of its fangs extracted and was under the control of Akuloff, a moderate man and an economist. The dangerous Yagoda had been removed. Stalin had preached the doctrine of fair-play to non-Communists and the whole country breathed a sigh of relief that the terror was over.

But now, in 1933, the terror has returned and in a form multiplied a hundredfold. Yagoda is back again at his work, slashing out left and right at all those suspected of opposition to the regime. The drive is now against all kinds of opposition. Formerly there would have been a drive against the Right Wing opposition, then against the Trotzkyists, then against the former bourgeois.

But now the attack is on all fronts - on party members, of whom numbers have been shot; on the intelligentsia, of whom there are countless representatives in Solovki; on the peasants for merely having wished to till their soi1 for themselves, and on the Ukrainian, Georgian, and Central Asian nationalists who have struggled for the rights of small countries. More and more power is being put into the bands of the O.G.P.U. and a small clique dominates the rest of the party, the members of which, although in their hearts. recognising the colossal failure of the Five-Year Plan policy, do not dare to raise even one small voice in contradiction to the general line of Stalin.

The O.G.P.U. has become the owner of large plots of land in the great cities. The finest buildings which have been built in Moscow are those O.G.P.U. residences and in the South the O.G.P.U. has entrenched itself and has excellent houses. The shops of the O.G.P.U. are the best stocked in all Russia. The wives of O.G.P.U. officials have the best dresses and the best fur coats. Many of those excellent foreign cars which are now common in Moscow belong to O.G.P.U. men. They have the greatest privileges in the Soviet Union.

But now the O.G.P.U. has made the greatest mistake of its career and it will rue the day when it arrested the engineers. Among most experts in Moscow it is believed that the O.G.P.U. acted on its own and that the Soviet Foreign Office is furious at this false step, which spoils many of the plans of its foreign policy.

How the Soviet Foreign Office must curse the clumsiness which has so embittered their relations with Britain! But still more must they curse the spoke which it has put in the wheel of American recognition. A great triumph for Soviet diplomacy was in the offing. The United States, which had refused to recognise the Soviet Union and which has never had an Ambassador nor a Consul in Moscow, was seriously considering taking the step which Britain took in 1924.

President Roosevelt was said to be favourable. Business men were booming recognition with all the arts of American publicity. Then suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, six British engineers are arrested. America stops to think, and the Soviet Government is now not so sanguine about recognition by America.

One reason why America wished to recognise the Soviet Union was to extend her trade in Russia. The arrest of the British engineers, however, throws a vivid light upon the difficulties which the Soviet Government is experiencing in meeting payments abroad. Up to now it has met its obligations with a punctiliousness which commands our respect.

Is this Metro-Vickers’ case an attempt to avoid payment? That is the question many observers are asking. For difficulties are crowding upon the Soviet Commissariats, which are drastically cutting down orders from abroad.

The case of the six British engineers must be seen with the hunger and the terror of the Russia of 1933 looming behind. For the mistaken policy which caused this visitation of famine British engineers have to atone in the cells of the O.G.P.U. headquarters.

Metrovick Trial

Walter Duranty, Prosecutor Vyskinski

and A.J.Cummings in front and First Secretary, William Strang at the back.

The Act authorising the prohibition of Soviet imports makes it lawful for the Government to prohibit by Proclamation the importation into the United Kingdom of all goods grown, produced, or manufactured in the Soviet Union.

If the Government makes use of the powers a severe blow will be dealt to Soviet foreign trade, which has already suffered from the world crisis Soviet exports declined from, approximately, £92,000,000 in 1928 to £56,000,000 in 1932. This decline was due to the great fall in world prices.

If Britain buys no more from Soviet Russia this dwindling foreign trade will be reduced by still another third, for the British market has in the past absorbed usually about 30 per cent, of Soviet exports and is, moreover, the only possible outlet for a number of Russia’s raw commodities.

