Albuquerque morning journal. [volume] (Albuquerque, N.M.) 1903-1926, 1921-11-14
PEASANTS FOOD
CONF |SCATEO BY
SOVIET LEADERS
Reuuisitions Of Grain BY
the Red Army and Other
Authorities Partly Re-
sponsibIe for the Famine.
CBy The Associated Press.)

samara, On the Volga, Nov. l3
(by a staff Correspondent Of the
Associated Press )-Constant req
uisitions of grain by the Red army
and other authorities, as well as
the lack of rainfall, was a CHIEF
cause OF the great famine in this
section of Russia, according to the
peasant farmers. They say the
soviet, itself, helped Kill the COOS
that laid the golden eggs.
The story of the famine and its
most intense miseries cannot be
had in the cities. 1t is only in the
little villages where the farm
workers live and where the fam
inc and had its origin that the
truth, bare, bitter and crushing,
can be ascertained.
The story Of the village or Nov J.
Semikinoi sixteen miles from Sa-
mara, is typical of many the cor
respondent visited up and doWh
the Volga. Riding out across the
rich, rolling farmland, swept by
cold winds from the east, but sti.l
beautiful in the golden autumn,
The forests shot with deep brown,
the grass yet green and upon 1t
herds of cattle and horses, with
here and there patches Of fields
ploughed and sowed with spring
rye and wheat, one arrives at this
village struggling for a half mile
along the two sides OF the main
road.
silence Fnvelops Village.
A heavy silence envelops the
village Many of its one-storied,
log cabin houses, each shut off
from the other by high rail fences
enclosing a quarter-acre plot for
chickens, cows, wagons and barns
are shut the windows are boarded
and the doors locked.
Midway in the village the cor
respondent stopped, knocked at til:
door of an occupied home, The
peasant said the village was COM
posed of ESQ houses, fifty of which
had been des rted by the owners
going elsewhere for food, Two
years earlier the richer peasanta
had worked each about 500 acres
of land but now they farmed but
three acres. Normally, the yield
was sixty to eighty bushels Of
grain per each three acres, wher"
as this summer, the harvest had
been but about forty pounds. Last
year the harvest had been about
four bushels of grain to each of
three acres.
At that point the peasant, a tai
raw-boned man, thinned by lack
of food, began to get angry. The
I.
cember ordered the village to con-
tribute about $500 bushels of
grain, for which no payment was
to be received. The village hadn't
been able to supply all this requi-
sition but offered part. SO the Red
soldiers came and took the amount
of the reguisition.
Boiled Up Old Skins.
The village was left without seed
grain, though it was promised
from Samara, and was also with
out food for the winter. To get
bread. in December, the villagers
began selling off their valuables,
and eating their cattle and sheep.
As the winter deepened, the fam
inc set in, and the poor villagers
began to boil up old skins and
hides from furs, even the soles Of
old boots and shoes.
When last spring came, Samar4
failed TO furnish such seed grain.
and the peasants sold more valua-
bles to buy a little. One way or
another they had thirty-six pounds
of seed grain per three acres. Then
came a dry spring and a dry sum-
1ner. with a scant harvest Tha
rain came after the harvest.
The worst of it was, he said, that
in the face of their starvation, the
samara soviet had just ordered the
village TO furnish three to six
pounds of butter for each COW
owned. Yet the only food for the
cows was field grass, and most of
them no longer gave milk.
No Cereal Available.
The villagers were eating fruit,
melons pumpkins, and bread mad
from roots, nuts. and ee bark.
They had enough for two or three
weeks longer. "A pound OF brea
cannot be had here, no, not for
100000 rubles," they dec. ed.
The villagers were SUFFERING
from stomach disorders, and asked
for castor oil, medicine not to be
had in the whole district. They adj
initted that food, not medicine,
was what they needed.
@"Our only hope is the Ameri-
cans they said. Otherwise we
must die"