The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-10-14

1 AS CNSlyWleTe 6f1uSAlSS OI growing resentment of the peasant population agannst the government and it's re- qu1sitioning expeditions. The earlier request of the Bolshevist government that the farmers upon their demob- ilization from the army should carry back home with them their arms and use them in appropriations of the larger land owners and breaking the power of the bourgeoise, has now given these same farmers armed strength against the government.
 The peasants are thus armed in part with machine guns,' says Worst,
 and I receive constant reports of agreements formed in neighboring villages for common bloody defense
 against the government and it's re- ties. This is a battle in which the
 urban proletariat and it's government
 unless 1t adopts other means of as
 sistance would beyond doubt have to
 succumb.
 For these and other reasons which
 are adopted as a matter of principle,
 the Soviet government has attempted
 to introduce the calss conflict into the
 villages, and to divide the poorest
 farmers Che Bedujaki) from the
 richer dhe KulakD. The Bedujaki, who likewise suffer from lack, are
 organized in the villages into Com mittees of Poverty who are to pro-
 ceed against the Kulali in the same , way as the urban proletariat against
 the bourgeoise. In this way it is
 hoped to level the unequal distribu- ton of land, goods and equipment . 4n a1c plete communism. At the same time the Bolshevist government sets up , the thesis that there is no sort Of
 conflict of interests between the Be
 dujaki and the urban proletariat;
 and in this way they hope to be able
 to collect the greater part of the pop
 ulace in the cities and in the rural districts into unified proletarian
 front As concerns the food problem the government hopes that the Bedu-
 jaki Community of Poverty once the : village community is split, will them selves appropriate the grain supplies of the richer peasants for the benefit of themselves, and the urban prolet- ariat.
 r This entire Bolshevist idea belongs to the program that has evoked the bitterest resentment on the part o1 the Social Revolutionists, that sectior
 of peculiar independant agrarian so cialism that. has grown up on Russian
 soil and which considers itself the natural champion of the interests O. the peasantry. They object to thi idea as unnatural and objectionabl
 and contrary to the traditional unity . | nf 4Ia cannot yet venture to judge whether this measure is likely to permit o
 realization, but prefer for the tim
 being to remain skeptical concerning
 it. At all events, it is still only in it beginnings. The numerous mention
 in the Bolshevist press of the forma
 ton of committees of poverty is fo = purposes of agitation rather than
 picture of actual fact"
 A typical instance of the counter
 measures taken by the richer farmer
 or Kulaki is cited in the case of on n community where, when the requisi
 tion party arrived, no Bedujaki o
 "poor farmers were found, the Kul N ah having previously gathered to gether, taken an inventory of th&
 respective holdings, and distribute u among the poorer brethren propor @ tionately therefrom sufficient grain t
 last even the poorest until the ne1 ~ harvest. The Bolshevist press de L nounced this as a bribe. Worst cite D the case, however, as showing not onl : the shrewdenss of the peasantry, bu ~ also the degree to which even the :. have been converted to a politica f1JrT ,f hn .e of the revolution.
 ' The troubles of the Bolshevist gov u ernment in the cities are constant v multiplying, according to the writer I for while the harvest was not bad, great part of the fields had not bee
 planted and there is no prospect of a " improvement in the organization ( = transport which has been the root { - Russia's evils from the start. IT ~ Food Administration is costing sun - of money far out of proportion to i ~ usefulness, the Moscow Food Admin ,5 istration alone having increased i N personnel from 750 to 4,0O0 perso1 IL between December and April, and no
 requiring a budget of 280,000,0C
 rubles monthly, so that the new ' paper Retch estimates the cost V grain provided through this unwielG a organization as at least 100 rubles . pud.
 Simultaneously with the breakdoN
 in organized systems of transportatio , and distribution, there has grown | an extensive but unorganized syste =, of furtive peddling Of grain S4 "miejetjinki," or "sack carriers" wi H crowd the railway trains and ru o. the market. Inasmuch as they off -r the peasants far higher price th' ,S' does the government, they great 4o hamper the execution of the gover ~ ment's measures under it's fixed price ,I1 In addition, they burden the sea l railway facilities; each "sack carrie :" being able to carry only limit :, quantity of grain,it frequently ha ~. pens that car is crowded with on of them carrying 200 pounds, whi D .s the same car could have transport ~ 1000 puds if free of the "carriers ad The carriers are not all peddlers, b consist in large part also of the DO t- of the cities, who travel for days A a time in order to fetch themselv
 a few puds of grain from some dista section.
 --4 Worst describes some of these de - perate expeditions of "sack carrier ,., of the starving urban proletariat, W ,d. wandered days and days, often ail ,on lessly straying into far-away gover ioa ments of Russia in search of a ft ;a puds of grain to take back home.
 cites one instance where 1000 Sli .- them seized a locomotive and 34 cs -s at Orel and drove the train iowa