In 1931 the United Kingdom bought £32,179,000 worth of goods from the Soviet Union, and sold goods in return to the value of only £9,044,000. Thus there was an adverse balance of £23,000,000.

Should an end be put to Anglo-Soviet trade the loss to British exporters would thus not exceed £9,000,000 and would probably be far less, because the Soviets are drastically cutting down their orders abroad.

The main goods which the United Kingdom exports to Russia are chemicals, ferrous metals, textile machinery, electrical appliances, and iron and steel manufactures.

£4,336,000, to Russia, but in 1932 only 68,800 tons were exported, to the value £42,701. The coal industry will, therefore be little affected by an embargo on Soviet goods.

The main exports of the Soviet Union are wheat, butter, oil, furs, timber, eggs &c. The export of most of these products however, declined rapidly last year. In the first ten months of 1932 Russia exported wheat to the value of approximately £1,200,000, compared with £6,800,00 in 1931. The export of butter declined from about £4,700,000 in 1931 to about £600,000 in 1932. The imports of timber from Russia into Great Britain have also declined in value. In 1930 the Soviet Union exported £7,423,000 worth of soft wood (not planed or dressed). In 1932 the value was £4.522,000. In 1932 the United Kingdom imported £985,000 worth of pitprops from Russia. The rapid decline in the value of Soviet exports made it difficult for the Soviet Union to meet its payments abroad. Up to now the Soviet Government has met it obligations with a punctiliousness which must be admired. But now an impoverished and nationalistic world buys less from Russia, and during the eighteen months up to June, 1932, Russia accumulated an unfavourable balance of about £45,000,000 sterling (at par). This is a grave matter for a country like Russia whose invisible exports (i.e., shipping banking, insurance, &c.) are small and who has no loans. It brings the Soviet foreign indebtedness up to the estimated amount of £120,000,000.

Of this debt Germany holds the greatest share, and the Soviet Union’s inability to pay would be a blow to German finances. The breakdown in Soviet foreign trade is no bright news for the capitalist world, for it means default on large payments. The main causes, namely, the decline in prices, the tariffs of the world, and the decreasing agricultural production of Russia, have, however, long been in effect. An embargo on Soviet goods would be another factor damaging her exports.

There is no doubt that Sir Esmond Ovey has placed the facts about the whole situation before the Government. His testimony is all the more to be believed on account of his former sympathy for the Soviet Government.

When he went to Moscow from Mexico three years ago he was immediately impressed by Russia’s achievements. Some of the Moscow-British colony thought that he was too pro-Bolshevik. Indeed, I often heard him accused of prejudice in favour of the Soviet Government, and of a lack of perception of their difficulties.

He has recently, however, become fully aware of the catastrophic conditions in Russia, as I gathered a fortnight ago in the Embassy in Moscow. He is often accused of being tactless, but in his firm handling of the present case he has earned the praise of the most critical journalists in Moscow.

Sir Esmond and Lady Ovey who were asked to leave the Soviet Union soon after Gareth’s visit.

The journey into Russia has beer described as the crossing of the boundary from one economic system, Capitalism, into another, Communism. But this description is too simple, for each country has a different type of Capitalism.

German Capitalism, which is almost a State Socialism or, as a German banker described it to me, "a Socialist State run by capitalists," is totally different from American Capitalism, where the State has up to recently kept aloof from business, and where the Government which rules least is considered the Government which rules best. French Capitalism, in which the Government has great control over finance and makes finance a tool of politics, is totally different from British Capitalism, where finance is more independent of politics and where the national income is less evenly distributed than in France.

Nor is Russia the land of Communism. Any Communist would refute this, and say that the Soviet Union is only building up Communism, and that Communist classless society will not be brought into being for many years.

A journey into Russia is, therefore, not journey from clear-cut Capitalism into clear-cut Communism. It is rather a journey from Europe into Asia into Russia is, therefore, from a Western civilization into an Eastern civilisation. It is a journey back several centuries. Russia never had the Reformation, which affected so deeply the life of Wales. Russia is now in the middle of her Industrial Revolution, which Britain went through over a century ago. The effects of the French Revolution were slight. Russia only abolished serfdom in 1881. The fight for freedom which created the free British and French characters had been crushed. Thus Russia remains Asia, although territorially in Europe. It is Asiatic in the past and present poverty and in the fatalism of its peasants.

Such were my thoughts as the Russian frontier came nearer. My companions had different ideas. They were all Communists who had fled from Canada or America and expected to find perfect conditions in the Communist State of Russia. They felt embittered at capitalism. One of them was a Hungarian who had lived in Canada and been arrested by the police and … without a trial. Finally he was deported. Where was be to go? If he went back to Hungary he would be hanged as a Communist. So he came to Russia, where, he said, the working class had built for themselves a magnificent fatherland.

His case was typical of other foreign deportees from Canada and America- victims of the depression. These workers coming from Hungary or Poland scrape up a few dollars, travel steerage to immigration officers and after weeks or months of confinement are deported. They make their way to Soviet Russia. There were many of these men bitter with capitalism on the train. When we crossed the Soviet frontier they raised a cheer. "Now, boys, we’re safe in the land without unemployment," they said.

We looked out of the train. They were delighted with everything they saw. The slightest building was exaggerated in their imagination into a Socialist triumph. We arrived in Moscow, and indeed there was little in the centre of the city which America, lose their jobs, sleep in the American parks, are finally seized by could disillusion them. The children looked well fed and most of the people had warm clothes and sufficient footwear. The, streets had improved greatly and several new buildings were in course of construction. My first impression was good. I had forgotten one thing … in the whole of the Soviet Union is collected for the capital city.

No greater contrast could be found than the feelings of those who left Russia the same time as I did several weeks later. These were American workers, who had come two and a half years earlier, expecting to find good conditions. They now cursed the Soviet Government with all the vituperation they could command. Their American passports had been taken away from them in order to make it difficult for them to leave Russia.

It was only through the efforts of an American journalist that they had received their passports. Their two sons had lived on a collective farm and had had nothing but potatoes and cattle fodder for six months.

They said: "No one wants to work. No one cares whether the machines are smashed or neglected. In the factory where I was almost 100 per cent, of the workers are against the Government. The workers are too weak to do real work. Now they are afraid of losing their jobs because in some factories up to 50 per cent, of a the workers have been dismissed."

When I heard the other workers in the train, Germans and Italians, talk of their experiences in Soviet factories and saw their joy when the Soviet frontier was passed I thought of the hope of the deportees as they entered the Soviet Union, and wondered how they were faring in that Asiatic country which had tried in vain to catch up many centuries of industrialism in the brief span of five years.

Famine, far greater than the famine of 1921, is now visiting Russia. The hunger of twelve years ago was only prevalent in the Volga and in some other regions, but today the hunger has attacked the Ukraine, the North Caucasus, the Volga district, Central Asia, Siberia-indeed, every part of Russia. I have spoken to peasants or to eye-witnesses from every one of those districts and their story is the same. There is hardly any bread left, the peasants either exist on potatoes and cattle fodder, or, if they have none of these, die off.

In the three agricultural districts which I visited, namely, the Moscow region, the Central Black Earth district, and North Ukraine, there was no bread left in any village out of the total twenty villages to which I went. In almost every village peasant had died of hunger.

Even twenty miles away from Moscow there was no bread. When I travelled through these Moscow villages the inhabitants said: "It is terrible. We have no bread. We have to go all the way to Moscow for bread, and then they will only give us four pounds, for which we have to pay three roubles a kilo (i.e., nominally nearly (3s. a pound). How can a poor family live on that?"

A little further on the road a woman started crying when telling me of the hunger, and said: "They’re killing us. We haven no bread. We have no potatoes left. In this village there used to be 300 cows and now there are only 30. The horses have died. We shall starve." Many people, especially in the Ukraine, have been existing for a week or more on salt and water, but most of them on beet, which was once given to cattle.

Last year, the weather was ideal. Climatic conditions have in the, past few years blessed the Soviet Government. Then why ‘the catastrophe? In the first place, the land has been taken away from 70 per cent. of the peasantry, and all incentive to work has disappeared. Anyone with the blood of Welsh farmers in his veins will understand what it means to a farmer or a peasant to have his own land taken away from him. Last year nearly all the crops of the peasants were violently seized, and the, peasant was left almost nothing for himself. Under the Five-Year Plan the Soviet Government aimed at setting up big collective farms, where the land would be owned in common and run by tractors. But the Russian peasant in one respect is no different from the Welsh farmer. He wants his own land, and if his land is taken away from him he will not work. The passive resistance of the peasant has been a stronger factor than all the speeches of Stalin.

In the second place, the cow was taken away from the peasant. Imagine what would happen in the Vale of Glamorgan or in Cardiganshire if the county councils took away the cows of the farmers! The cattle were to be owned in common, and cared for in common by the collective farms. Many of the cattle were seized and, put into vast State cattle factories.

The result of this policy was a widespread massacre of cattle by the peasants, who did not wish to sacrifice their property for nothing. Another result was that on these State cattle factories, which were entirely unprepared and had not enough sheds, innumerable live-stock died of exposure and epidemics. Horses died from lack of fodder. The live-stock of the Soviet Union has now been so depleted that not until 1945 can it reach the level of 1928. And that is provided all the plans for the import of cattle succeed, provided there is no disease, and provided there is fodder. That date 1945 was given me by one of the most reliable foreign experts in Moscow.

In the third place, six or seven millions of the best farmers (i.e., the Kulaks) in Russia have been uprooted and have been exiled with a barbarity which is not realised in Britain. Although two years ago the Soviet Government claimed that the Kulak had been, destroyed, the savage drive against the better peasant continued with increased violence last winter. It was the aim of the Bolsheviks to destroy the Kulaks as a class, because they were "the capitalists of the village."

A peasant woman in the Moscow district said to me, "Look at what they call Kulaks! They are just ordinary peasants who have a cow or two. They’re murdering the peasants and, sending them away everywhere. It’s oppression, oppression, oppression." I saw near Moscow a group of hungry looking, miserable peasants being driven along by a Red Army soldier with his bayonet fixed, on his rifle. The treatment of the other peasants has been equally cruel. Their land and, livestock taken away from them, they have been condemned to the status of starving, landless serfs.

The final reason for the famine in Soviet Russia has been the Soviet export of food stuffs. So anxious has the Soviet Government been to meet its obligations abroad that it has exported grain, butter, and eggs in order to buy machinery while the population was starving at home. In this respect the Soviet Government has followed the example of the Tsarist Government, which used to export grain even in a year of food shortage. There was never in Tsarist Russia, however, a famine which’ hit every part of Russia as today. To export food at such a period has aggravated the hunger, and although the Soviet Government deserves praise for its habit of paying punctually it has by its policy harmed the health and endangered the life of a considerable section of its population.

The taking of the land away from the peasant, the massacre of the cattle, the exile of the most hard-working peasants, and the export of food-those are the four main reasons why there is famine in Russia to-day.

The first Five-Year Plan abolished unemployment. Whereas in the capitalist world the figures of the workless rose from month to month, the Soviet Union could correctly say that they had successfully tackled that problem. Indeed, their great problem was shortage of labour.

The Five-Year Plan has succeeded on the munitions side and many gun and tank factories have been built. For the Plan was primarily a military and not an, economic plan.

The second Five-Year Plan, which began on January 1^st, 1933, has seen the return of unemployment. More than 20,000 workers have recently been dismissed from several Kharkoff factories. Several thousand were dismissed from the Kharkoff Tractor Works. From another Kharkoff factory 8,000 were dismissed. In Moscow the number of dismissals has been great. In some factories about 25 to 4.0 per cent. of the staffs have been dismissed, while in some offices up to 53 per cent. have lost their jobs.

It is impossible to estimate the total unemployed, for many of them are peasants who invaded the towns, found work in the factories, and are now being sent back again to the villages. No unemployment figures are published.

There is no unemployment insurance. When a man is dismissed his bread-card is taken away from him, or in some cases is left to him for a fortnight. Unemployment is thus a condemnation to starvation. The unemployed man is usually refused a passport and has to leave the city for the countryside, where there is no bread. A man often loses his post for coming to work a quarter of an hour late, for labour discipline is now exceedingly strict.

Why is there unemployment in Russia? Why has this problem, which did not exist a year ago, returned to trouble the Soviet Government?

The first reason is the shortage of raw materials. The supply of coal, timber or oil fails and the factories have to stand idle, waiting until the necessary fuel arrives. In Kharkoff, not many miles away from the richest coal district of Russia, there was a shortage of coal and led to long delays in factories. In Moscow there was a shortage of petrol, and this also led to stoppages. Bad transport is responsible for these de1ays. The railway lines get blocked, and this disorganises distribution.

In the "Pravda" of March 19, I read: "Disgraceful Work of the Administration of the Southern Railway. In the storehouses of the Almaznyansky Metal Factory 13,000 tons of metal are lying idle, intended mainly for the agricultural machine factories; 1,500 tons are waiting to be sent to the Kharkoff Tractor Factory, 2,000 tons to the Stalingrad Factory, 2,000 tons to the Nijni-Novgorod Motorcar Factory. The Southern Railway is only sending 12 to 15 wagons of iron per day instead of 35. On some days no wagons at all are dispatched."

The second reason for unemployment in Russia is financial. There is now a rigid economy campaign being carried on. Many factories have had large deficits. The operating costs are exceedingly high. "What do you do when factories have deficit?" I asked official in the Commissariat for Finance. He replied, "We apply methods to force them to economise. We even oblige them not to pay salaries and make them dismiss their staffs."

That tends to unemployment. The director of the factory has to make both ends meet, and thus dismisses workmen.

The third reason for the unemployment in Soviet Russia is the food shortage. Each factory has been made responsible for the feeding of its workers. A factory is given a certain agricultural district from which to draw supplies. A director is made responsible for the feeding. There is hardly ever enough food for all the workers In the factory on account of the breakdown of agriculture. In order to make the food supply go round workers are dismissed and are sent to the countryside. The food shortage is probably the main cause of unemployment.

The final cause for unemployment was given to me by a director of the Kharkoff Tractor Factory. "Why have you dismissed men?" I asked him. He replied, "We’ve improved our technical knowledge and so we do not need so many men." An admission that technological unemployment is not a. feature of capitalism alone.

The Five-Year Plan was intended to make Russia independent of the rest of the world. This aim has failed. Foreign specialists are leaving Russia. When they have gone woe betide the Soviet machines.

The lack of raw materials, financial difficulties, the food shortage, and increase in the use of machines-those are the four causes of unemployment in Russia.

The foreign policy of the Soviet Union is emphatically one of peace. If there is any stable factor in this ever-changing world of ours, it is the fact that Russia will never attack. Russia will never attack because her internal position is too weak. An army cannot fight without bread, and although the Soviet Government has good reserves for the Army, it is not enough to enable it to embark on a big military campaign.

to deliver grain. A war would place weapons in the hands of the population and would mean the overthrow of the régime. Russia -will not attack because throughout her territory there are national minorities waiting for the war-drums to beat in order to gain their independence. In the Ukraine the Home Rule movement is ever growing and the Ukrainians hate the Great Russians with increasing bitterness.

The policy of Russification which the Soviet Government began about two months ago will increase the rebellious feelings of the Ukraine and will weaken Russia’s military strength.

In Georgia the nationalists are increasing their strength and there are many underground plots to overthrow the Soviet régime. In Central Asia national movements are ever strong and have been fanned by Moscow’s tolerant policy of encouraging native languages and literature. These minorities are waiting for war in order to rise. Thus Moscow will avoid foreign conflicts.

Russia will not attack because her transport is too disorganised to send troops across long distances. This fact explains the forbearance of Russia in the Manchurian dispute.

Fear of war explains Soviet Russia’s policy. Lenin prophesied that the capitalist nations would launch an attack on the Soviet Union. To prevent this Russia has sought friendship with all the nations on her borders. She refuses to belong to any group of nations for fear she will be dragged into a conflict. She refuses to make any alliance for the same reason. Thus she has offered and has signed Pacts of Non-Aggression with a number of countries, including Poland and France. There has recently been a rapprochement between the Soviet Union and France.

One nation refused to sign a Pact of Non-Aggression with Russia and that nation was Japan. This refusal has led many Soviet observers to fear that Japan is planning to attack Russia.

The Soviet Union dislikes the League of Nations because it is a capitalist organisation and because it has many members which do not recognise Moscow, but it has co-operated energetically at Geneva on the question of disarmament. The Soviet Union has recently hoped that the United States would give it diplomatic recognition. But these hopes have been dimmed since the arrest of the British engineers, and now it is not probable that America will send an Ambassador to Moscow. Close relations between the United States and Russia are, however, not out of the question because both countries are united by fear of Japanese expansion.

In spite: of the Soviet Union’s desire for peace, there has been a great spread of militarism in that country. Flamboyant posters show the need for defence. Children in school are given gas-mask demonstrations and are taught how to shoot. In a village at least a thousand miles from the nearest frontier I was informed that the peasants had been taughthow to use gas-masks. The Society for Aviation and Chemical Defence is a flourishing organisation, with twelve million members spreading its influence throughout the factories and offering training ground for those about to join the Army. Military aviation has made great strides in Russia. Great stress is laid upon the Army and upon munitions factories.

The policy of Russia is, therefore, a paradox-it combines great desire for peace with energetic preparation for war.

Easter in the Soviet Union is a period of renewed anti-religious propaganda. When a Christian festival occurs the Society of Atheists booms out its anti-God publicity with increased vigour. At Christmas and Easter time there are mocking processions in the streets which revile the beliefs and rites of Christianity.

The methods of the Atheists have, however, changed since 1930, and the persecution of religion is now in its fourth period. In the first period, from 1917 to 1921, religious people were persecuted by violent methods, such as terror, and innumerable priests were killed or sent to the prison islands of the North and to Siberia. When the New Economic Policy was introduced in 1921 a period of comparative toleration began, which was interrupted from time to time by outbursts of persecution, such as the trial of and death sentence upon the Catholic Archbishop Cepiak, in 1923.

When in 1928, however, the period of toleration ended and Stalin began on his course of rapidly turning Russia into an industrialised Socialist State by the Five-Year Plan, religion was again submitted to violent persecution.

From 1928 to 1930 force was applied to the crushing of all religious sects and creeds. None was spared. The attack was not only against the Orthodox Church which had been a pillar of Tsarism, but against Baptists, Evangelists, Mohammedans, and the innumerable sects which had arisen. That attempt to crush religion by force in 1928 to 1930 failed. Lunacharsky, once Commissar for Education, summed up the failure pithily when he stated: "Religion is like a nail: the more you hit it the deeper it goes in."

That saying has guided the anti-religious policy of the Bolsheviks since 1930, when the fourth period began, and the dominant note had been, "We must fight religion by more subtle methods, by science and by propaganda."

Thus the Atheists have now declared themselves against physical force and state: "We are for the ideological form, of struggle, for deep cultural propaganda." Lecturers tour the country to show that religion is unscientific, that religion is mere superstition, that religion: is symbolic of dirt, disease, and drunkenness, while Atheism brings electric light, the aeroplane, and the tractor.

Atheism is associated with the correct teaching of biology, geography, physiology, chemistry, and other sciences. Religion is associated with all that is medieval, such as witches, charms, curses, water-sprites and ghosts. Why do the Communists fight against religion? Their policy is guided by the slogan, "Atheism is a weapon of class-warfare." Because there has been renewed class warfare since 1928, the battle for Atheism has been waged with greater energy. The Communists claim that the classes which they are destroying are not dying without a struggle and that they are using religion as a weapon to wreck the building of Socialism. religion as a weapon to wreck the building of Socialism religion as a weapon to wreck the building of Socialism.

Religious people, the Communists complain, are fighting against the Socialist collective farms. The priests have been writing letters which they purported to have come from God, stating, "I, God, tell you that the collective farm is the work of the Devil."

According to the Communist, religious peasants have been warning the others that if they entered the collective farms they would go to hell. The Communists complain that the religious peasants have been agitating against scientific methods, and that they are still in favour of the three-field system, because, as they say, "Even God is for the three-field system, because God is for the Trinity, and the Trinity is symbolic for the three-field system."

The Communists state that the religious festivals do harm to agriculture and that the peasants drink so much during these festivals that they do not ‘work for many days and, thus wreck the spring sowing. The Communists are against religion because they claim that religion upholds the old capitalist world and that the churches are merely tools of Rockefeller, Ford, and Deterding.

"Why are there missionaries in the world?" they ask; and they reply, "The missionaries are there because the capitalists and the imperialists -have sent them,"

Thus the Bolsheviks are attempting to crush religion. Although they have stated that they wish to abandon forceful methods, thousands of preachers and priests are now half-starving in prison. How great, has their Success been? Among children the propaganda. and the teaching in the schools have undoubtedly had a great effect. If you ask Russian children, "Do you believe in God?" most will answer emphatically, "No."

But there are many young people who believe in God. One Russian girl told me that she believed in God, but that she was going to join the Young Communist League. "How can you join the Young Communist League when you believe in God?" I asked. She replied, "Of course I can. I shall pretend to be a Communist and make wonderful Communist speeches, but all the time I shall believe in God," and she added a phrase which impressed me deeply, "For what my lips say, my heart need not believe."

The hearts of the Russian people often remain Christian while their lips utter vilifications against God. Religion has not been crushed

There has been a religious revival in the last year. Numerous sects have sprung up. Personal religion has grown. Deep human emotion is taking the place of ceremony. Mr. Hessell Tiltman was quite right when he said: "They may shoot every Christian in Russia and men and women there will still nurse the image of God in their hearts. Long after the last anti-God poster has faded on the hoardings, the last lesson in Atheism been given in the schools, and the present Soviet leaders are no more, the love of God will be found in. Russian hearts. For the Communists, who are so fond of quoting the proverbs of Lenin, have forgotten one proverb that Lenin did not write, but the truth of which is attested by all history. That proverb runs: "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church."

The trial of the British engineers in Moscow will rank as one of the biggest blunders of history. The false step which the O.G..P.U. (the State Political Police) blindly took when they ordered the arrest of the six Britons has had results greatly damaging to the Soviet Union. The O.G.P.U. went about the frame-up without consulting anybody. Its officials left the Soviet Foreign Office in the dark and sprang the trumped-up charges upon an astonished Soviet public.

The Moscow Foreign office could not fight against the O.G.P.U., which is now all-powerful, and had to defend the O.G.P.U. action in public, while probably cursing it in private.

What the O.G.P.U. did in keeping with the Bolshevik mentality. It was motivated by a great fear of the capitalist nations. According to the Bolsheviks, the capitalists are ever plotting the overthrow of the Soviet Union and send swarms of spies to Russia.

"England and America are preparing war on the Soviet Union. The Pope and the Hitlerites are allies in preparing to attack the Soviet Union."

Those are typical propaganda posters which one sees everywhere. This fear of capitalist attack is deeply impressed on the Russian mind, for the Bolsheviks credulously accept Lenin’s prophecy that the war between Capitalism and Communism is bound to come. What wonder that most British experts or observers going to Russia are suspected of being spies?

The O.G.P.U. is fanatical in another of its suspicions, namely, the relations between British people and the Intelligence Service. The Bolsheviks really believe that Scotland Yard (which they confuse with the British Intelligence Service) is an all-powerful force dominating British life. Scotland Yard, in their imaginations, is the exact equivalent of the O.G.P.U. and has every man and woman and child under its control.

The Bolsheviks have been taught to believe that every British subject going abroad has to report to Scotland Yard, has to have special permission to leave the country, and has to call at Scotland with military information on his return to England. In pre-war days the Tsarist police were also suspicious concerning the character of the foreigners who entered Russia.

The O.G.P.U. was also fanatically-minded in its suspicion of sabotage. The wrecking of machines has been a frequent crime both in Tsarist and Bolshevik Russia. Although the accusation strikes as fantastic, sabotage is quite a natural idea to Russians. Much valuable machinery has been wrecked by wilful damaging by Russians who hate the Bolshevik system.

Hence the O.G.P.U.’s blunder was natural one in view of Russian history and of Russian mentality. The O.G.P.U.’s disregard of human life is also natural in view of Russian character. Human life has never been of much stock in Russia, and the rights of the individual have always been scorned by the ruling class, whether Tsarist or Bolshevik. Nor will Russian public opinion have much effect on the Bolsheviks’ policy. The young Communists and the members of the party will see in the trial an explanation for the breakdowns in industry. But the rest of the country will only think and talk of one subject- "Food."

Where the O.G.P.U. blundered most was in its ignorance of foreign countries. It did not foresee the first result of the trial which was a world-wide publicity of the dangers accompany engineering trade in Russia. The trial has thrown vivid searchlight upon the way the government treats foreign experts. The natural reaction in a foreign firm is: "How can we trade with people who treat the representatives of a first-class company in such a disgraceful way?" The third degree methods employed in the trial and the invalid nature of the evidence obtained by terrorising Russians have also damaged the Soviet Government in foreign eyes.

The second consequence of the trial which the O.G.P.U. did not foresee was the barrier it put in the way of American recognition. President Roosevelt seemed in favour of entering upon diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, but the Moscow trial has alarmed the American, and that goal of Soviet foreign policy-American recognition-is now farther away than ever.

The final consequence unforeseen by the O.G.P.U. is the prohibition of 80 per cent. of imports from Russia, which was proclaimed yesterday. Next week the import of petroleum, wheat, butter, raw cotton, timber, and other commodities will be banned. This will deal a severe blow at Soviet foreign trade, for Great Britain has been Russia’s greatest market. Usually, almost one-third of the Soviet exports have come to the United Kingdom. In 1931 the Soviet Union sold to Britain goods to the value of £32,000,000, and bought from Britain £9,000,000 worth of goods.

The ban on timber from Russia may lead to difficulties, in view of large contracts which have been signed and in of the suitability of Russian timber for British needs. Among the items banned are pitprops and pitwood.

The banning of foodstuffs will probably not change the situation greatly, for the export of foodstuffs will, in any case decline rapidly on account of the massacre of cattle and of the ruin of agriculture in Russia.

Some of the effects of the embargo will be unfortunate. The shipping trade between British ports and Russia will be adversely affected. The shutting off of the British market will cause the Soviet Government great difficulties in meeting obligations abroad, and this will hurt British businessmen who are owed money by Russia. Moreover it will hasten Russian default in Germany, and this will endanger the German budgetary situation. Little did the O.G.P.U. think of the world-wide political and economic consequences of their sudden descent upon the British engineers’ lodgings in Moscow.